‘This is the benchmark’: A rediscovered concert film shows George Michael at his peak

As far as pop images go, it’s indelible. The Ray-Ban aviators. The stubble. The leather jacket. The cocked hip. Onstage in Paris in May 1988, just months after Faith became a global chart-topping smash, George Michael playfully teases an audience of 20,000 fans, striking a silhouette to impassioned screams.

“He knew the strength of that image he created, and he just played to it,” says Andy Morahan, who directed Michael’s iconic Faith music video. “He’d already plotted his solo image as he was exorcising himself away from Wham! and the big blonde hair and all that stuff. It was like, ‘Right, this is who I am now.’”

The new concert film, George Michael: The Faith Tour, captures the late singer at his pop peak. He’s 24 and firmly in the midst of his Faith tour, which took in 109 shows across 16 countries, including Australia, between February 1988 to July 1989.

“He’d served his apprenticeship with Wham!, and he knew how to write these songs that jumped out of the radio,” says David Austin, Michael’s longtime friend and manager, who co-directed the film with Morahan. “He was sparring with the greats – Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, his three great contemporaries – and he was outselling them all. By the time he got to Faith, he was pretty polished and he knew what he was doing.”

Ahead of the 10th anniversary of Michael’s death this December – the singer died on December 25, 2016, aged 53 – the film is a wild feat of resurrection. It was assembled from restored and remastered 35mm footage shot during two performances at Paris’ Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy on May 30 and 31 in 1988 which sat untouched in 30 film canisters in Michael’s archives for almost 40 years.

Morahan had originally captured the concert for Michael’s video for Monkey, the funked-out fifth single from Faith. “It was never designed to be a concert film. George had just wanted me to shoot the best bits from the show that he could pick out,” he explains. “It wasn’t until 40 years later that David came to me and said, ‘Have a look at this, we might have something here’.”

The footage proved a treasure trove. Since it wasn’t a scripted shoot, Morahan had approached the original job with a looser brief. He had Michael’s permission to light the audience during certain sections of songs. He also had a director of photography and a 16-camera crew situated throughout the arena. “I was talking to them on headphones, and they were asked to really go for it, to get the flares and silhouettes and really capture the energy of George’s performance.”

The audio for both nights had also been recorded on a 24-track mobile studio for a French radio broadcast. “When we revisited it all, it was like, wow,” says Morahan. “George was really comfortable with where he was at that time, which is why this film is so joyous. He’s at the top of his game. He literally runs around like an Olympic athlete. He’s got the audience in the palm of his hand.”

As a pristine time capsule, the footage is remarkable. Michael paces nonstop across three stages as he peels through classics such as Father Figure, Careless Whisper and I Want Your Sex (three times). He bounces like a glistening jackhammer, doing MTV dance moves choreographed by Paula Abdul.

As a cinematic event, it’s immersive. In the arena, we’re surrounded by 20,000 fans swaying cigarette lighters in a way that might horrify young phone addicts and OHS officers alike. Cameras shoot the action from all over, including inside the audience pit with Michael hovering above.

The footage was cut together by editor Ben Wainwright-Pearce, who edited concert films including Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft. Between the sound and vision, it feels like you’re right there.

“The technology helped us in that we can clean everything out, we can do amazing things,” says Morahan. “In a funny kind of way, this is probably a better film for having waited all these years.”

Opening the concert film is a short documentary, Finding Faith, from photographer and filmmaker Mary McCartney, the eldest daughter of Paul and Linda. Her film sets the context around the concert, using previously unseen archive photos and unreleased clips from interviews Michael did with Tony Parsons between 1989 and 1990 for the book Bare. McCartney says she was drawn to how casual and unguarded Michael was in the interviews.

“He’s really young, 24 and just out of Wham!, and we see a very reflective George Michael. He’s thinking, ‘What’s my next move? I want to do this, but what am I willing to sacrifice for this?’ He’s a sensitive person at an interesting time in his life and career, and I think that comes across.”

McCartney had known Michael for years, but the two became close around 2005 when Michael and his then partner, art dealer Kenny Goss, invited her to exhibit her photography at their gallery in Dallas. “I got to understand his humour. You’d ask him a question and he was very honest, very funny and slightly self-deprecating,” McCartney recalls. “I wanted this piece to show the emotion of George and the vulnerability, and also his talent and craft, and then just release him live into the auditorium.”

In the years since his death, there’s an added wrinkle to seeing Michael in his pure element. Recent documentaries, such as Netflix’s 2023 film Wham!, have reflexively reframed Michael as a tortured artist, the pop star whose teen idol success forced him to conceal his sexuality until his infamous arrest in a public bathroom in 1998. In the Faith concert, Michael’s staging plays like a metaphor: he emerges from a barred cage, lives his best life onstage, only to return to his cage at the show’s end. Was he trying to tell us something?

“No, he wasn’t tortured at all!” says Austin with a laugh. “He absolutely owned who he was throughout his career. Everything was very calculated.”

Morahan agrees. “There’s a thing in Mary’s opening film where he says, ‘I consider myself one of my generation’s high achievers, but I want to be known as a musician and an artist,’ and I think that was his motivation. When he won his first Ivor Novello award in 1985, he burst into tears because to be recognised by his peers was absolutely everything to him.”

Michael’s estate has proven generous in promoting his legacy to a new generation. Last year, Taylor Swift interpolated Father Figure on her song of the same name on The Life of a Showgirl, while Haim gained permission to sample Freedom! ’90 on their album I Quit. At September’s MTV Video Music Awards, young artists including Sombr and Raye joined in a medley of Michael’s biggest hits. The film offers another chance to refocus Michael’s legacy, away from cheap narratives and sordid storylines, and back to his craft.

“For me, it’s like, ‘Didn’t see the Faith concert the first time? Well, here’s your chance to see it’,” says Austin. “I hope young people can feel what George was doing and understand the excellence on show. Because this is the benchmark.”

George Michael: The Faith Tour is in cinemas now.

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