Becoming Led Zeppelin - Three Mighty Documentaries at the Venice Film Festival

Jimmy Page on the Red Carpet for Becoming Led Zeppelin
Photo: La Biennale di Venezia - ASAC by A. Avezzù

(Venice, Italy) The Sala Grande on the Lido is one of my favorite cinemas in which to screen a film, even better than the Director's Guild Theater in Hollywood. The original Sala Grande theater was inaugurated on August 10, 1937 for the fifth edition of the Venice Film Festival. Over the years it has been expanded and improved until in 2011 it was completely overhauled and reconstructed, inspired by the original 1937 design by Luigi Quagliata. Normally it seats 1031, but because of COVID restrictions this year it only seats 518.

It is a magnificent theater, even with half the audience. The thrill of watching a movie on a big screen and going on a mind journey with fellow human beings in the same physical space and time is a treasured experience. 

I screened three documentaries — Becoming Led Zeppelin, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song and Life of Crime 1984-2020 — in the Sala Grande in the 2:00 PM slot, a time where members of the film delegation watch the movie together with the audience after they appear on the red carpet. The audience is a mix of accredited guests and the general public — not just industry people like other screenings — so it is a distinct way to screen a film. 

The people who create the movie are eager to see how their labor of love will be received. The journalists who will write about the film watch it with a critical eye. The general public is something other — they have bought tickets to an adventure, arriving from everyday life to the bustling village of the film festival, where there are lights, cameras, and lots of action — a real red carpet complete with movie stars, silent Lexus electric cars, digital billboards, squirting water fountains and the magic of the movies wafting through the air. Putting these different audiences together in one theater can create interesting reactions to a film.

Initially, I was going to combine my impressions of all three documentaries into one post, but have since decided to write three separate pieces. Here is Part One - Becoming Led Zeppelin.

Becoming Led Zeppelin

Jimmy Page with director Bernard MacMahon 
Photo: Cat Bauer

The public audience for Becoming Led Zeppelin was a surprising mix of old and young, from little kids with their parents to hip Gen Zs to grannies out for a day at the movies. I morphed straight into a groupie when I realized that Jimmy Page was at the screening in the flesh.

Booking tickets this year even with accreditation has been a real challenge, so you take what you can get as fast as you can get it — it wasn’t until I was walking into the theater and caught a glimpse of Jimmy Page out on the red carpet that I knew he was there — it was a grand surprise. When he appeared up in the gallery, radiating Rock Star energy, the audience roared to their feet and gave him a standing ovation that seemed to go on forever.

They made us bag our devices so I doubt anyone has footage except for Jimmy Page, who whipped out his phone and documented the emotional moment — we just could not stop clapping. Why? I think because his music was such an integral part of our lives and we wanted to thank him. 

After growing up in New Jersey with Led Zeppelin playing in the background of my teenage life, to arrive at the point where I was watching a film about Led Zeppelin with the founder of Led Zeppelin sitting in the audience at the Venice Film Festival 50 years later was a surreal experience. I kept thinking, I can’t believe that Jimmy Page is sitting right there!

Unlike most bands, Led Zeppelin was not a group composed of a bunch of friends who grew up together. Each member was a solid musician in his own right, respected amongst fellow musicians, but unknown to the public. Jimmy Page did have some public presence as a guitarist with the Yardbirds through his friendship with Jeff Beck, who had left the band, which broke up completely in 1968 while still committed to a Scandinavian tour.

Page put a new group together composed of singer Robert Plant, drummer John Bonham, and John Paul Jones on bass and keyboards — they were all master musicians, but working for a paycheck. From the moment they played their first song at Page's home studio, they had electric chemistry and a new sense of freedom — it was a life-changing experience. They went on tour as the New Yardbirds before transforming into Led Zeppelin. 

By that time, Jimmy Page was not only a guitar god, he was smart and had been around long enough (at age 24) to know that for the band to control their own music it would be better to record it first and then present it to a record label. Because he had toured in the States with the Yardbirds, Page knew that underground FM radio in the USA was playing entire sides of albums, not singles, and constructed the first Led Zeppelin album with that concept in mind, paying the costs of recording himself. 

The gamble paid off and thus began the supernova composed of the 20th century pagan gods that would become Led Zeppelin — they started a UK tour in September 1968, signed with Atlantic Records in November, and began a US tour before the end of the year. While on tour, on January 12, 1969 (three days after Page’s 25th birthday) the first Led Zeppelin album was released in America and reached number 10. In their first whirlwind year, they played four US and four UK concert tours and recorded their second album. And the rest is history.

Led Zeppelin.com

This is the first documentary ever approved by the band, who all appear in it except for John Bonham, who died on September 25, 1980 at the age of 32 after a day and night of uber-heavy drinking. The filmmakers, director Bernard MacMahon and writer/producer Allison McGourty managed to dig up a forgotten interview that Bonham did in 1971 in Australia, so he, too, is poignantly present. 

The filmmakers said they wanted to make a musical documentary, which is what this is — they have included live versions of entire songs recorded when the band was on tour, so you feel like you are actually at a Led Zeppelin concert. At the end of each song the audience in the theater whooped and applauded together with the audience in the movie, who are preserved forever in celluloid from the 1970s.

The simultaneous clapping in past and present created a kind of time warp — like attending a virtual 50-year-old Led Zeppelin concert but in real present-day life with other human beings thinking in the same key, one of whom was Jimmy Page. (The documentary focuses on a very specific period from 1968 to 1970, so “Stairway to Heaven” is not in the movie.)

Bernard MacMahon said that they “saw the film as a series of life-lessons from four very different people on how to achieve your dreams through dedication to your craft, hard work and perseverance.”

Unlike standard documentaries, there is no behind-the-scenes dirt of the band’s notorious antics, nor any commentary by anyone other than the band members themselves. Since there would be no Led Zeppelin if Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were not control freaks, it is not surprising they continue to control their legacy. I’m just grateful that the stars aligned and I got to watch Led Zeppelin become Led Zeppelin together with Jimmy Page.

BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN TRAILER

For some reason, I cannot embed the trailer, so you are going to have to click over to watch it on YouTube. As of this writing, a release date for Becoming Led Zeppelin has not been announced.

Ciao from Venezia,

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog