Sound Of The City - Rock City London 64-73

''ROCK CITY'' is a wild and woolly scrapbook of London's pop scene in its heyday, which the movie defines as the era between 1964 and 1973. It's a collection of clips, randomly assembled, featuring just about everybody who was anybody in those days. Bopping down memory lane, the viewer encounters Rod Stewart, Pete Townshend, Cream, the Rolling Stones in loud outfits and war paint, and Otis Redding, who offers a version of ''Satisfaction'' that puts even the Stones to shame.

The movie, which opens today at the Harold Clurman Theater, was made in 1973. It's certainly dated, but that's just the point. With no attempt to cast light or impose order on his material, the director, Peter Clifton, simply assembled views of some of his favorite performers doing favorite things. For Ike and Tina Turner, that means a lewdness that leaves so little to the imagination that it's halfway funny; for Cat Stevens, it means posing artily in an all-black outfit in an all-white room. Mr. Stevens's song ''Father and Son'' is illustrated by a pantomime chess game between an old man and a boy, in an arch fashion that has mercifully gone out of style.

For Jimi Hendrix, it's performing those special, smutty guitar pyrotechnics that made him such a legend. For Joe Cocker, it's surrounding himself with so many backup singers that it's hard to pick Mrs. Turner or Rita Coolidge out of the crowd. The footage of Mr. Cocker comes out of another film, ''Mad Dogs and Englishmen.'' But most of Mr. Clifton's material appears to be too offbeat or secondary to have turned up elsewhere.

His glimpse of the Stones is particularly memorable. At around the time of the ''Satanic Majesties'' album, they cavort before the camera in a style that combines mugging with the occult. To songs like ''We Love You'' and ''2000 Light Years From Home,'' they stage a mock trial, featuring some wicked allusions to their own legal problems of the time. Anyone who doesn't remember, say, that Marianne Faithfull was once alleged to have been found on the Stones premises wearing nothing but a bearskin rug will be baffled, if not bored, to see a rug unrolled with Mick Jagger inside. This is all interesting in its way, but it's not for curiosity seekers, it's for hard-core fans.

Also on the bill are the Animals, Blind Faith, Pink Floyd and the Faces. In the Faces, Mr. Stewart's performance is photographed from such an inconvenient angle that his face is frequently obscured by cymbals, and the camera appears to be gazing up at the underside of his chin.

Ah, well, those were the days before perfectionism set in, among either the musicians or those who photographed them. A viewer might wonder about some of Mr. Clifton's judgments -where are the Kinks, for example? -but not about the evocativeness of his souvenir. Janet Maslin

Those Were the Days

ROCK CITY, directed and produced by Peter Clifton; photography by Richard Mordaunt, Peter Whitehead, Graham Lind, Michael Cooper, Peter Neal, Bavin Cook, Ernest Vincze, Ivan Strasburg, Charles Stewart and Bruce Logan; edited by Thomas Schwaln; a World Film Serv- ices Ltd. production; a Columbia picture. Running time: 104 minutes. This film is not rated. At the Harold Clurman Theater, 412 West 42d Street.

WITH: the Rolling Stones, Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Otis Redding, Peter Townshend, Cream, Steve Win- wood, Blind Faith, Cat Stevens, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Donovan, Joe Cocker, Tina Turner, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, Pink Floyd and Rod Stewart and the Faces.

Added: 28.09.2008