Bob Dylan - Don't Look Back

Rating:
Summary: Cultural change caught on film
Review: I last saw Don't Look Back when I was a kid. I've always like Dyaln's music and his importance in changing pop culture. 35 years had gone by since I saw the film. I bought the film on a weekend whim, figuring it would be entertaining, and perhaps a bit nostalgic.

The film is far more than just a candid, grainy black and white behind the scenes chronicle of Dylan's last acoustic tour in 1965. It was the birth of cinema verite. Don Pennebaker spoke at a film class I was in several years after the film came out, and described how he had a devised a system that used the quartz movements of the Acutron watches (one of the world's first electric watch movements) which were accurate to 1 second a month, and used them to sync film and sound recording independent of each other. This meant that film and sound no longer needed to be tethered to each other via cable to provide synced sound with images; and *that* allowed the filmmakers to be far less obstrusive than documentarians had been to that point. Most of the people in the movie have little awareness that they are being filmed, let alone filmed for posterity, and the results are wonderfully candid.

But most striking is observing Dylan's maturation as an adult and cultural icon over the course of the film. On his arrival in England, he's a bit feckless and precious. Clever and immature. Under the wing of Joan Baez, who at that point must have thought that she might be invited to share the tour with her young protege. But it's soon clear that Dyaln is the hippest person in any room, his appeal and intellectual depth transcending his entourage and every situation he enters. By the time, later in the film, that he has the famous encounter with Terry Ellis (the Science Student) and the man from Time magazine, he's a different person from the first scenes. Baez has disappeared with no explanation. Albert Grossman has moved to the background, after his great confrontation with the hotel manager earlier in the film. The Dylan at the end of the movie is sharper, more acerbic, and looks older... and it's just a few weeks later. Somewhere during this tour Dylan eschewed his folky roots (as seen in archival footage of him singing Pawn in the Game early in the film) and explodes as a genuine pop star... the man everyone wanted to be. Amazing.

Just as amazing is that when this film was made in 1965, Bob Dylan already had a substantive body of work, and had just turned electric (there's an early scene in the hotel listening to a test pressing of Maggie's Farm). He was just becoming the rock star Dylan that caused so much controversey at the time. And here it is 40 years and 30 albums later, and he's *still* discussed almost as much as he was then. I can't think of any other entertainer whose career has been as relevant for as long a time as he has. Amazing...

This film is a must for anyone who wants to understand how our music and culture took a sharp turn many years ago. Pennebaker's methods were a revolution in film making that caught a revolution in the making. Great stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Legendary doesn't mean watchable
Review: I might've expected too much .I'd seen Monterey Pop and liked the energy of that .I'd heard a lot about this 'legendary' film . Too much of it is too slow .
We already know Bob is hip - luckily there's some different aspects to the film , when the promoter is talking with TV stations negotiating a fee for Bob's appearance .

There is interrupted music making and it is made obvious Bob is a celebrity , but he spends most of the film behaving like an idiot .

Bob is acting in this , so why not just watch something where we're sure he's acting in character ? Hang out for the DVD release of Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid .

Subtitles would have helped - a bargain basement release almost redeemed by the commentary .

A disappointment . Let the buyer aware - rent it first .



Rating:
Summary: Essential On So Many Levels
Review: I saw "Don't Look Back" again the other day, my first time in a number of years. I actually was prompted to this after seeing the recent Bob Dylan interview on "60 Minutes" (to promote his equally astonishing memoir "Chronicles-Volume 1"). Were you as astonished by the "60 Minutes" piece as I was? In any event, "Don't Look Back" is essential on so many levels: first and foremost, it gives us a never-since equalled candid view at life (on the road) with Dylan. While it does contain a number of performances, "Don't Look Back" is not a concert movie. It's more a pre-concert movie than anything else, watching Dylan getting ready to perform in the "Green Door" and other performing halls' waiting rooms. The film also remains essential as a looking glass onto England, 1965, with its gritty, if not to say seemingly always gray outlook and feel to it.

Back to the "60 Minutes" interview. When I was watching it, it felt so familiar. Even though the interviews are separated by almost 40 years, Dylan played the "60 Minutes" interviewer in very much the same way he played the British journalists in 1965, although admittedly in a somewhat nice fashion now. Watch again the "interview" Dylan did with the reporter from "Time Magazine" towards the end of "Don't Look Back", it's the highlight of the movie for me.

The live performances in "Don't Look Back" are equally essential, if for no other reason that you are watching Dylan in Spring, 1965 (almost 40 years ago to the day!), a mere months before turning electric at the Newport Festival. From an audio perspective, the performances in "Don't Look Back" are very similar to the material covered in the 2 CD set "Dylan Live 1964", issued in Spring of 2004. The staying power of "Don't Look Back" 40 years later is proof that this movie is essential for any Dylan fan. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: A Parochial View of Bob Dylan...
Review: I'd give this documentary a solid B. There is some fantastic footage, great clips of Dylan writing and playing music, and interesting dialogue between him and Joan Baez. However, at times it is very hard to understand what the people in the documentary are saying. It is also incredibly frustrating to see Bob Dylan being such a jackass to the majority of people that he encounters throughout this film. I don't believe that this is necessarily a fair portrayal of the person he actually is- but maybe that's just me being naieve. He is opinionated, and animated, and this is surely evident in this film. I saw Bob Dylan recently in concert, and it's great to see what he once sounded and acted like live in the mid 60's, for better or worse. Recommended for "patient" Dylan fans.

