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Dont Look Back



Bob Dylan is captured on-screen as he never would be again in this groundbreaking film from D. A. Pennebaker. The legendary documentarian finds Dylan in London during his 1965 tour, which would be his last as an acoustic artist and marked a turning point in his career. In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century's greatest artists thrust into the spotlight, Dylan is surrounded by teen fans; gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists; and kicks back with fellow musicians Joan Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price. Featuring some of Dylan's most famous songs, including "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "The Times They Are A-Changin'," and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Dont Look Back is a radically conceived and shot portrait of an American icon that has influenced decades of vérité behind-the-scenes documentaries.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by director D. A. Pennebaker, with newly restored monaural sound from the original quarter-inch magnetic masters, presented uncompressed on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 1999 featuring Pennebaker and tour manager Bob Neuwirth
• 65 Revisited, a 2006 documentary directed by Pennebaker and edited by Walker Lamond
• Audio excerpt from an interview with Bob Dylan in the 2005 documentary No Direction Home, cut to previously unseen outtakes from Dont Look Back
• New documentary about the evolution of Pennebaker's filming style, from his 1950s avant-garde work to his '60s musical documentaries, including an excerpt from the filmmaker's footage of Dylan performing "Ballad of a Thin Man" during his 1966 electric tour
• Daybreak Express (1953), Baby (1954), and Lambert & Co. (1964), three short films by Pennebaker
• New conversation between Pennebaker and Neuwirth about their work together, from Dont Look Back through Monterey Pop (1967) and beyond
• Snapshots from the Tour, a new piece featuring outtakes from Dont Look Back
• New interview with musician Patti Smith about Dylan and the influence of Dont Look Back in her life
• Conversation between music critic Greil Marcus and Pennebaker from 2010
• Alternate version of the film's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" cue card sequence
• Five uncut audio tracks of Dylan songs from the film
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic and poet Robert Polito

Makes perfect sense, as Neil McGlone was recently trying to get contact with Donovan and Alan Price.

What might be the chances of Criterion including Pennebaker's other Dylan films: Something Is Happening and Eat the Document ? We also had that phantom page indicating Primary earlier this year. Perhaps we'll be seeing a lot more Pennebaker soon.

Edit-

Actually, Eat the Document might be highly likely given this tweet.

I'd eat my own shoe to see Eat the Document get a legitimate release, if only to finally see and hear a high-quality recording of Dylan's hotel room performance of Does She Need Me, which closes the film. So many brilliant moments, and some slightly unnerving ones as well, in a film that has only been rather poorly bootlegged over the years.

I can't imagine that Criterion would not try for Eat the Document once they knew they were getting Don't Look Back. Securing an official release of that film after all these years would be a major feather in their cap, a big selling point, and news that would get beyond their standard media platforms.

If Eat the Document is on the table I also want The Last Movie. Hey, I can dream.

Bando wrote:I'd eat my own shoe to see Eat the Document get a legitimate release, if only to finally see and hear a high-quality recording of Dylan's hotel room performance of Does She Need Me, which closes the film. So many brilliant moments, and some slightly unnerving ones as well, in a film that has only been rather poorly bootlegged over the years.

It's a shame Les Blank isn't still alive to document that when it happens.

Not having seen the bootleg, how much of EAT THE DOCUMENT ended up in NO DIRECTION HOME? Does Dylan own that footage?

d-less wrote:If Eat the Document is on the table I also want The Last Movie. Hey, I can dream.

And Dylan's own Renaldo and Clara

From what I've heard (I haven't seen the bootleg) mostly just concert footage appeared in No Direction Home, including the Judas incident.

Newsnayr wrote:From what I've heard (I haven't seen the bootleg) mostly just concert footage appeared in No Direction Home, including the Judas incident.

It seems to me that the bit of Dylan making fun of the store sign and, possibly, some of the press conference footage would have come from the EAT THE DOCUMENT material as well.

Calvin wrote:

d-less wrote:If Eat the Document is on the table I also want The Last Movie. Hey, I can dream.

And Dylan's own Renaldo and Clara

Still holding out for a "Dylan on Film" box (to include DON'T LOOK BACK, EAT THE DOCUMENT, RENALDO AND CLARA, NO DIRECTION HOME, I'M NOT THERE, 65 REVISITED, HEARTS OF FIRE, MASKED & ANONYMOUS, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR, and that Victoria's Secret commercial)

Roger Ryan wrote:

Newsnayr wrote:From what I've heard (I haven't seen the bootleg) mostly just concert footage appeared in No Direction Home, including the Judas incident.

It seems to me that the bit of Dylan making fun of the store sign and, possibly, some of the press conference footage would have come from the EAT THE DOCUMENT material as well.

All of the 1966 footage in No Direction Home should come from the Eat The Document material but there's not that much actual footage from the latter in the former. However, NDH showed what excellent quality the 1966 footage is in, so ETD could be a real winner here.

The problem for me with Dont Look Back has always been that Bob didn't give a rat's ass about the music he was performing in England in 1965 and as always with him you can tell. I've always felt Pennebacker made his film one year too early since the 1966 tour is much more pivotal and interesting but I guess ETD is that film - more or less, because that guy with the Jesus billboard certainly gets his 15 mins of fame...

Be careful not to think of ETD as a concert film. There obviously are performances in it, but Dylan is in contrary mode and most (if not all) of the concert footage is truncated or consciously adulterated in some way. I imagine people's frustration/disinterest with his approach is at least part of the reason for its obscurity, but demanding the expected from Dylan has always seemed like a foolish thing to do, I think it's a great little film.

