Streaming Bob Dylan – Don’t Look Back Online
July 5th, 2010 |
Streaming Bob Dylan – Don’t Look Back Online.
Movie Title: Bob Dylan – Don’t Look Back Bob Dylan – Don’t Look Back is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Bob Dylan – Don’t Look Back |
Don’t Glimpse Serve is the best documentary about a musician on tour that I’ve ever seen. I can’t say enough safe things about it, and it is all I can do to imagine how D. A. Pennebaker simultaneously made himself so ubiquitous and so unnoticed as to retract the powerful footage that he got on Dylan’s British tour. From the amazing sequence of Joan Baez warbling the then-unreleased “Percy’s Song” even as Dylan is pounding out the lyrics on his typewriter, to the revealing moments where Dylan manager Albert Grossman quite literally strong-arms the BBC into a high-paying deal for a tv appearance, to Dylan himself, at the most accessible he would ever be in his long career, alternately jousting and jesting with the British press, most of whom seem completely ignorant as to which is the jest and which is the joust. Dylan again, talking with a fan who doesn’t like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” because “it objective doesn’t sound like you,” (which was the whole point of the song), and Dylan’s gritted-teeth reply: “Oh, I discover what kind of person you are factual away.” Dylan yet again, in an astonishingly unguarded moment, bawling out everyone in his hotel room over a wineglass Alan Sign dropped out of the window, acting like the only responsible adult in a kindergarten class…and when a drunken Stamp admits the deed, Dylan lets him have it with both barrels and finally kicks him out, despite Label having been Dylan’s best friend in England throughout the entire film. In fact, a lot of this movie is about Dylan shedding elements of his persona, entourage, and his music. Bringing it All Serve Home had fair been released when Don’t Notice Benefit was being filmed, and the album served as a harbinger of the rock and roll shift Dylan’s music was about to catch. It’s far more noticeable in hindsight, of course, but in this film you ogle Dylan breaking his ties with his folkie past. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” being shown just up front is a dumb giveaway, but you may miss some of the more subtle signs: His growing disenchantment with being pegged as a folkie, evidenced by both the abovementioned reaction to his fans and his jests/jousts with the press, both harbingers of the surreal “anti-interviews” Dylan would give over the next few years. Then there is the lifeless disintegration of his relationship with Baez — there is a moment about midway or 2/3 of the map through Don’t Peer Befriend where Joan walks out of Dylan’s hotel room…and though she appears later in the film through the judicious exercise of editing, Baez has since admitted that that was the moment she walked out of Dylan’s life. Another folk-music tie broken, as noteworthy by Dylan as by Baez (his near-indifference to her through worthy of the film is chilling…) . There is also Dylan’s discomfort with the “Donovan stammer”, both in being compared to Donovan and in meeting the guy. You can scrutinize the uncertainty all over Bob’s face during this sequence, and the nicer he tries to be to Donovan — who quite honestly sholdn’t even be in the same room with Dylan — the funnier the whole thing gets. Then there is Dylan’s meeting with the President of Dylan’s British fan club — the bespectacled weedy fellow who looks like he objective stepped whole and breathing out of the nightclub scene in A Hard Day’s Night. Dylan’s conversation with this guy is polite on the surface, but again, there are undertones of discomfort, even abominate, so palpable that they do you want to cringe. Dylan is so clearly disenchanted with some aspects of his career, even though he puts on a game face and acts joyful with what he’s doing, that it’s a wonder he didn’t completely telegraph his shift to electric music. (Actually, he did — it’s impartial that most people were too blind to sight it coming at the time.)
As I said above, the footage in this film is incredibly revealing. Never again would Dylan be so accessible, so unprejudiced and forthright, as he was in Don’t Observe Succor — and even here, as I’ve said, you can sense his withdrawal from that accessibility initiate. How Pennebaker managed to buy all this intense, mighty, human footage of Dylan and co., without his subjects noticing or caring about how they came across, is beyond me. Few music documentaries, before or since, have had such verve, or such nerve, as to expose their subjects in such a potentially-unflattering light (the only two I can consider of that near anywhere terminate are Gimme Shelter, the Maysles Brothers’ fabulous Stones/Altamont document, and Let It Be, the Beatles’ on-film disintegration (and final live performance) which stupidly remains out of print) . Don’t See Support does all that and more, never cheating, never prevaricating or retreating, always telling the truth. It was a rare achievement for its time, and a film that could never be made today.
(FINAL NOTE: All upright, Messrs. Dylan and Pennebaker — now that Don’t Witness Benefit has been remastered and rereleased, how about doing the same with the long-missing and much-missed 1966 followup, Eat the Document? It’s no less raw, revealing, and improbable than its predecessor, and is richly deserving of a rerelease. Here’s hoping!)
The best thing about the DVD version of “Don’t Leer Befriend” is the commentary. It puts a lot of things into perspective. But be aware that this is no restored film. The flaws, such as cracks in the negative, are made even more visible by the clarity of DVD. And read carefully: The full-length versions of the songs from the 1965 British tour are presented here in “audio” only. The fact that there isn’t a single completed song in the film has always been a sore status with me, but the filmmaker talks about that on the commentary. All in all, a examine at Bob Dylan support in ‘65 is worth the time to any music fan. And this is currently the best plan to conception it, despite the few flaws.
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