Hard Light Cinema

Who is Bob Dylan really?

This was the question the media and the listening public found themselves asking every six months or so by 1965. He’s the boy bard, the kid who made Allen Ginsberg feel talentless when he first played him “Hard Rain.” Over the span of just three years, he’s been a Woody Guthrie-type, a wildly imaginative surrealist, and a bona fide rock star. If you asked two different people who he is, you’d get two different answers. If you asked Dylan himself, you’d get even more.

In the decades since this period, there have been a handful of attempts to make plain Dylan’s self-consciously fractured image, from his many-faced portrayal in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There to the recent big-budget biopic A Complete Unknown. While these films all have their strengths, perhaps the most resonant is the one that preceded them all.

Employing the then-emerging style of cinéma vérité, D.A. Pennebaker takes a back seat to the action, letting Dylan himself show you just who he is through performance, conversation, and his berating of journalists, friends, and fans alike. Part concert film, part travelogue, and part meditation on identity, celebrity, and ‘60s counterculture, Dont Look Back is a touchstone of the cinéma vérité canon that has something for Dylan acolytes, skeptics, and casuals alike.

This is the next installation in a series of Staff Picks from the Hard Light crew. This film was selected by Jay, who just thinks Bob is a really cool guy.