Tcm

[Chris Knipp]

BOB DYLAN (DON'T LOOK BACK)
Sorry - our posts overlap because you're putting up so many. "What makes no sense?" you ask. I mean your argument about why you reject Pennebaker and tried to make DON'T LOOK BACK an anonymous film (but you can't do that, and it's not fair) makes no sense. Why is making a documentary film for history a fault? I asked and you replied

It's a fault when it's only done for posterity, as Pennebaker seems.
He doesn't care about the Monterey Pop festival OR Bob Dylan- he's capitalizing on the moment.
He even names the film "DON'T LOOK BACK"- because you might not like what you see.
He's no Ken Burns. Michael Wadleigh and Scorsese are better. They're more genuine...

That is what makes no sense. And by the way, in my book being "no Ken Burns" is not a problem but a plus. Ken Burns is a bore. It's preposterous to suggest Pennebaker is less "genuine" when this is a pioneering work of vérité documentary filmmaking, of authenticity. That's what's so fascinating about it, it's so unvarnished and authentic - not the kind of canned voiceover narration and collection of stock film footage that Ken Burns produces.

I just looked up the Wikipedia article on DON'T LOOK BACK and it's good. About the title:

In the commentary track to the DVD release, Pennebaker said that the title came from the Satchel Paige quote, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you," and that Dylan shared this view.

In the opening of the article:

The film shows a young Dylan: confident if not arrogant, confrontational and contrary, but also charismatic and charming.

That states the mixture very nicely. I don't quite agree "if it weren't for his musical genius he could be written off as a punk." I think that's a simplification, a misreading of something more complex. He's too clever and witty to be written off as a punk, whether he is a genius or not, which in 1967 was not decided. The Nobel Prize was a long way away. I think you misread Donovan in the film. I don't think Donovan comes off very well. I didn't see much in the "anarchist" label, a red herring I'd say (and not mentioned in the Wikipeida article for the film).

BILLIE HOLIDAY[ (LADY SINGS THE BLUES)
On to our other subject, LADY SINGS THE BLUES...you posted:

I consulted Queen Pauline about Lady Sings the Blues:
"I LOVE IT. Factually it's a fraud, but emotionally it delivers."

Touché - you know how I admire Pauline. That's a very effective soundbite on your part and it's true, though again, Pauline's response, in her review, is more complicated than that. She did write on a piece of paper in the theater "I love it," and she stuck by that, but the bulk of her typically somewhat over-verbose New Yorker piece (which I've just reread) is what's wrong with this kind of movie about this kind of figure. Final words of her review:

"Lady Sings the Blues" is as good as one can expect from the genre--better, at times--and I enjoyed it hugely, yet I don't want Billie Holiday''s hard, melancholic sound buried under an avalanche of pop. When you get home, you have to retrieve her at the phonograph; you have to do restoration work on your own past.
-The New Yorker, Nov. 4, 1972.

Kael points out how the movie passes over a whole string of very important facts about her: that Holliday was very promiscuous, had many men in her life (the movie makes her virtually monogamous); that her life was much worse than this, much grimmer, that her lows were lower and more pathetic; her immense skill and ability to make it in a competitive market - evidenced by the fact that she had made 100 records by the time she was 25; the wry, ironic quality of songs as she delivered them; above all, the fact that she was a jazz singer, and the complexity of her interpretations and the backups with jazz greats in the best recordings.

I want to remind readers that last year's new documentary What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver 2018) is available via virtual theater on a host of locations, and worth watching.