Makes sense to release Don't Look Back the same month as Inside Llewyn Davis - perhaps both in December? A guy can dream.

Don't Look Back is essential viewing if only for the hotel room scene in which Dylan just devastates Donovan, after an entire film's worth of Dylan reading headlines about Donovan's supposed greatness. Don't get me wrong, Donovan's performance is perfectly nice and all, but the "oh shit" look on Donovan's face halfway through Dylan's performance... Absolutely priceless.

And for those asking for Renaldo and Clara... Have you actually seen the film? I positively love the Rolling Thunder material, but the film is positively painful. Do yourself a favor, listen to the Bootleg Series release on the '75 tour, read the Ratso Sloman book, and maybe watch Idiot Wind from the '76 Hard Rain TV special, and call it a day. Renaldo and Clara is best left in the can. Really, aside from the Pennebaker films, Dylan's career on film is really quite forgettable.

Bando wrote:Don't Look Back is essential viewing if only for the hotel room scene in which Dylan just devastates Donovan, after an entire film's worth of Dylan reading headlines about Donovan's supposed greatness. Don't get me wrong, Donovan's performance is perfectly nice and all, but the "oh shit" look on Donovan's face halfway through Dylan's performance... Absolutely priceless...

I had a chance to interview Donovan about thirty years ago and asked him specifically about how he felt about his appearance in DON'T LOOK BACK. He replied that it was very early in his career and he was just happy to be hanging out with Dylan. He didn't feel that Dylan was ridiculing him as much commenting on the press stories and maintained that Dylan had been cordial to him.

The guy who really does get ripped apart by Dylan is the journalist (Terry Ellis) who would go on to start up Chrysalis Records and produce Jethro Tull!

As to Dylan's other films, I admit to a weakness for MASKED AND ANONYMOUS which plays like it was based on a particularly densely-layered, never-released mid-70s concept album. The big Mickey Rourke speech where he talks about unleashing the elephants attains some of the surreal grandeur of Dylan's song lyrics.

I too have a soft spot for M&A. Saw it in the theater when it came out. It's a tough watch for many, but it's interesting enough. Not to mention the fact that the particular iteration of Dylan's touring band that appears in the film could have been the best collective group of musicians to ever play behind him. And, yes, I realize how much of that sounds like hyperbole, but I swear it's true. There's a lot of unused musical footage floating around out there, supposedly.

Bando wrote: Not to mention the fact that the particular iteration of Dylan's touring band that appears in the film could have been the best collective group of musicians to ever play behind him. And, yes, I realize how much of that sounds like hyperbole, but I swear it's true. There's a lot of unused musical footage floating around out there, supposedly.

This. I saw that version of Dylan's band (right before Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell left, and Dylan's inexplicable move to piano) several times, and if M&A's had no other purpose than to give us the legit recording of their version of "Blowin' in the Wind" that plays over the credits, then dayenu.

Not to drift too far off-topic (he said as he drifted too far off-topic), but...

The most likely theory I've heard for Dylan not playing guitar live is that he has back problems and it's too uncomfortable to stand around with a guitar for that long.

Roger Ryan wrote:

Bando wrote:Don't Look Back is essential viewing if only for the hotel room scene in which Dylan just devastates Donovan, after an entire film's worth of Dylan reading headlines about Donovan's supposed greatness. Don't get me wrong, Donovan's performance is perfectly nice and all, but the "oh shit" look on Donovan's face halfway through Dylan's performance... Absolutely priceless...

I had a chance to interview Donovan about thirty years ago and asked him specifically about how he felt about his appearance in DON'T LOOK BACK. He replied that it was very early in his career and he was just happy to be hanging out with Dylan. He didn't feel that Dylan was ridiculing him as much commenting on the press stories and maintained that Dylan had been cordial to him.

A later interview in the Guardian confirms this. It seems like just another in the relentless onslaught of media-provoked celebrity rivalries between two stars who wouldn't otherwise hold any ill will toward each other. Having seen the film a few times but not in several years, what I remember is Donovan making a slight gaffe (he was extremely young when this was shot), and then hands the guitar over to Dylan. There was probably slightly more to what happened but not much. The whole documentary is brilliant as a study of the pressures that Dylan was under and how capturing certain moments on film leaves them open to interpretation by the viewer. As the linked article says of the the Dylan/Donovan scene, "Viewers divide into those who see Dylan as a genius dismissing a young pretender, or a sniggering bully surrounded by sycophants."

FWIW, the film Pennebaker made from the 1966 footage (before Dylan recut it into Eat the Document) was Something Is Happening, and even though it hasn't been bootlegged, it's been seen by plenty of people. Greil Marcus has written quite a bit about it, and certainly a number of Dylan collectors have seen it.

There's a number of scenes that weren't used for No Direction Home and will look completely new to anyone who sees them. A lot of stuff that was used that wasn't concert footage was re-cut (most notably Dylan riffing on a sign on a building), but since the raw footage is similar, it will look very familiar.

This is an absolute must for any Dylan fan. The extras are through the roof.

Bando wrote: And for those asking for Renaldo and Clara... Have you actually seen the film? I positively love the Rolling Thunder material, but the film is positively painful.

Yes , I've seen it, and I agree with you. It's unwatchable.

I like that this is in mono.