The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound (1966)

The greatest movie ever!

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

It's the Velvet Underground in 1966 so it would be difficult to make this bad. Pretty much the only way it could be ruined is if the cameraman zoomed in and out rapidly for 10 minutes... 20 minutes... 30 minutes... which, in fact, is the case. It's absolutely nauseating. While this might not bother some, it certainly bothered me.I guess what the cameraman was trying to do was treat the camera like it was an instrument. The other effects don't detract from this document, and the zoom wouldn't even be that bad if it was used a little more sparingly. On occasions, though, I really wish the camera was strictly used as a means to record this moment in time. John Cale plays something really wicked looking at one point, but you never really get a good look at it with all the zooming in and out and the tendency to not be focusing on what you want to see.It is still a film worth seeing for any Velvet Underground fan, and if you're a fan of Warhol's films, well, I guess you're used to things that are difficult to watch, so go for it. I definitely understand why this isn't commercially available. I'm glad I saw it, but I wouldn't be disappointed if I never saw it again.

There are a few other bits of footage of the band, but this is the only rentable film known to exist. Anyone have home movies with synched sound? ... If so, want to make some money? (well, don't look at me, others have deeper pockets).Yes, there is footage of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable with VU, but the sound isn't from *that* performance. More accurate is the footage of the band tying up Moe. Like this film (VU & Nico), you actually hear the band members speaking and such in the tie-up-Moe film, but they aren't playing instruments, and there's no Nico.Therefore, fans simply MUST see this film is all its wandering, unfocused glory. Lay back and let the noise wash you away.

I had access to a print of this back in highschool days, and would steal away with friends to screen it whenever possible.Great document.But it's not the only film on the subject that should be listed at IMDb.Someone's neglected to enter the 12-22 minute (depending on the version) "Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable with The Velvet Underground" mini-featurette ...if I've tagged it right! What I've recently seen is a fragment of live 'performance' footage... as in dancer-performers against lightshow and bits and pieces of Velvets' soundtrack further edited into stroboscopic oblivion. The "look" is that of the stills from the show reproduced on the band's first LP.It's very much a "Morrisey with Warhol" product of the times, a real film in itself, and explains a LOT about how the band worked as an extension of the Warhol Trip in the great man's own fantasizing Svengali imagination. Heard this way (which means heard only but seen 'enacted' with fractured clips of dancers and ecstatics whippers and whippees), the onslaught is a sensual barrage of drugged out cool, Heroin on Speed.Vocal roles go to Cale doing the one about "boots of shiny, shiny leather", Venus in Furs, and just possibly European Son (where was Lou that night?), and Nico in the middle on a snatch of It Was a Pleasure Then. Gerard and Inga fling themselves around with abandon. Great stuff!

Even ardent fans of the velvet underground will probably move uneasily in their chairs during this picture. The movie includes everything, except for a VU performance. The band IS there, and they are playing, but it is an incoherent jam session from hell rather then something familiar. Warhol accompanies the music with repeating focus shifts, lighting experiments, bizarre camera movements, etc., all of which combined create an hypnotic trance-like effect, not to be forgotten soon. Warhol also chooses to let only the diegtic sound from the amplifiers be heard, and thus whole sequences, such as the cops who arrive to stop the show on account of various complaints from neighbors, remain unheard and eluded to instead of crudely "shown". This is a revolutionary experiment in rock videos, even in today's standards.