Set The Video: Don't Look Back, More4, Tuesday 31 July, 10pm
Friday, March 28th, 2008That many people’s favourite music documentary is a fake one - the admittedly brilliant This Is Spinal Tap - is probably evidence of the fact they can be pretty rubbish. Nowadays, HMV is full of tour DVDs, but they are generally dull, self-congratulatory fare. But this Tuesday, More4 is showing one of the greatest music documentaries ever committed to film. Along with Let It Be, which painfully charts the darkest latter days of The Beatles, Don’t Look Back is one the best ways of experiencing the workings of genius first hand, with no interfering narration.
The film, by D.A. Pennebaker, follows Bob Dylan at (arguably) his coolest, during a tour of the UK in 1965. He’s shown to be hugely charismatic, but also very shrewd, and much cleverer than most of the people around him - especially interviewers whom he generally rips to pieces. Watch out for Donovan worshipping the ground Dylan walks on, and, of course, that famous and much parodied Subterranean Homesick Blues sequence.
Set The Video: Don’t Look Back, More4, Tuesday 31 July, 10pm