27/12/2025
As we started out this year examining the Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, it seems somehow fitting to end this year in the wake of 2025 with Izzy Young’s review of another Dylan-story-based film from sometime before, Don’t Look Back, 1967. Izzy does not hold back in this banger of a reflection upon his impressions of the film.
Agree or disagree with his words of that time, this writing is really something to unapologetically, enjoyingly absorb. From Izzy's fringe-sarcasm, with his inclusion of the ‘roaring reviews’ at the top, through his serious considerations of the implications of what this film meant for Dylan’s erupting legacy,… this article/review, as Izzy would say, is certainly “the proof without the pudding.”
Enjoy, and Happy Holidays from the Folklore Centrum!
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DON'T LOOK BACK.
Folklore Center - Fretted Instruments Newsletter, Monday, Sept. 11, 1967
1 kr
An absorbing film! A special, hip fun!" - New York Times
"Endlessly fascinating! - Newsweek € An essay in cinematic truth telling!"- Time Magazine
Pulls no punches! - The Christian Science Monitor
I've seen so many reviews of the Dylan movie that was released in NYC last week and I didn't care for any of them, so I'll add my notes taken when I saw it in San Francisco in July as my contribution.
"....we went to see D. A. Pennybaker's film on Dylan based on his trip to England in 1965. A sad event. Dylan surrounded by machinations, appearing whenever he is told to, and resenting it. He is abusive to interviewers. Why? He didn't have to agree to it. IF he didn't like England, why go there? He has enough money to stay away from anywhere. Not once is he shown close to the audience as he insincerely sings the songs he made his reputation on in America and had freshly repudiated. Neither is there a rock band that he found so necessary at Newport to communicate his new ideas. Joan Baez comes across like an idiot reduced to making faces for photo people as her main contribution to the film. If you don't like the form of what you are doing don't do it. Don't pick on the dorrman of a hotel. Don't pick on a TV functionary. Pick on an equal. A rockefeller. If you don't respect TV don't do TV shows. If you dislike large hotels and their beaten down unctious staffs don't inhabit them. The communication was on the 'wow, there's where it's at' level. Never more. Never less for that's not possible. Only one good scene. Money. BBC buying Dylan as they might buy Lassie for he just went from 45 to 6 on the charts, ho ho, while Al Grossman, manager, looks on with non-care until the moment of financial triumph. Grossman is always near Dylan at showtime but never speaks to him. He merely indicates to Dylan that it is time to release himself to the audience. More interviews in which he spits back at inferiors. He doesn't like Time, Newsweek. He doesn't read them for the truth. Dylan would rather see a photo of a tramp vomiting next to a picture of a Rockefeller eating. A true statement he doesn't live up to in the film. The film could have been made in Dar Es Salaam for all the contact with the English people shown. These are spoiled capitalistic products enjoying themselves nervously, and at the expense of others. In all of England Dylan finds only one thing to get really angry about, a broken glass thrown out of a window. Joan Baez appears and reappears but never on the stage with Dylan as was originally envisaged. Dylan is bigger now than Baez so who needs her on his stage, just because she squired him on her stages for two years. Sad for Baez, but musically meaningful. She kisses him once on the back of his head to prove that she's close to him while he types something. The camera tries to capture the suggested immortality of the moment by trying to focus as clearly as possible on the words. Quite possible, just the majesty of human thought transferred to paper via clicking typewriter keys. There is one fine moment, though, when he gives an autograph to a girl in a record store and asks her to think for herself, the only warm moment in the film. He should dump the management around him and the prison of his friendships shown in the film." end of notes. Now some more comment. Derroll Adams has a role in the film as a seated stumble bum. He should have at least been given a line to recite. I missed what Donovan had to say as I didn't see the film again. I notice that the film is being released as slowly as possible around the country, as if it were a new soap, to see if the 'put-on' will be accepted by the general American audience that now calls itself 'hip'. I am convinced that the owners of the film are not so sure now that they made the film in the right way. But they're willing to take enough risk to present the film rather than bury it. I hear from friends that the film is a masterpiece in spite of itself, a coup de cinema verité exposing the producers for what they are, and at the same time preserving the genius process, for the first time, so that future professionals will be able to tell what was going on. You know the argument. Just think if we could have done the same for Rembrandt or Bach. Now, if you want to see a good movie underlined by hand-held-camera work, and lousy film technique and terrible sound track - go to see Barbara Rubin's film on Allen Ginsberg's London journey of about the same time where he is caught reading poetry at Albert Hall. You can feel his oneness with the sudience as he enfolds them with a pan-sexual embrace, full of mystery and open love, so unlike Dylan in the same hall, alone and blinded by lights. And there is a wonderful non-rude touch as Allen writes in his journal while sitting on the grave of William Blake. I think that Bob Dylan made a serious mistake in allowing this film to be released. I'd feel worse if he has no control over its destiny.
Signed Israel G. Young
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