I’ve seen “Stop Making Sense” a few times over the years, and that was reason enough to duck back into this re-issued classic 1984 concert film between other new releases to catch it on the big screen the other night.

I got into the band right around the time the film originally came out and was thus late to the art-school-kids-play-arty-proto-punk-New Wave thing they were surfing at this, their peak moment. But watching it anew, I was instantly swept up in memories of my first impressions of this piece of art-rock theater, reinforced 39 years later.

You remember the grey-on-grey and black production design — costumes, etc. — that David Byrne conjured up for this series of shows, the big smiles — apparently genuine — of the expanded version of Talking Heads that took the stage, the “huge suit” which became a pop cultural punchline, and the sweat one and all worked up, which future Oscar winner Jonathan Demme captured with his on-stage or just offstage cameras.

The show, conceived almost as a play, quietly opens, builds, transcends, climaxes and delivers its curtain call in 90 sometimes antic, always-considered and choreographed minutes.

And then, ever so briefly, Demme scans the diverse and seriously hip crowd that was at the Pantages Theatre in LA on these select nights. Oh yeah, THAT’s the phenomenon that they were. This band — Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison — in service of their mad, artistic and autistic genius (not known at the time) leader, were much bigger than the occasional bit of radio airplay they’d had up to now, or the radio/MTV hits that would follow in the few years they stayed together afterwards.

Some of the songs were already touchstones in the culture — “Psycho Killer,” “Life During Wartime,” “Burning Down the House,” their quirky New Wave cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River.” The rest would help expand their fanbase after this widely-hailed concert doc by a Big Name filmmaker came out.

Byrne would take his vision of music and visuals into a feature film (“True Stories”) and Broadway (“American Utopia”) and his sense of theater into every aggregation he gathered around him to perform his hits in later years. There was a joyous tour with the art rocker St. Vincent, a drummer and eight-piece brass band about ten years ago whose excerpts are my favorite Youtube “happy place.”

But there’s a frosty remove to most of Byrne’s self-consciously avante garde work that’s always made “Stop Making Sense” a sterile experience to me. Watching it now, that “Sheldon Cooper Starts a Band” joke attached to the on-the-spectrum sitcom character comes to mind. The “Oh, he’s autistic” news came along later and just sort of explained the disconnect of the music and this film.

Smiles on stage notwithstanding, the emotional heft of “The Last Waltz” or even U2’s “Rattle and Hum” is lacking. The colorful, creative chaos of “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” or a few other great music docs — Scorsese’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” comes to mind — is missed.

The energy exerted is extraordinary. One can feel exhilarated and exhausted at the same time at the musicianship, dancing and constant running in place.

This is a good stage show concert film that feels a little dated in light of the grand stage shows of the bigger, more flamboyant tours to come. It still holds up, but that somewhat heartless art feeling that crept up on me watching it, decades ago, hasn’t faded with the years.

“Stop Making Sense” is a very good concert film, an excellent snapshot of an offbeat band at its peak, but “the greatest concert film ever?” I’ve never thought so and never will.

Rating: PG

Cast: David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Bernie Worrell, Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz, Ednah Holt, Lynn Mabry, Alex Weir and Steven Scales.

Credits: Directed by Jonathan Demme, scripted by Jonathan Demme and Talking Heads. A Cinemom release re-issued by A24.

Running time: 1:28