Few albums have charted a more curiously rocky path — or inspired as much controversy and belated acclaim — as Lou Reed's "Berlin," which has now been reborn as a concert film directed by Julian Schnabel. Originally released in 1973, it is easily the second most misunderstood work in this legendary New York rocker's discography.

The first, of course, was "Metal Machine Music," his almost perversely unlistenable 1975 double-album of ear-numbingly distorted electric guitar noise. But "Metal Machine Music" was designed to dismay and offend; Reed made it specifically in order to gain release from his then-contract with RCA Records, a goal he achieved not long thereafter.

"Berlin," which flopped commercially and was widely scorned by most critics at the time, is another story altogether.

It came on the heels of Reed's second solo album, 1972's glitter-rock-tinged "Transformer," which was produced by longtime fan David Bowie and yielded what remains Reed's only Top 40 U.S. hit, "Walk on the Wild Side."

Yet, while "Transformer" captured Reed at his most commercially accessible, "Berlin" presented a dramatic contrast. A truly harrowing concept album that challenged the dedication of even his most devoted fans, it presented a grim portrait of a doomed, drug-addled German prostitute named Caroline and her junkie paramour, Jim, whose love for Caroline didn't prevent him from beating her to a pulp.

The album's themes — violence, drug abuse, sadomasochism, dysfunctional families, bi-sexuality and, ultimately, suicide — were not exactly listener-friendly, even if Reed had explored precisely these same topics in the 1960s as the leader of the pioneering, proto-punk band the Velvet Underground.

Dismissed by legendary rock-music critic Lester Bangs as perhaps "the most depressed album ever made," "Berlin" alienated many listeners, including Stephen Davis. In his 1973 review, Davis bristled that "Berlin" was "so patently offensive that one wishes to take some kind of physical vengeance" against Reed for having made it, if not his collaborators (who included such first-call musicians as organist Steve Winwood, bassist Jack Bruce, drummer Aynsley Dunbar and budding jazz sax star Michael Brecker).

But Schnabel, who earned an Oscar nomination last year for helming the deeply moving feature film, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," had a much different response.

At the start of the movie, which has been re-titled "Lou Reed's Berlin" and was shot over the course of five concerts in New York in 2006, Schnabel credits the chronically misunderstood 1973 album for providing "the soundtrack of much of my life." Later, in one of the DVD's three bonus features, he and Reed are briefly interviewed by Elvis Costello on an English television program. "I listened to that record all the time, every day, for years," Schnabel, a noted painter turned filmmaker, tells Costello about "Berlin's" impact.

"In 1973 (when) I (first) heard 'Berlin,' I didn't know that Lou didn't go to Berlin, that there wasn't a German girl. I believed all that."

The chillingly visceral qualities of Reed's songwriting on "Berlin" are precisely what made the album so provocative. Ironically, these same qualities present daunting obstacles for any filmmaker, even one as talented as Schnabel (whose previous credits include 2000's excellent "Before Night Falls" and his impressive 1996 directorial debut, "Basquiat").

Consider the vivid quality of such Reed lyrics as: "All your two-bit friends, they're shootin' you up with pills / They said that it was good for you, that it would cure your ills."

Then there's this chilling couplet, also from one of "Berlin's" songs: "Caroline says — as she gets up from the floor — 'You can hit me all you want to, but I don't love you anymore' / Caroline says — while biting her lip — 'Life is meant to be more than this.'"

These words create such a rich and complete picture, however bleak, that Schnabel was largely painted into a corner before he shot even a single frame of "Berlin" (which is now out on DVD after a very limited theatrical release).

As a consequence, the scenes of French actress Emmanuelle Seigner as Caroline, which were presumably shot to enhance the concert performance footage, instead detract from the power of Reed's potent lyrical imagery.

Similarly, while the shots of "floating furniture" were ostensibly intended to depict Caroline and Jim's internal and external upheavals, these segments seem both silly and distracting. So does the juxtaposition of Reed's lyric "the Welsh man from India" (in the song "The Kids") with footage of a bearded, long-haired man who looks less like an Eastern mystic than Vlad the Impaler, en route to a family beheading.

That's why the most memorable moments in "Lou Reed's Berlin" — and there are many — come directly from the music itself. Reed himself has rarely sounded better, and his craggy, half-spoken/half-sung vocals capture the essence of these doomed love songs far better than any actors could.

He benefits greatly from the contributions of his first-rate band, which includes veteran guitarist Steve Hunter, drum dynamo Tony Smith, twin bassists Rob Wasserman and Fernando Saunders. Also on board is a choir, a seven-piece string and wind section, and the remarkable singer Antony Hegarty, who almost steals the show with his transcendent vocals on "Candy Says," one of two choice Velvet Underground songs that are performed as an encore. The usually taciturn Reed is so moved by Hegarty's magical rendition that he seems close to tears by the song's end.

Reed has long been a minimalist, as he acknowledged in a 2000 San Diego Union-Tribune interview: "People say to me: `How can you use those same chords, over and over?' And I say: `I'm just starting to get it right.' They think that I'm kidding. And I'm not."

But "Berlin" contains some of the most intricate, challenging and rewarding music of his career, and "Lou Reed's Berlin" scores most strongly by letting that music soar freely on its own.

To find out more about George Varga and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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