By now, the last thing the world needs is more writing about Bob Dylan, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself. It’s all so interesting, and the recent deluxe repackaging of D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back film with its companion 65 Revisited provides more Dylan meat to chew on.

 

Seeing the two films back to back makes it clear how sui generis Don’t Look Back was. 65 Revisited is clearly a concert movie, and for footage of Dylan live, it’s a superior movie. But it is also a conventional movie, even if the footage came from the same miles of film that were first cut into Don’t Look Back. Watching Don’t Look Back, on the other hand, it’s tempting to speculate about the role the movie played in establishing the Dylan mystique.

 

It presents Dylan as a truly counterculture figure in that he seemed counter to everybody’s culture. He was at odds with the straights, the freaks, the old and the young. Everything seemed to amuse him, but what he’s grinning at is rarely clear. The film, like Dylan himself, doesn’t fit neatly into any genre. Music is integral to it, but it’s definitely not a concert film, and while it’s formally a documentary, little is revealed. The edited film suggests a narrative structure, but it’s really a period in Dylan’s life, shaped by Pennebaker’s editing with people and incidents gaining significance simply because his camera spent time on them.

 

Both discs feature commentary by Pennebaker and Bob Neuwirth, and it’s often interesting, but it’s not surprising that Pennebaker spends a lot of time talking about shlepping the camera around on his shoulder. The greater service done by the deluxe edition is put the famed “Subterranean Homesick Blues” film sequence in a whole new context. It’s hard to imagine who hasn’t seen the sequence of Dylan dropping the cue cards as the lyrics roll by as if shot from a Gattling gun.

 

This package shows two other versions, one in a park and one on a rooftop. In the park, Neuwirth and Allen Ginsberg are talking, and when Ginsberg gets hot, he takes off his jacket and sweater in such a busy way that it’s impossible to watch Dylan. Far funnier is Dylan on a cold, windy rooftop unable to feel his fingertips as he fumbles with the cards. It’s a near-complete fuck-up moment, and noteworthy as one of the few moments I can think of where Dylan was inept.