Presentation Don't Look Back-Salem Maamri

7/30/2019 Presentation Don't Look Back-Salem Maamri

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Don t Look Back 1967

D. A. Pennebaker Documents & Documentary Modes in Literature, Films and Visual Culture

PD Dr. Christina Ljungberg

Salem Maamri


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Overview

1. Bob Dylan the rebel-singer or the mouthpiece of the 1960s

2.The Socio-Historical Background of DirectCinema

3. Direct Cinema in context

4. D. A. Pennebaker s Don t Look Back as a newform of Direct Cinema

5.Conclusion

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1. Bob Dylan the rebel-singer or the mouthpiece of the 1960

Dylan was born a Jew namedRobert Allen Zimmerman on May24, 1941, in Hibbing, Minnesota.

By adolescence he had rejectedhis heritage, formed several Rockand Roll bands and was seeking

an escape from the suffocatingconfirmity of his hometown.

(Heylin 20)

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In 1961, he moved to New Yorkto start a career as a folk singer,his life would be changedbeyond all recognition.

He was influenced by two mainmusical style: folk music andBlack music (Rock n Roll, Blues).

(Sounes 73)

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W

Woody Guthrie

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Sly and the Family Stone


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During the 1960s Dylan was considered as singer with a

message, a protest singer, a popular entertainer.Many of his songs such as Blowing in the Wind, The TimeThey Are A-Changin, Like a Rolling Stone, Forever Young, Knockin on Heaven s Door, and Tangled Up in Blue wereconsidered as the common language of the young of the late1960s.

He advocated the counterculture of the late 1960s that focusedmainly on the social alienation of the youth from mainstream

American life.

His music was also concerned with issues such as civil rights,civil liberties, and Vietnam war.

(Morgen 188)

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President Barack Obama awarded Bob Dylanthe Freedom Award, 29 May 2012


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2.The Socio-Historical Background of Direct Cinema

Direct Cinema emerged in the United States in the late 1950sand early 1960s.

Direct Cinema exemplified the ideological and aesthetic shifts inthe documentary form that occurred in the post World War twoera.

It represented a clear break with the documentary former role asa means of persuasion and propaganda of the earlier nonfictionfilms(especially after the WWII), such as those produced by JohnGrierson and the British documentary movement.

The appearance of Cinma Vrit (cinema truth )had a greatimpact on Direct cinema.

The direct cinema filmmakers were dependent on thetechnological innovation appeared on the 1960s.

Rothman (109-110)

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Portable handheld(lightweight)

16mm cameras (1960s)9


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3. Direct Cinema in context

[Filmmakers of Direct Cinema] attempt to keep authorialintervention to a minimum by adopting a more casual, observationalstyle that had as its premise the desire to follow action rather thandictate it, to see and record what happened to evolve in front of thecameras. (Bruzzi 74)

To record people speaking their own words in their own voices.

(Rothman 110)

we had a whole bunch of rules. We were shooting, no tripods, nolights, no question, never ask anybody to do anything. (Leacock :interview 1999)

Celebrities are the perfect subjects for direct cinema because they areused to being photographed and can therefore appear to ignore thepresence of the camera. (O Farrell par. 4)

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Cinma Vrit

Participatory mode

Filmmakers weremore concerned withthe politics of involvement

Overt politicalmessage

Direct Cinema

Observatory mode

Filmmakers wereprimary concernedwith the ethics of non-intervention

Covert politicalmessage

(Rothman 118-120)


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Robert Drew, 1960 Albert & Davis Maysles, 1964

Albert & Davis Maysles, 1965

With Love from Truman (1966). Dir. Albert & Davis Maysles

A.D. Pennebaker, 1967


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4. D. A. Pennebaker s Don t Look Back as a new form ofDirect Cinema

The film documents the 1965 DylanBritish Tour.

The film is an example of D.C:Pennebaker is observing Dylanwithout disrupting his normal

behaviour.

The film portrays Bob Dylan both inonstage and in backstage (

juxtaposit ion of Dylan s public andprivate life.

The film presents a celebrity that isconsidered as the spokesperson for the wider 1960s counterculture.

