TIFF Day 9 - /* the times they are a changin' */ - Don't Look Back - An American in London

D A Pennebaker's documentary on Bob Dylan's tour of London and area in the year of 1965 when he was the rising "folk singer" - a pigeonholing he reruted to the press - his acoustic career was ascending into the media spotlght on a scale of the madness of Beatlemania.


Shot in black and the camera captures it all on the grainy footage following Dylan everywhere from backstage of concert venues to his travelling limo or the hotel rooms to the front of stage itself. Playing solo on stage in front of a church hall or the Royal Albert Hall - it was a time for all mod cons. Marianne Faithful watching on as Dylan played at the piano, Joan Baez on the sofa with Dylan typing away on an old manual, the ever hovering Alan Grossman, his manager, trying to land a deal with the BBC - Alan Price, Donovan - and the ever presence young girls following Dylan, eyeing his hotel room from ground level - or chasing his car after concerts. The madness of a carrer and not that we knew it the beginning of the end of his relationship with Joan Baez who he did not bring on stage with him even though she was invited to accompany him. Plenty of cigarettes and alcohol in a room and the incident with a glass being thrown at a limo driver that seems to be escalating and fueling Dylan's anger.

Of course the beginning of the film is hallmarked by its homestyle flip card video of Subterranean Homesick Blues with Allen Ginsberg in the background lookingly bemusedly on at the shooting.

Don't Look Back belies its title - it is worth the look back