Features: DVD
When acclaimed documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker (Monterey Pop, The War Room) filmed Bob Dylan during a three week concert tour of England in the Spring of 1965, he had no idea he was about to create one of the most intimate profiles of the musician ever put on film. Wanting to make more than just a concert film, Pennebaker sought both the public and private Bob Dylan. With unobtrusive equipment and rare access to the performer, he achieved a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of one of music's most influential figures. Hailed as one of the best documentaries about a performing artist ever created, Don't Look Back is more than a view of an extraordinary concert tour -- Bob Dylan's last as a solo acoustic performer. It's "a portrait of the young Dylan tearing the pop world apart!" (S.F. Examiner)
"Portrait of the young Dylan tearing the pop world apart!" Mikal Gilmore, L.A. Herald Examiner
"An endless fascinating film. Don't Look Back is really about fame and how it menaces art, about the press and how it categorizes an original like Dylan." Newsweek
Editor's Note
A raucous and intimate road movie of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, DON'T LOOK BACK may be the most influential rock star documentary of all time. D.A. Pennebaker's trademark cinema verité approach, with its comprehensive perspective, captures the paradoxical Dylan in alternating moments of confrontational belligerence and contemplative repose, all within the framework of the pop culture hurricane of one of the most publicized concert tours of the mid-1960s. Mobbed by frenzied fans and stalked by confounded journalists and music critics unable to penetrate his carefully evasive yet antagonistic persona, Dylan takes refuge with Joan Baez, his folk contemporary, and Albert Grossman, his juggernaut manager. As the tour progresses, a pattern emerges from Dylan's modes of expression, offering a glimpse of what would come to be a constant in his career: his perpetual redefinition of himself. Displaying the enigmatic performer's roles as both folk artist heir apparent to the Woody Guthrie throne and electric guitar rock pioneer who turned the Beatles on to pot, DON'T LOOK BACK preserves not only Dylan's musical genius but his inimitable, vital, and profound defiance of definition.
Plot Summary
The rock and roll documentary that launched a thousand imitations, D.A. Pennebaker's loose shooting style and focused interviewing paved the way for films of this nature; it details Dylan's celebrated 1965 tour of England and features appearances by Joan Baez and Dylan's manager Albert Grossman. The film also includes one-of-a-kind performances of "The Times, They Are a Changin'," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
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