Reel Classics: Dont Look Back

The year is 1965.  Bob Dylan is going on a brief tour in England as he is on his final tour as an acoustic folk singer with his gui­tar and har­mon­i­ca.  He was on the verge of the tran­si­tion (not com­plete­ly well-accept­ed by his fans) to the “elec­tric” Dylan.   His lat­est album, Bringing It All Back Home, was released that year and had one side elec­tric and one side acoustic.

The idea of film­ing the tour report­ed­ly orig­i­nat­ed with Dylan’s man­ag­er, Albert Grossman.  D. A. Pennebaker had been mak­ing doc­u­men­tary films and Grossman approached him ask­ing if he would be inter­est­ed in doing a doc­u­men­tary focused on the tour.  Pennebaker report­ed­ly knew noth­ing of Dylan oth­er than a song he had been hear­ing on the radio, “The Times They Are A‑Changin’”.  At the time Dylan was only 23 years old but well known in the world of folk music.  Pennebaker saw it as a great oppor­tu­ni­ty and agreed to accom­pa­ny the entourage which includ­ed the likes of Joan Baez and Donovan. 

Pennebaker used a hand­held 16mm cam­era and fol­lowed Dylan and oth­ers from air­ports to hotel rooms and the stages.  It’s not a con­cert film (though there is music being per­formed), but a doc­u­men­ta­tion of life dur­ing a con­cert tour.  Many known and famil­iar musi­cians can be spot­ted dur­ing the film, includ­ing the afore­men­tioned Joan Baez and Donovan as well as Alan Price (Eric Burdon & The Animals), MarianneFaithfull, John Mayall, and Pete Townsend. 

The open­ing scene of the film (which also inter­est­ing­ly serves as its trailer—see below) was essen­tial­ly a music video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” from his just-released album and fea­tured the “elec­tric” sound.  Though actu­al­ly filmed at the end of the project, it was used as the intro­duc­tion of Dylan at the begin­ning of the movie.  In the back­ground, you can see anoth­er famous fig­ure of the era, poet Allen Ginsberg.  The film­ing began with Dylan’s arrival in England on April 26, 1965, and end­ed after his con­cert at the Royal Albert Hall on 10 May.  Over twen­ty hours of footage was filmed, and Pennebaker even­tu­al­ly edit­ed it down to 96 minutes.

The title of the film, Dont Look Back, is report­ed­ly not a ref­er­ence to the lyric in the Dylan song “She Belongs to Me” from Bringing It All Back Home. The lyric is “She’s got every­thing she needs/She’s an artist, she don’t look back.”  Pennebaker was adamant about that, as Dylan had insist­ed that none of his lyrics be used in the title.  Pennebaker said the title was a quote from the well-known African American base­ball play­er Satchel Paige — “Don’t look back.  Something might be gain­ing on you.”  The direc­tor stat­ed that the use of the Paige quote was inspired by his obser­va­tion of Dylan and his “relent­less­ly for­ward-look­ing atti­tude to life and work.” 

In the film Dylan cer­tain­ly does not come off as a “warm, fuzzy guy.”  He appears aloof, argu­men­ta­tive, and dif­fi­cult at times.  Dylan’s demeanor in the film cer­tain­ly had an impact on one of the more well-known film review­ers of the day, Roger Ebert.  He described the Dylan exhib­it­ed in the film as “imma­ture, pet­ty, vin­dic­tive, lack­ing a sense of humor, over­ly impressed with his own impor­tance and not very bright.”  In a return look at the film in 1998, Ebert wrote, “As a musi­cian, Dylan has endured and tri­umphed.  Perhaps he has also grown and matured as a human being, and is today a nice guy with an infec­tious sense of humor and soft-spo­ken mod­esty.  Or maybe not.”

Reportedly Joan Baez and Dylan were roman­ti­cal­ly involved at the time and Baez had accom­pa­nied Dylan on the tour with the thought of accom­pa­ny­ing him on stage.  However, in the film, we see Dylan pay­ing lit­tle atten­tion to her, and she even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pears lat­er in the film.  Before doing so, she is filmed in a hotel room singing her well-known song “Love is a Four-Letter Word.”  We also get to see and hear Donovan per­form at one of the gath­er­ings.  He vis­its Dylan in his hotel room and, after play­ing a song for him, requests Dylan play “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.” 

