VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
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      • Saboteur
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      • Notorious
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      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
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EAT THE DOCUMENT
 The film of Bob Dylan's 1966 tour of Britain is not a remake of Don't Look Back, the brilliant and beautiful movie of the English 1965 tour. Just writing those words causes me to suspect you may be wondering about the value of analyzing a remarkably bad film from 1971-72. There actually is a point and we will get to it in short order. Meanwhile, your patience is appreciated.
    One thing must be admitted: The film features Dylan at his best looking and at one of the peaks of his artistic talent. This is the period of his three greatest recordings (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde) and his most artistically successful work. The concert tour took place shortly before Bobby wrecked his motorcycle, an event which laid him up for a spell and kept him off the stage, although not away from music. Somehow or other he got it in his head that it would be nice to edit the film himself, a statement of fact causing more than one person to wonder what horrors were contained in the outtakes. Because Dylan did have an astute awareness of the power of film--having grown up on Elvis movies and having been a grown-up at the time of A Hard Day's Night--he knew just enough, as they say, to be dangerous. The film takes about ten minutes to move beyond scenes from a van of the English countryside, scenes which probably meant a lot to the farmers and shepherds but not to anyone else. This is quite simply one of the sloppiest, most literally unfocused films ever involving a major star.
    And yet. . . 
    We get to see and hear four-fifths of the group that would soon become The Band. We get to see and hear Dylan sing a proud and intimate duet with Johnny Cash. We get to endure a tedious yet occasionally interesting car ride with Dylan and John Lennon, both of whom appear to be smashed, although John clearly handles the condition better. But most importantly we get to lay back shaking in awe of two live versions of "Ballad of a Thin Man," the second of which is so vituperative you'd swear the singer had swallowed a bayonet. For the duration of that performance, it is possible to forgive Bob Dylan anything, including the remainder of the movie, which has a running time of 54 minutes but which is nevertheless otherwise interminable. 
    Some genius at ABC-TV had encouraged the film's production, thinking the network might turn a handy dollar or two on the free-spending youth market. I am certainly not the first person to wonder if the entire cinematic enterprise were intended to be so bad that ABC would reject it--as they in fact did. The best arguments against that theory are (a) Dylan did choose to release the bugger, and (b) artists are driven more by ego than by any other thing. It's entirely possible Bob thought this film was a major statement. After all, he did write the book Tarantula. 
    Some of the lessons of the 1960s spoke to the dangers of over-indulgence, in one sense meaning that the human form is not invincible, as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Keith Moon, among others, can attest. In another sense, though, an over-abundance of self-indulgence can be nearly as lethal as a speed ball overdose. This film and its many cousins of that period are visual records of just how deadly dull ego-centrism can be when it's given no guidance whatsoever, unless chemicals count.
    A lot of people called the 1966 concerts "The Judas tour," referring to an audience member who shouted that epithet at the stage. Dylan shouts back, "Aw, it's not that bad." Except for the aforementioned song, it actually is. 
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links