I realize I've been hitting the movies-about-music angle a little hard lately, and I promise to lay off... as soon as I finish this column about my somewhat frustrating obsession with a famous concert film that comes out on DVD this week after more than 20 years of lying fallow--out of print, hard to find, relegated to occasional PBS fundraising fodder. The audio recording of the show is a total waste--like most live records, it reveals how unreliable the memory can be. The film, however, which you have probably seen at least part of, at least once, belongs in the pantheon of great rock moments, if only because it allows us to witness the undeniable pinnacle of one pop star's life.

In September of 1981, about 500,000 New Yorkers gathered to watch Simon and Garfunkel play a free reunion show in Central Park. It had been 11 years since the duo had released its final studio album, during which time Simon had enjoyed massive solo success, while Garfunkel's musical star had declined sharply. It's easy to read the '70s careers of both men--like those of John Lennon and Paul McCartney--as a decade-long effort to prove they didn't need each other. And though in Simon's case it may have been true, the fact remained that (again, like Lennon and McCartney) the combination of the two of them together pleased people more than anything either one could do alone.

But especially Art Garfunkel. Paul Simon, after all, was not just a voice, but a songwriter and guitarist whose real talents had only just begun to take flight as the duo fell apart. In the S&G days, it was widely held that Garfunkel was the true star of the combo, with an angelic voice to elevate dwarfish Simon's overintellectual ditties into era-defining songs. This is a funny idea now, if only because Paul Simon could fill Central Park on his own (and did, a few years later, in a conscious effort to trump his former partner), and when Garfunkel tours, he plays the Woodland Park Zoo. In rock 'n' roll, the writer always wins.

But if there was ever any doubt about the importance of Arthur Garfunkel, it is dispelled midway through this DVD, when he sings his signature solo, "Bridge over Troubled Water" (written by Simon, naturally), and half a million people nearly explode with joy. Though that half-million figure has been much disputed through the years, the video tells the story: It's more people than you've ever seen. And one single voice is silencing them, creating a moment of such pure musical interaction that the five-minute ovation that follows seems barely adequate. You can see, in Garfunkel's heavily penciled eyes, that this is the summit of his life in music--by then a 25-year journey--and the ultimate testimony to his musical worth. The sad part is that Paul Simon made Graceland a few years later and all Art Garfunkel got was this lousy DVD.