Dont Look Back [1967]

 D.A. Pennebaker’s trailblazing film Dont Look Back (the missing apostrophe was a conscious choice) – a landmark in ‘direct cinema’ and the first feature-length documentary on Bob Dylan – provided an intimate peek into the opaque, magnetic and mercurial persona of the iconoclastic poet, prophet and troubadour. Playfully operating at the intersection of music reportage, diary film, rockumentary and even a biographical essay in its intimate, unfiltered, behind-the-scenes portraiture, it had Pennbaker following Dylan – shot in grainy, gorgeous B/W using a customized, portable 16mm camera that he’d co-developed with compatriot Richard Leacock – through his 1965 England tour. The docu began with a legendary music video – one that was conceived by Dylan himself – featuring the songwriter presenting a series of cue cards bearing words and phrases from his song ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, while that plays in the background, and with poet Allen Ginsberg and folk singer Bob Neuwirth seen interacting in the industrial backdrop. While, over the course of the work, we get to see Dylan performing at different concerts, it’s primarily set inside hotel rooms and cars, at corridors and backstages, and with friends, reporters and strangers. What emerged, through these candid observations of moments and interactions, was a kaleidoscopic impression of an individual alternatively funny, gregarious, inspired, reflective, prickly, aloof and enigmatic. The film’s most memorable segments included his impromptu jams with Joan Baez, Donovan and Alan Price, taunting a Time’s correspondent, and bemused reactions upon being labelled an anarchist. Incidentally, though he was on the cusp of superstardom when it was made, by the time it eventually released two years later he’d released two seminal albums, had a motorcycle accident, switched to electric, married and become an unprecedented phenomenon.

Director: D.A. Pennebaker

Genre: Documentary/Musical/Diary Film

Language: English

Country: US