The beginning two minutes of D.A. Pennebaker’s legendary 16mm documentary Dont Look Back is about as iconic and memorable as they come.
The beginning two minutes of D.A. Pennebaker’s legendary 16mm documentary Dont Look Back is about as iconic and memorable as they come.
When you imagine the genesis of music videos (called “promotion films” way back when) few stand taller than 24-year-old Bob Dylan unassumingly standing in an alley, dropping hand drawn cue-cards with fragments of his lyrics written on them.
Some are verbatim while some are clever re-spellings or riffs that showcase that Dylan is not always as serious about his intent, which is usually playfully genuine.
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” might even register as the first “lyric” music video that has become a mainstay of YouTube for teaser videos or music videos lacking the proper funding.
Having the actual Allen Ginsberg hanging out in the background as a cameo is just a treat for the ever observant.
Dont Look Back follows Dylan’s seminal 1965 London tour, following the singer as he plays to his biggest European audiences ever, capturing various behind the scenes occurrences with the likes of Joan Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price, and infamously Dylan’s tangling with legions of skeptical British press along with adoring teen fans.
It’s a fly-on-the-wall kind of approach that feels raw, usually context free, but never meandering. It’s a rather ghastly picture with everything is grainy black and white and contains a certain amount of dark cascades of imagery that harkens back to sinister flicks aimed to scare.
Pennebaker shot roughly around 20 hours of footage on a hand rigged camera to craft the cinema vérité look the documentary presents. But instead of a ghoul, we have Bob Dylan playfully and sometimes bitterly trying his best to be the cleverest defense mechanism known to man.
Dont Look Back seems to be reissued every couple of years to various degrees and it’s certainly a welcome entity to see it once again assembled and packaged by the Criterion Collection.
The director approved, 4k transfer is top notch and provides a robust contrast along with a stacked amount of supplemental materials.
No film will make Dylan look better and certainly doesn’t do Dylan wrong. Included in this release is audio commentary featuring director D.A. Pennebaker and tour manager Bob Neuwirth, 65 Revisited, a 2006 documentary by Pennebaker, an audio excerpts from a 2000 interview with Bob Dylan for the documentary No Direction Home, cut to previously unseen outtakes from Dont Look Back, a new documentary about the evolution of Pennebaker’s filming style, a new conversation between Pennebaker & Neuwirth, Snapshots from the Tour, a new piece featuring never-before-seen outtakes from Dont Look Back, a new interview with musician Patti Smith, a conversation between music critic Greil Marcus and Pennebaker from 2010, five audio recordings of Dylan songs not used in the film, an alternate version of the film’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” cue card sequence, a trailer, and a booklet featuring an essay by critic and poet Robert Polito.
During this film’s creation, Dylan the artist was going through a career flux having just released his half electric album Bringing It All Back Home and was met with mixed and sometimes extremely negative responses from fans who thought he was turning his back on his folk roots (to the point that an audience member would call him “Judas” during a performance).
Watching Dylan excited to see an overpriced guitar in a shop window augurs the burgeoning stylistic change that will come later. Being not only musically misunderstood, but personally, was why Dylan more often than not comes across so jaded, so brash, smug, intelligently assured, hip, and brimming with existential cynicism and cigarette smoke.
Not a portrait, these are highlights no less, so the film provides a pretty extreme version of Dylan that even he himself seems to be fully aware of and not taking very seriously.
Having Dylan read an exaggerated tidbit about him smoking 80 cigarettes a day and reacting “I’m glad I’m not me” is at once the most charming moments in the flick, and maybe the most telling of his headspace.
The fact Dylan gave the film his stamp of approval leads me to believe he even gets some ironic joy at somebody writing him off as a heralded jerk that bullies journalist with retorts and picks fights with colleagues.
Dont Look Back was revolutionary in how we digest and dissect our favorite artists beyond just their art and what photos you could dig up. It certainly something we might take for granted today as everybody and everything is seemingly more overexposed than the next and an industry onto itself. The movie feels incredibly fresh as there’s no handlers, no strategist, no image makers to mold said artist; just Dylan fighting his way through some shows.
It’s an intimate and fascinating portrait of an artist for sure.
Dont Look Back
United States (1967)
D.A. Pennebacker
Spine #786
Available on Criterion Blu-ray & DVD