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Discussion Questions

1. How can You explain Dylan s different reactions in bothinterviews ?

2. Do You see any contradiction between Dylan s on-stageand offstage personae?

3. Do You consider Don t Look back as a pure DirectCinema documentary movie?

4. According to You what is the primary objective of Pennebaker to document Dylan s 1965 British Tour in a

documentary movie?

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The disagreement about Dylan s interviews

Argument 1:

The scene is, in fact, (merely) the most explicit and sustained exampleof a current motif that forms the dominant structural pattern of the film:a systematic critique of traditional news-gathering and reportingpractices. And it serves as least as much to reveal or reflect Dylan s own affectations and attitudes toward the popular press as itdoes to validate and celebrate Pennebaker s alternative documentary aesthetic. (Hall 226)

Argument 2

At certain times, Dylan seems to take delight in the interviews, and atother times he appears to be annoyed by interviewers, but bothreactions are evidently calculated. Dylan appears as a masterful roleplayer, an obfuscationist , indulging in word games and gambits,willing to spin stories which are clearly fabricated at the interviewer sexpense. ( Beattie 29)

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Pennebaker s movie is it really a direct cinema documentary?

Argument 1 :

let Dylan Do It Directly. This is the most convenient device for pennebaker, since the cinema verit filmmaker purports not to interview,argue, or editorialize, but simply to look and to listen, himself silent andinvisible. (Hall 229)

Argument 2

By privileging and , in effect, licensing Dylan s off-stage performances for the camera Don t Look Back complicates the direct cinema rhetoricof detached observationalism and the claim that the presence of acamera doesn t modify a subject s behaviour.

( Beattie 30)

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Argument 3

Don t Look Back demonstrates how this strategy(observation) canwork: the fact that Pennebaker follows a popular singer and mediapersonality allows him to adhere to the direct cinema rules, resistingdirect interviews on the basis that his observational watching has aninbuilt mise en abme structure: he watches and records other members of the media with his camera as they use their use their cameras and tape recorders to interview Dylan. (O Farrell par. 4)


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Contradiction between Dylan s on-stage and offstage persone

Because Dylan is kept constantly under the camera s surveillance,certain salient features of his personality emerge clearly a taut, in-

drawn quality even when he is among friends, his tension as heprepares for a performance, a pseudo-intellectual arrogance (as in hisinterview with a hapless Time reporter), and a subcutaneous hostilitytoward friend and fan alike. All this is in fascinating contradiction to hisonstage personality, in which he gives every appearance of trying

desperately to connect with his audience. (

I want to be with yeew!

hebeseeches in one of his songs.) (knight, cited in Hall 227)

In one particular interview, with the correspondent for Timemagazine(Horace Judson), Dylan launches a verbal attack on Judsonand steps out of the role of the interviewee by asking Judsonunanswerable questions. The scene is unsettling Dylan , the man of peace indulging in verbal aggression. (Beattie 29)


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5. Conclusion

Don t look Back is carefully edited and structured, combining anobservational approach with a strong personal perspective andeditorial line(O Farrell par. 4). The movie also suggests a movingaway from direct cinema s original journalistic impulse, towards what

Rothman(149) has described as a collaboration in which filmmaker and subject are co-conspirators.


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Bibliography

Primary Sources

Don t Look Back . Dir. D. A. Pennebaker. Docurama, USA 1967.

Secondary Sources

Beattie, Keith. Its not only Rock and Roll: Rocumentary, DirectCinema, and Performative display. Australasian Journal of American Studies Vol. 24, No. 2, 2005: 21-41.

Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: A Critical Introduction . London:

Routledg, 2000.Hall, Jeanne. Don t you ever just watch? : American Cinma Vritand Don t Look Back , in Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski(Eds), Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video . Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1998.


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Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: Behind The Shades: A Biography . NY:Summit Books, Cop. 1991.

Morgan, Edward P. The 60s Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

O Farrell, Tim. No Direction Home: Looking Forward from Don t Look Back. Senses of Cinema 38 (2006),(accessed October 20, 2012).

Rothman, William. Documentary Film Classics . Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997.

Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan . London:Doubleday, 2001.


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