Don't Look Back

In April-May 1965, filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker accompanied Bob Dylan to England to make a film about the singer/songwriter' seven-city, eight-show tour of the UK in of 1965. It was a fortuitous occasion as it documented the singer in the process of casting off his folk balladeer and “voice of a generation”  persona and emerging as an electric stage warrior as he would the following year.   

Although opening with the now famous "Subterranean Homesick Blues" cue-card sequence, Dont Look Back featuers only a fewstage performances, the emphasis being very much on the man himself, but it is also thankfully free of narration, talking heads, or any kind of supplement to what Pennebaker’s hand-held camera records.

Pennebaker shot over 20 hours of fly-on-the-wall footage of the strikingly self-possessed 23 year-old Dylan in hotel room, limos, and in confrontations with reporters and fans and edited it all into one of the classic rock documentaries and a must-see for Dylan fans, capturing as it does the man and an era with unvarnished accuracy.

 

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