Reeling Backward: Dont Look Back (1967)

With the success of the Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," it's time to take a look at D. A. Pennebaker's essential film, the original 'rockumentary.'

D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary accounting the 1965 England tour of Bob Dylan isn’t just essential. It literally established an entirely new genre, the rock ‘n’ roll documentary aka ‘rockumentary.’ Everything from Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” to Pennebaker’s own “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” to 2015’s “Amy” has in some ways emulated the mold he set.

With the success of the recent biopic, “A Complete Unknown” starring Timothée Chalamet, I thought it a good opportunity to catch up. “Unknown” made my Top 10 list for 2024, despite my not being a particular fan of either Dylan or Chalamet.

And believe it or not, I’d never actually seen “Dont Look Back.”

(Pennebaker intentionally excluded the apostrophe, though most citations of the film include it.)

My reaction is about what I expected. It’s a marvelous piece of filmmaking, a true you-are-there existential look inside the backstage life of a famous artist stomping new grounds. Filmed over the 11 days of Dylan’s whirlwind tour, it also marked a critical juncture in Dylan’s career. Just a couple of months later, he would “go electric” at the Newport Folk Festival, betraying (in some minds) the musical community that first made him a star.

That said — I’m still not a huge fan of Dylan. Watching this movie only reinforces my indifference.

He comes across as incredibly self-serving and even snotty in the film, a not-yet-turned 24-year-old clearly riding a wave of stardom that he think provides him with a profound sense of entitlement to treat others with contempt. His attitude toward his fans, the journalists asking him questions and even fellow artists is surly, bordering on cruel.

Honestly, I just wanted to smack him.

I suppose things might be different if I were watching the movie contemporaneously, and/or if I was younger. The experience was much like reading “The Catcher in the Rye” at age 15 versus 35. At the former, Holden Caulfield is your hero; by the latter, a transcendent pain in the you-know-what.

The thing that most struck me about the film is how little screen time is given to Dylan’s actual stage performances. Pennebaker, who also acted as editor, is almost perfunctory in showing this stuff, and never even allows for a complete song, often cutting away abruptly without so much as a fade-out.

Interestingly, he takes pains to show the start of every show, which Dylan always opens with “The Times They Are A-Changin'”. Dylan positively races through his iconic anthem, and seems barely invested in the audience’s swoon for its call to protest action. Honestly, he seems kinda bored, like he knows he’s expected to sing it and doesn’t really want to.

Behind the scenes, in the green rooms and late-night hotel suite gatherings — that’s where the real musical joy takes place. Dylan strums song snippets on his guitar or pounds out chords on a piano, sometimes solo and sometimes with a large group of hangers-on about.

The man simply could not sit in stillness. He had to make music.

Singing partner and sometimes girlfriend Joan Baez is there in the background, occasionally joining in for a duet, including a marvelous rendition of Hank Williams’ “Lost Highway.” She sings a portion of “Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word,” which Dylan promises to finish writing for her some day, which he did.

But Baez seems uncomfortable having to share Dylan with others, and beats a hasty retreat when the crowds draw too close. She and Dylan delight in reading aloud newspaper and magazine articles about themselves, and doing cool young-people things like wearing sunglasses indoor at night.

We see poet Allen Ginsberg in these midnight scrums sometimes, though he never speaks. Manager Albert Grossman is also a mostly silent presence, other than when he has to shoo away the nosy hotel concierge fretting about noise, or wrangling through an intermediary with the BBC about Dylan’s appearance fee. (They settle on £2,000, or about $56,000 in today’s dollars.)

Scottish folk singer and friend Donovan, only just come into his own stardom, follows about as a sort of mascot/spirit animal.

Longtime Dylan friend and road manager Bob Neuwirth is a constant presence, often working to assuage the star’s foul moods or direct them in a more positive direction. Pianist Alan Price, recently separated from The Animals, plays with Dylan onstage but frequently vexes him off it with his drinking. At one point Dylan becomes very angry because he thinks Price smashed a glass in the street during a scrum with fans, threatening to throw everyone out of his hotel room if the guilty party doesn’t step up.

It’s an odd concern, considering how little time or attention Dylan otherwise gives to his fans — especially the teen Brit girls who often wait for hours outside his hotel hoping for a glimpse of the halo-haired, diminutive star. At one time a girl actually flings herself onto the trunk of his getaway car, and they have to stop to nudge her off.

Dylan’s sparring interviews with journalists are skin-crawlingly uncomfortable to watch. He seems to take the whole prospect of people asking him questions as a profound affront, and plays silly games with them, giving contradicting answers (“I’m not a folk singer”) or acting coy. “I’m not angry. I’m delightful.”

Two encounters stand out. He has a long, rambling diatribe with Terry Ellis, a young self-described “student of science” who would go on to found his own record label. You can watch the whole discussion through three times and still not get what they’re arguing about — other than it’s clear Dylan doesn’t want to talk to him.

Dylan saves his most petulant mood for an interview with Horace Freeland Judson, acting as a correspondent for Time magazine, which the singer trashes as an insignificant publication for middlebrow consumers. It appears Dylan is playing to Pennebaker’s camera, and in one stark moment Judson actually disengages from the exchange, turning his head away and smiling ruefully to himself in silence.

The journalist — who later wrote some seminal histories of molecular biology — knows exactly how he is going to be portrayed, as a doddering old square, and that he’s powerless to stop it.

I’d have more sympathy for Dylan if what he was saying was on-point or even coherent, but it’s just a lot of rambling patter and backtalk. “Every word has its big letter and its little letter,” he needles, and as the criticism of Dylan’s lyrics points out, it’s empty phrasing that masquerades as the profound.

“He is not so much singing as sermonizing,” one reporter pronounces, dictating his copy over the phone to an editor.

The movie wraps up with Dylan’s big concert at Royal Albert Hall, which everyone treats with the significance it is due. Dylan is delighted that The Beatles are in attendance — “All of them,” someone coos — though they are not shown or met with by the American.

Dylan and Baez ride away into the night inside their car, very self-aware of the importance of the moment. Dylan makes a mockery of an article describing himself as an anarchist — “A singer such as I?!?” he fake-protests.

“Dont Look Back” is a fabulous portrait of a guy who’s built a career out of self-consciously cultivating mystery. We see him in his chrysalis stage, having a joke at this whole idea of being a famous singer/songwriter. I guess it was fun in a juvenile way for its moment, but the reverential fog of mythology that’s built up around the man over the decades has turned this shtick into sanctimony.

“Actually, applause is kind of bullshit,” Dylan muses shortly before taking the stage for his spotlight. Who knew disdain could be a virtue.