D. A. Pennebaker was in town over the weekend for a screening of “Don’t Look Back” at the Little Theater. I pictured him being chauffeured in at the tail end of the movie but he was in the house for the full ride and at eighty seven he got up on stage with a big smile and he was ready to talk and field questions.
He told the crowd he “wanted to see how the film held up” and I was thinking about the number of times we’ve seen the movie and how when the big “Don’t Look Back” letters come on the screen at the end of the film it is always a surprise. The movie is perfectly edited, lingering uncomfortably long on some of those back stage scenes and then cutting fast through performances, and it always whizzes by.
The opening scene with Dylan tossing hand painted placards of his brilliant lyrics is a hundred times better than any MTV video ever was. Donovan clearly got under Dylan’s skin and the scene with the two of them trading songs is is my favorite part of the film. D. A. told us Donovan helped paint those lyrics and he also said he caught Dylan alone playing Donovan’s record in his hotel room.
I will never get tired of seeing Dylan in his prime. There will never be another like him but Pennebaker was there and he caught it for us. You feel the presence of the camera in the hotel rooms, in the car and backstage but as Pennebaker says, “he was searching.” He is not out to tell a particular story or manipulate the action. He would pitch movies and the suits would ask him what the movie was about and he would say, “I don’t know yet, I haven’t made the movie.” He was searching.
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