This film incorporates everything I hate about concert films and so-called "music video." Instead of a rare and valuable record of one of the most influential acts in the history of hard rock, we get a disjointed, fragmentary, and frankly idiotic set of moving images. During approximately a half hour of concert footage,only about one minute provides a view of what the musicians are actually doing. The rest alternates between extreme closeups of the musician's faces (mostly Jack Bruce), even more extreme closeups of Ginger Baker's hands (but not in a way that reveals his playing), and random shots of people in the crowd. Throw in some "psychedelic" effects, like rapidly jacking the zoom in and out (indeed "jacking" themselves is an apt description of what these filmmakers are doing), and you have one of the most egregious wastes of film and greatest missed opportunities in music history.
But what else could we expect? Even before this film, music video producers were adopting the elements that have come to define the genre's style (one song sequence from the Beatles movie "Help" contains almost every technique that has ever been used since). The overarching theme is that the camera -- and by extension the producer, director, or editor -- is the star of the show. To hell with the musicians. It's far too dull to just set up a static camera with a good viewpoint and let it capture the full performance and allow viewers to direct their attention to the parts of the action that most interests them. No, that doesn't require any talent or skill on the part of the filmmaker, and we must never forget that they are the real auteurs of the show.
And never, never, never expect them to have any knowledge of music in general or of a particular song in the program. Whatever is most musically important at a given moment -- a guitar solo, a drum fill, a crucial lyric -- they are almost certain to be focused elsewhere. And if their cameras should alight on a particular individual at a particular time, they will almost never stay there long enough to allow viewers to see a musically significant interval -- like a complete riff or full measure. It is never about the music but always about their idea of a compelling visual.
One of the worst things ever to happen to popular music was the advent of MTV and the jump-cut, effects-laden, camera-as-star style it institutionalized once and for all. But MTV did not invent that style but only guaranteed its ubiquity. No, there were pretentious, talentless nabobs who knew a "better way" to present stage performances long before. If you watch this abortion of a film, you'll see some of the nabobs in action. My apologies to Misters Bruce, Baker, and Clapton. Only a few thousand people were lucky enough to see you perform during your short career together as Cream, but I was not among them. When I first encountered this program in the early 1970s, I thought I 'd been granted a gift from God. I soon learned it was a cruel, devilish joke. I hope it's keeping its creators warm somewhere.