Film Forum

(1967) Bob Dylan, on tour in England in 1965, takes time out in hotel rooms to casually compose at a piano; keeps on typing as Joan Baez sings and plays beyond his right shoulder; subtly disses acolyte Donovan; argues with a buttoned-down Time correspondent — among the endless stream of reporters trailing in his wake — over “truth” and “facts”; mercilessly puts on a clean-cut science student/college journalist; and more than meets his match in a so-veddy-proper “high sheriff’s lady.” Other highlights include Alan Price’s deer-in-the-headlights look into the camera at a casual mention of his separation from The Animals; crass manager Albert Grossman’s profanity-laced heave-hoof of pushy hotel staffers; and — most iconic of all — a blasé Dylan flashing lyric-emblazoned cue cards for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” to the camera, with Allen Ginsberg lurking in the background: one of the most imitated, homaged and anthologized sequences in all of rock doc history. And then there’s the concerts, topped by two triumphant nights at the Royal Albert Hall, with songs including “All I Really Want to Do”, “The Times They Are a Changin’”, and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” DCP. Approx. 95 min.

Reviews

“It’s hard to say which is more riveting: scenes of Bob Dylan performing such classics as ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,’ or scenes in which Dylan unleashes his acid tongue on hapless reporters who just want a few good quotes.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out

“Like a very good Dylan album — let’s say Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited or The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan ... Pennebaker lets him have his mysteries, which is both right and generous; robbing a poet of mystery is like pulling the wings off a butterfly.”
– Matt Zoller Seitz

“Evokes the 60s like few other documents; Dylan’s relentless heaping of scorn on the mainstream press, before the coercive tentacles of ‘creative management’ made such things virtually impossible, is especially telling... Memorable for its goofy, syncopated opening sequence alone.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum

“My first serious film... I felt in the end that I hadn’t had to compromise anything, that it was as rough and raw and mean as it had to be.”
– Pennebaker