Rating:
Summary: Not Really A Review
Review: Two things -- There are references to Dylan being 24 at the time. He was actually 23.

Also, here's another vote for the release of "Eat The Document," centering around Bob's 1966 concert tour.

Rating:
Summary: Bob Dylan is the epitome of rock n' roll. What a pimp!
Review: Dylan doesn't take crap from anybody in this extremely entertaining rockumentary. This DVD shows Bob Dylan on top of the world. The tour where he went from unplugged to plugged-in. Bob Dylan is in no way a sell-out. A lot of the DVD shows Dylan debating with a series of different people; mostly reporters that want an interview. He just blows them off, giving them absolutely nothing to write about and making them feel stupid in the process. Dylan is in your face; sticking it to the man every chance he gets. The discussions on the film really give you great insight into the way Dylan thinks and feels. He talks about his feelings as an atheist. He also seems to be pretty annoyed that people think he plays "folk" music. Most of the time, he seems to be having fun with the individual he's debating with; trying to get a rise out of them.

If you like Bob Dylan's lyrics, this is an essential piece of Bob Dylan's discography. Bob Dylan is like an open book. This gives you a lot of insight to Bob Dylan's personality off-stage. One of the best rockumentaries I have ever purchased.

Rating:
Summary: I PLUMB FORGOT HOW GREAT HE WAS
Review: This reminds me of "Elvis, One Night With You." What do I mean by that? I mean this is about the best thing Old Bob ever did, and it's definitely the best thing on video (with the possible exception of "Concert For Bangladesh.") Only one thing irks me, which is this: I realize they probably had no idea people would still be watching this forty years hence but why Oh why do they not have COMPLETE SONGS? Just a verse and a chorus here, a verse and a chorus there. I find this extremely frustrating, especially when bob is doing things that as songs are such works of genius that they still sound like they're sailing at you from somewhere in the future--like "It's all right ma, I'm only bleeding." I would love to hear the WHOLE THING, excuse me. That said, this is still about the most stunning thing of dylan's I've ever beheld. Holy smokes, already, the man is a song writing genius. and this is him in his prime of unruly black cotton-candy hair and wrap-around sunglasses. I just watched it on a lark and it blew me away, took me by suuurprriiise, I must say. So I immediately bought it on dvd. Now I've only watched it...four times...so I think I must kinda' like it. Thanks bob and please keep breathing.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Think Twice-It's Alright
Review: This innovative film includes raw footage of the video for Subterrean Homesick Blues, Dylan talking to teenaged fans (that happen to have a thing for him) Dylan songs, Donovan and Dylan bonding, Bob lecturing a science student who still probably doesn't know what hit him, Joan Baez singing and Dylan ignoring her (he starts typing loudly on a typewriter while she's singing a beautiful song) You won't be dissapointed with this. An inside look at a day in the life of one of music's most infuential people. Reccomended for any Bob Dylan/Donovan/Joan Baez fan.

Rating:
Summary: Vintage Bob...a classic
Review: This film gives the viewer a candid view of an incredibly talented, precocious, irreverent, and actually quite beautiful young Dylan revealed in wonderful concert and behind-the-scenes footage. After seeing the film I felt that Dylan's legendary arrogance has been perhaps misunderstood -- actually he was pretty humble and engaging with school kids and fellow musicians -- more interested in learning from them than in showing off his own talents. What comes off as arrogance is his almost allergic aversion to simplistic, cliched, or hypocritical concepts imposed upon him by clueless, syncophantic journalists and fans. His trenchant verbal sparring with a reporter from Time magazine, in which he argues that the readers of Time are settling for secondhand drivel and that Time has too much to lose by telling the truth, is one of the most refreshing and amusing interviews I've ever seen. Likewise, one can appreciate his struggle to avoid being pigeonholed as either a political activist or a folk singer; certainly his political sensibilities are profound, but he understandably chaffed at the attempts to turn him into a mouthpiece for any single cause or established movement. His instinctive fight to keep the doors of perception ajar has proven well founded; it is precisely his protean shape-shifting and incessant search for new levels of meaning and musical expression that have made him such a timeless icon. The one sour note in the film was his obviously strained relationship with Joan Baez, not only a brilliant singer in her own right but also a witty mimic and comic, whom he relegates to groupie status and mostly ignores. Given the fact that she invited Dylan to share her stage when he was virtually unknown, one would have expected Dylan to have invited her to sing a song or two. What a waste of talent -- but then, apparently their romantic relationship was in its death throes, so it may be unfair to judge. Ultimately, this film made me sad simply because it shows the sheer brilliance of a person at a moment in time that is now forty years in the past. We can look back, but we do so at the risk of having our hearts broken.