This year marks the 40th anniversary of the premiere of the film. Demme revolutionized the editing, planning and staging of film concerts through this work, and turned the genre of the live filming that I had recorded until then. After 40 years, 4 can be seen in the reformed version of the Great Definition Ultra as of March, by the hand of the producer A24. For all these reasons, the film is considered mythical in its genre, only the score given by the websites IMDb and Metacritic, 8.7/10 and 94/100 respectively.

At the same time, the giant clothing used by musician David Byrne on the melody Girlfriend Is Better, which shows the remarkable influences of the Japanese Noh theatre, has become an icon of the film and the group. This resource was used to minimize the singer's head in the movie, which has become forever a group identity sign. In 2014, in an interview with Time magazine, Byrne recalled how the idea came to him: "I was in Japan and I was researching the traditional Japanese theater: Kabuki, Noh, Bunraku -- and at the same time I was thinking about what to put for our next tour. So a fashion designer friend, Jurgen Lehl, told me in his typical ironic tone: 'Well, David, everything is bigger on stage.' I was talking about gestures and all that, but I applied the idea to a business suit."

Another of the most important names in the film that took part in the film was photo director Jordan Cronenweth (1935-1996), who participated, among others, in the classic science fiction film Blade Runner (1982).

Byrne, revised “It’s almost like I’m looking at a
character. I'm pretty far away. I keep the elements of that person, but not everything. 'Oh, what relationship is there between that being I'm looking at and me' is like thinking,' said Byrne in an interview last December in the middle of the New York Times, on the occasion of the repremiere of the film, without showing any kind of nostalgia.

However, Byrne’s attention is drawn to the fact that those between 20 and 30 years old or younger find some meaning when watching the film. "When we were recently serving the press with the team (the film), Jerry Harrison (the team) said many of the things we did were very analogous." And he set an example: "Enlightenment: Most is nothing you couldn't do in 1930. Technically, there is nothing to talk about the 1980s. It is not rooted in a particular musical era.”

Seven cameras, four performances in 1983, Jonathan
Demme rolled his first great film, Swing Shift (1984). Despite his grand budget, the star of the time, Goldie Hawn, participated in the film. But Demme was furious because the project did not satisfy his artistic intentions. In this way, I deeply hated that work and wanted to do another, maybe smaller, but a lot more fun.

The American filmmaker was in love with Talking Heads and his music since he saw the band's lead earlier this year. So, enchanted by Byrne's presence and music, she thought it might be a good idea to make a film of one of her concerts: her intention was to shoot a retrospective of the active group since 1975. I wanted to do something to match the classic Rust Never Sleeps by Martin Scorsese, by The Last Wpoa or Neil Young, always from the right and right perspective.

So David Byrne (singer and guitar), Tina Weymouth (bass), Chris Frantz (drums) and Jerry Harrison (keyboard) offered four concerts at Christmas 1983, at the Pantages Theatre at Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, and Demcam shot the four with the help of seven. Thus, in the songs of the film the director used the audio and video tracks of all the concerts, but the assembly is so fine that the jumps are almost imperceptible. As for sound tracks, the film was pioneering or innovative in the field of digitalization, as it was one of the first digital sound films.

In the first concert, the director placed the cameras on the left side of the stage; in the second, on the right; and in the other two performances, with different camera shots. Demme wanted to record a fifth concert without an audience with the empty room, but the musicians rejected him because the “energy” of the group could be different in a false direct.

The filmmaker chose the long planes to move away from an accelerated montage filled with dominant short planes in the seasonal video clips. He wanted to immerse the viewer in the real experience of watching a live concert, and for that he prioritized a fixed plan that suggested the viewer's view: long planes, promoted over time. He even avoided the images of the audience because they impaired the assembly, as Demm compared the exhibition of the attendees to the concert with the recorded laughter of the television comedies. So he focused his gender on the stage. These technical and aesthetic decisions helped to highlight David Byrne's theatricality, his gestures and choreographies.

Another main characteristic, more than live, is the presentation of songs: each song represents a partner or instrumentalist. Thus, the performance starts with David Byrner, playing and singing his particular Psycho Killer, accompanied by acoustic guitar and radio cassette, and as the show progresses the stage is filled with musicians until reaching the absolute music show live, becoming a musical explosion. So, the group and the way to present the songs and the brave assembly of Demme came together perfectly. Perfect symbiosis.

The film premiered on April 24, 1984, at the San Francisco International Film Festival, with the audience raised from the armchairs and with an intense juerga. And the critics were fascinated. Spanish film critic El País, Ángel Fernández Santos, wrote in 1987: “The nonsense of the current video clip and the lack of moving encounters between the rite of rock and the routes perforated by the musical film (...) have found a way in this modest film. After what was expected, this path leads to surprise; after simplicity, complexity; after the document, to fiction; after a claustrophobic closure, to relaxation of freedom".

Talking Heads music is little mentioned in the article, in exchange it is recommended to start the album Remain In Lights.