There are a cou­ple of scenes in the film where Dylan is addressed by the press.  Bob Dylan does not come off as very favor­able of the press.  This was described as unusu­al at the time as musi­cians often saw the press inter­views as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote their music and their tour.  Pennebaker, in talk­ing of those press con­fer­ences, stat­ed about Dylan “He saw press con­fer­ences as sort of com­ic relief.  The guys doing it weren’t doing it seri­ous­ly; some­body had said, ‘Here’s your job today: go get Dylan and get a sto­ry on him.’ Dylan was treat­ing it like they were clowns sent to the behead­ing.  It was kind of fun­ny at first, but lat­er we got bored and stopped.”  One of Dylan’s quotes to the press was, “My real mes­sage?  Keep a good head and always car­ry a lightbulb.” 

In 2015, the mag­a­zine Rolling Stone pub­lished an arti­cle about the film.  The arti­cle stat­ed it would cre­ate “the tem­plate for the mod­ern rock doc­u­men­tary and become one of the sin­gle most influ­en­tial movies of all time.”  Pennebaker went on to work on many oth­er music-ori­ent­ed doc­u­men­taries, includ­ing Monterey Pop (1968), Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973), Jerry Lee Lewis:  The History of Rock & Roll (1991), and Woodstock Diary (1994).  However, many con­sid­er Dont Look Back to be his finest effort. 

Rotten Tomatoes crit­ics con­sen­sus states, “Dont Look Back leaves the mys­ter­ies of Dylan large­ly intact while offer­ing a grip­ping verite-style account of a piv­otal moment in his incred­i­ble career.”  In 1967, the Newsweek review­er wrote “Dont Look Back is real­ly about fame and how it men­aces art, about the press and how it cat­e­go­rizes, bowd­ler­izes, ster­il­izes, uni­ver­sal­izes or con­ven­tion­al­izes an orig­i­nal like Dylan into some­thing it can dim­ly under­stand.”  Paste describes the film as a “brac­ing por­trait of an artist col­lid­ing head­long with both his grow­ing fame and the con­fu­sion of those in the press who don’t know how to approach this mer­cu­r­ial young man—or the gen­er­a­tion he rep­re­sent­ed . . . Dont Look Back some­how man­ages to cap­ture the promise of the decade’s coun­ter­cul­ture move­ment, all embod­ied in a will­ful lit­tle genius . . .”  Even Roger Ebert, with his crit­i­cisms already not­ed, gave the film three of four stars “for its alarm­ing insights.” In 2014, Rolling Stone ranked Dont Look Back as the great­est rock doc­u­men­tary of all time (even greater than Woodstock). 

One crit­ic who was not so high on the film was the sub­ject himself—Bob Dylan.  In a 1969 inter­view with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone, he said, “But you see, Jann, I don’t hold these movie peo­ple in too high a posi­tion.  You know this movie, Dont Look Back?  Well, that splashed my face all over the world, that movie Dont Look Back.  I did­n’t get a pen­ny from that movie, you know. . . so when peo­ple say ‘why don’t you go out and work and why don’t you do this and why don’t you do that,’ peo­ple don’t know half of what a lot of these pro­duc­ers and peo­ple, lawyers. . . they don’t know the half of those stories.” 

But he also said he was­n’t too bit­ter: “However, I’m an easy-going kind of fel­low, you know. . . I’m for­give and forget.” 

When Dylan’s man­ag­er, Albert Grossman, asked Pennebaker to make the film, they agreed to be co-pro­duc­ers.  They shared the prof­its at 50% each.  When Jann Wenner asked Dylan “Did you like Dont Look Back?” Dylan report­ed­ly laughed and said, “I’d like it a lot more if I got paid for it!”

In 1998 Dont Look Back was select­ed for preser­va­tion by the National Film Registry.  It is also now part of the Criterion Collection of DVDs.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates the film at 7.9 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics’ score of 91% and an audi­ence score of 92%. 

In search­ing my Roku device I found no free stream­ing sites for the film.  The Clark County Public Library does not have a copy on the shelf, but I feel cer­tain they will obtain one if you ask. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below, let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site, Facebook page, and WinCity Voices Facebook page.