Bob Dylan - Don't Look Back
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Movie Reviews of Bob Dylan - Don't Look Back
Movie Review: Truly awful
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow wow WOW!! Difficult to get through this one, but as you only live once give it a glimpse. It might hurt, but thats what I was looking for and it felt so sweet. Bob is king!Movie Review: The man and the movie.
Summary: 3 Stars
I've been sitting here reading many of the reviews for this DVD. I didn't want to submit my own until I had read them all, because I didn't want to rehash any of the criticisms already covered by others. Well, I have no desire to sit here and read all 70 of them, so, here goes...
I liked this movie. I didn't LOVE this movie, but I did like it. Of course, I didn't have any preconceived ideas about what it should be, so that helped a lot. As a movie, I liked the way it was filmed. Pennebaker did a great job of intimately capturing what was happening during Dylan's 1965 tour of England. He certainly got an accurate portrayal of the many moods of Bob Dylan, warts and all. But the sound is awful. There are many parts in this film where I can't understand the dialogue at all. Subtitles would have been great. And that's about all I have to say about the technical quality of the DVD.
About twenty years ago was the one and only time I've seen Dylan in concert. It was one of those "Be the 23rd caller..." type of deals, where I won front row tickets to the show from a radio station. It was a great show. So, obviously I'm a fan of the man's music. But Dylan as a person, frankly, really gets under my skin, particularly in this film.
First off, I'm so sick of hearing Dylan say that he's not a folk singer, and shouldn't be called one. He's been saying it his whole career. If he didn't want to be labeled a folk singer, he should've stayed out of the coffee houses in Greenwich Village back in the early 60s. Because, guess what? Folk singers performed in those coffee houses in Greenwich Village back in the early 60s. Sounding a lot like Woody Guthrie also was a good clue for many of the people that labeled him a folk singer.
And since I'm already in a funk, let's talk about his overt rudeness with the media. Dylan sure spent a lot of time giving his fans and the media a hard time in this movie. What was that all about? One reviewer said that Dylan was too young, and wasn't prepared for all the crazy stuff that goes along with fame. Groupies, sycophants, and an intrusive media are all part of fame's package deal, I'm afraid. There's no reason Dylan shouldn't have been hip to this. After all, Beatlemania was already in full swing when this movie was filmed. It sounds to me like Dylan wanted to have his cake and eat it too. I think Dylan used this dislike of the public as an excuse to be rude to everyone around him.
If you're just a casual fan of some of Dylan's music, you probably won't get much out of this film. It was done too early in his career to include many of his bigger hits. But if you're a die-hard fan, it'll probably be worth the price. But remember, I warned you, the sound quality is horrible. Admittedly, I didn't view this on a state-of-the-art Dolby surround-sound system, but I've got a feeling it wouldn't have helped much. Some of the musical performances don't sound too bad, but most of the dialogue sounds like it was recorded on one of those old 40-pound cassette tape recorders with a built in microphone the size of a pencil eraser.
Movie Review: Don't Stop Looking.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is probably a more true and revealing portrait of the world's greatest songwriter than any interview with Ed Bradley on Sixty Minutes could ever be. We see Dylan in his youth which seems an impossible eternity ago and he is already, by the time the film starts rolling, a massive phenom. The British press are tertiary characters in his life and they appear as both foils and fans.
The one thing that I would say most describes this documentary is the word "alive." It is a living, breathing document of what life was like for St. Dylan before he went electric and alienated all of the folkies. The black and white is artful and adds to Don't Look Back's importance.
We see Dylan as a boy and as a man. He labors over his lyrics while smoking and drinking the nights away with his friends. I had a good laugh when they showed the girls screaming over his presence. It's humorous to think of Bob as a sex symbol. He is accompanied by a giggling Donovan along with playful band mates and a hyper-vocalizing Joan Baez. Keep an eye on the left of your screen during the introduction and you'll see a distant Allen Ginsberg conversing to someone off-screen during Bob's card flopping "Subterrean Homesick Blues."
This movie is fresh after nearly forty years. I'm glad Pennebaker was there to record our hero in his glory.
Movie Review: Cultural change caught on film
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Movie Review: Legendary doesn't mean watchable
Summary: 2 Stars
I might've expected too much .I'd seen Monterey Pop , which is by the same director 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 . In a way , I suppose this is a 'puff piece' , something to make Bob seem hip to all the kids .
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 .