Don't Look Back

Starring: Bob Dylan, Albert Grossman, Bob Neuwirth, Joan Baez, Alan Price

Directed by: D.A. Pennebaker

RS: 4of 4 Stars Average User Rating: 3.5of 4 Stars

Filmed during Bob Dylan's tour of Britain in the spring of 1965, Don't Look Back -- now in a definitive two-disc edition -- is the first and best pop documentary of its kind, a defining study of celebrity as suffocation. It is a masterpiece of all-access portraiture, too, capturing a Dylan (not yet twenty-four) who is shy, wily and pissed off in rapid, unpredictable succession, yet also driven to create. In a hotel room, he pecks furiously at a typewriter as paramour Joan Baez sings his still-unfinished gem, "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word." In its grainy frankness and stretches of backstage banality, Don't Look Back is the anti-A Hard Day's Night, stripping away the fictionalized glamour of the Beatles' tour romp of a year earlier. As the tour proceeds, Dylan's manner darkens. At one point, he lets a reporter have it with both barrels: "I could tell you I'm not a folk singer and explain to you why, but you wouldn't really understand." D.A. Pennebaker then makes the point for Dylan in a brisk concert medley: quick edits of songs from the blunt apocalypse of "The Times They Are A-Changin' " to the complex fury of "Gates of Eden." "I just go out there and sing 'em," he tells a fan. In that way, Dylan has never changed.
DVD EXTRAS A disc of previously unseen outtakes including different musical performances, a cameo appearance by Nico and footage of Dylan playing the unreleased"I'll Keep It With Mine" on a piano backstage in London; two alternate versions of the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" clip; commentary by Pennebaker and tour manager Bob Neuwirth; a reproduction of the 1968 paperback of the film's transcript.

DAVID FRICKE

(Posted: Mar 1, 2007)

Your Turn

Give us your review of
Don't Look Back

Review 1 of 2

3of 4 Stars

I haven't seen Don't Look Back in awhile, since the late 80s, when you could to the video store and find a diverse selection. Joan Baez was motherly. As a poet, at best, Donovan was considered second-rate. Alan Price was a drinking buddy (and a kickass keyboard player). If it wasn't for the Beatles and Allen Ginsberg, there'd be no Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blond On Blond.

Mar 23, 2007 11:27:56

Review 2 of 2

4of 4 Stars

The new release is fun, with the performance outtakes (around for years) added in. Dylan was fascinated by the Beatles' commercial success, but had little use for their music. He once said that there were lots of people in the Brill Building writing the same kind of song as the Beatles' hits. The hero worship was one way only, and Lennon knew he was out of his league. Don't believe the hype.

Mar 6, 2007 18:30:27

Previous Next