Don't Look Back (1967)
Leacock-Pennebaker

Description

When acclaimed documentary filmmaker D A Pennebaker (Monterey Pop, The War Room) filmed Bob Dylan during a three week concert tour of England in the Spring of 1965, he had no idea he was about to create one of the most intimate glimpses of the rock legend.

Tags

1960s, Rock

Collected reviews and ratings

10 San Francisco Chronicle | Craig Marine

"Don't Look Back," which follows a young Bob Dylan on his 1965 tour of England, is easily one of the best documentaries on any subject ever made. It is also one of the most cinematically influential.
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10 allmovie | Scott Engel

Don't Look Back is an uncompromising look at an artist dealing with the burdens of fame while trying to grow, and is required viewing for all music fans.
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9.2 The Onion A.V. Club | Nathan Rabin

The film's only real weakness is its surprising lack of music: Only a handful of Dylan songs are heard in the film, and none of them are heard in their entirety. But it hardly matters, since everything else here is so strong. Don't Look Back is a spellbinding portrayal of a gifted artist at the peak of his creative brilliance.
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9.2 digitallyobsessed.com | Jesse Shanks

For the student of film history, this is the beginning of American cinéma vérité and although it lead to so many poor imitators, this film set a standard of heightened realism that few films have ever matched.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

Shot during Dylan's 1965 British concert tour, Don't Look Back employs an edgy vérité style that was, and is, a snug fit with the artist's own consciously rough-hewn persona. Its handheld black-and-white images and often-gritty London backdrops suggest cinematic extensions of the archetypal monochrome portraits that graced Dylan's career-making early-'60s album jackets.
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9.0 New York Times | Donal J. Henahan

It is an absorbing film. Whether one is a member of the under-thirty set that regards Mr. Dylan as a spokesman, or one of the vanishing Americans over that age, this look into the life of a folk hero is likely to be both entertaining and occasionally disturbing.
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9.0 DVD Talk | Jamie S. Rich

The cramped shots taken from within the entourage, tracking Dylan from press conferences to backstage waiting rooms and through taxi rides up to the hotel, bring the viewer incredibly close to the subject. Pennebaker isn't just a fly on the wall, he's landed in the ointment, and he captures the bare reality of touring life.
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8.0 documentaryfilms.net | Mark Nichols

It is almost painful to watch Dylan revealed as an immature, ego-inflated, even cruel individual, who seems wholly consumed with appearing to be clever and incomprehensible at the same time. "I know more about what you do just by looking at you than you'll ever be able to know about me," Dylan tells a Time Magazine reporter in one especially unflattering scene.
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8.0 Eye For Film | Chris

For non-music fans and people not specifically interested in the period, the film has slightly less to offer. Poor definition on many hand-held shots means a lack of visual elegance. The lack of any voiceover means the viewer has to work out many details themselves. And, while it is a remarkable and very vibrant portrait of an esteemed artist at one of the most famous and influential periods of his career, there are maybe too few songs for fans.
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7.5 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

What a jerk Bob Dylan was in 1965. What an immature, self-important, inflated, cruel, shallow little creature, lacking in empathy and contemptuous of anyone who was not himself or his lackey. Did we actually once take this twirp as our folk god?
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