By his own accounting, the artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel spent three and a half decades under the spell of “Berlin,” the third solo album by Lou Reed, the Brooklyn-born singer, songwriter, guitar player, and Velvet Underground founder. In his new film “Lou Reed’s Berlin,” Mr. Schnabel has erected a cinematic monument to Mr. Reed’s 1973 musical story of amour fou between two fictional junkies clinging to life, love, sanity, and each other. In the film Mr. Reed performs his songs, shot over six nights in December 2006 at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, on a stage set designed by Mr. Schnabel. The stage show is augmented with dramatized home-movie footage shot by Mr. Schnabel’s daughter Lola. The first voice we hear on the soundtrack is not Mr. Reed’s, but the filmmaker’s own.

Like many die-hard aficionados, Mr. Schnabel pits his own unwavering loyalty against a perceived negative historical consensus. His brief onstage introduction implies that the studio recording of “Berlin” is a forgotten masterpiece that’s been overlooked since it was received with critical scorn and less-than-stellar sales 35 years ago.

When “Berlin” was released in the summer of 1973, critical reaction was indeed mixed, to say the least. A Rolling Stone magazine reviewer, Stephen Davis, declared the record — the follow-up to the considerably more radio-friendly LP, “Transformer” — “a disaster,” and excoriated it for “taking the listener into a distorted and degenerate demimonde of paranoia, schizophrenia, degradation, pill-induced violence and suicide.”

In the pages of Creem magazine, however, Lester Bangs praised “Berlin” as “the bastard progeny of a drunken flaccid tumble between Tennessee Williams and Hubert (‘Last Exit from Brooklyn’) Selby, Jr.” that brought “all of Lou’s perennial themes — emasculation, sadistic misogyny, drug erosion, twisted emotionalism of numb detachment from ‘normal’ emotions — to pinnacle.”

In subject matter and tone, “Berlin” was a good half-decade ahead of the heroin-chic curve and Mr. Reed’s operatic, co-dependent tragedy held considerably more long-term attraction than anyone could predict in 1973. By the early 1980s, the album had gone from an unconvincing, pretentious, and depressing rock-opera dud to a seminal artistic statement for a post-Sid and Nancy world in the hearts and minds of many.

In Mr. Schnabel’s film, Mr. Reed performs the album assisted by several of his original 1973 studio collaborators, including the guitarist Steve “The Deacon” Hunter and the record’s original producer, Bob Ezrin. One has the sense that the show is a long overdue victory lap for everyone involved. Clad in a sky-blue tuxedo jacket with the album’s title vertically stenciled down the back, Mr. Ezrin appears particularly elated as he exuberantly “conducts” the ensemble (without a score) and sings along (without a mike) with Mr. Reed and background vocalists Sharon Jones, Antony, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

Over the course of an 80-minute performance, Mr. Reed himself barely breaks a sweat and appears especially reserved, if not downright dour, for the first few songs. Eventually a particularly heroic burst of notes from Mr. Hunter prompts smiles and laughter and an exhortation to “do that again” and “oh, my goodness gracious,” from the sphinxlike front man. That exchange in turn becomes a gauntlet toss. Showcased in a crunchy, guitar-heavy mix, it’s ultimately Mr. Reed’s fretwork — a jagged, crackling tumble — rather than Mr. Hunter’s smooth, accessible arena-rock sonic blur, that provides the film’s musical highlights.

It’s difficult to imagine a more cheerful and upbeat presentation of a record featuring such lyrics as “you can hit me all you want but I don’t love you anymore” and “they’re taking her children away.” The mixture of onstage valediction with vintage melodramatic lyrical degradation that makes up “Lou Reed’s Berlin” is frankly an odd sensibility cocktail, and Mr. Schnabel’s filmic approach doesn’t really make it go down any smoother. Despite the director’s dogged attempts (aided considerably by the excellent cinematographer Ellen Kuras) to avoid merely documenting the proceedings from front-row center, “Lou Reed’s Berlin” remains a concert film, through and through. And, as is often the case with live rock and roll committed to film (the Stones’s catastrophic performance at the Altamont Speedway in the Maysles brothers’ “Gimme Shelter” notwithstanding), it’s difficult to shake the impression that it would’ve been a lot more fun to have been there.