He used extensive and sometime unseen footage from D.A. Pennebaker's 1966 film, Don't Look Back which I had seen back when it first came out. I was eighteen when that film came out, and a participant in the psychedelic counterculture. When I saw that film, I was turned off (as we said back then) by Dylan's sarcastic style. Seeing it again as part of Scorsese's film, it became completely understandable.
The part of the film my mother saw (the last hour and a half or so) focused more on the "present" of the English tour and was significantly more discordantl than the first two hours.
Those hours were spent as a series of flashbacks from the "present" of the 1966 tour — which told the story of the young Robert Zimmerman from Minnesota's transformation into the superstar Bob Dylan. In the process, the turbulent and transformational events gave the beat and folksy episodes a positive vibe of hope. Dylan and his fellow folkies were significant players in the civil rights movement which hsbr America for a while, a dream of better days.
The music and scenes were sweet and interspersed with portions of interviews with Dylan and with others important to the story including beat poet Alan Ginsberg as well as folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Biaz. The musical selections were each perfect and emphasized both the enormous volume of significant works Dylan produces as well as his poetic eloquence.
The second segment ended with sudden catastrophes. Kennedy is killed. Dylan has a bad motorcycles accident and stops touring for eight years. The film ends there making you want things to somehow return to those earlier harmonies and youthful innocence that went before the fall.
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Article comments
1 - Amy
Martin Scorsese did a documentary about Tha Band's last performance (tour?) called "The Last Waltz" which is quite wonderful. Definitely worth finding particularly if you enjoyed the Dylan documentary the last two nights.
2 - Bruce Eisner
Thanks for the suggestion Amy, I have now added that to the list of links for this post. Look forward to watching it.
3 - Loyd
Of course Scorcese was involved in filming the Woodstock concert too. He does some excellent camera work. He also had a series on PBS called "The Blues", which took a look at the origins and development of American blues, from the Delta, through Chicago and up to current day blues musicians.