BY HANK REINEKE
In March of 2019 I took a drive to the Hudson River town
of Nyack, New York, for a rare public screening of Bob Dylan’s ill-fated
cinematic opus Renaldo & Clara. The film, originally released to art
houses in New York City and Los Angeles January of 1978, was mercilessly panned. The movie – shot during Dylan’s fabled autumn
1975 tour with his ragtag Rolling Thunder Revue – all but disappeared from
cinemas and, mostly, from public consciousness within the span of a few
weeks. The original cut of the film was,
let’s charitably say, a rambling affair, clocking in at just under four hours.
Dylan would tell his co-writer, the playwright Sam Shepard,
that he was looking to model his film after a pair of French classics: Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis
(Children of Paradise) (1945) and Francois
Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Or, as he would further expound in his
famous mumble, “Something like
that.†If that was Dylan’s original
vision for Renaldo & Clara, the
resulting film fell far short of its lofty ambitions. Four decades on, I can still recall reading Pauline
Kael’s withering review in the New Yorker,
describing Dylan as a “sour Messiah,†the film demonstrating “an absence of
artistic intelligence.†Even the street-hip Village
Voice famously devoted several pages of opinions on the opus from seven
different writer-critics, all of whom descended with sharpened knives.
There’s one aspect of the original production that’s
pretty remarkable. In the torrent of old
releases that would flood the market following the advent of home video, Dylan never
chose to green-light an official release of Renaldo
& Clara. The notes to this set suggest
one reason this might be so: the
original negative of the musical
portion of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour footage seems to have been lost. The dazzling tour footage offered here on
this new Criterion release - material mostly culled from vintage Renaldo & Clara footage in strikingly
gorgeous quality, all things considered – is the result of a pristine 4K
transfer from a surviving 16mm workprint.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The reason behind my traveling to Nyack in
2019 was two-fold. The screening of Renaldo & Clara that afternoon was
to be hosted by Rob Stoner, the bass player and bandleader of the Rolling
Thunder Revue, Bob Dylan’s backing ensemble in autumn 1975. I was hoping that since Stoner was a central
figure in Dylan’s inner circle (at one time), we might – at long last – experience
the film in better resolution. The only
copies of Renaldo and Clara that
circulated through “underground†channels amongst collectors had allegedly been
sourced from a couple of one-off European TV broadcasts. Since the videotapes of those broadcasts
varied wildly in picture and sound quality, the caliber of the bootleg sourced
was dependent upon what generation a copy had been mastered from.
So it was with some surprise and disappointment when I discovered
that Stoner’s personal copy was hardly better than any of the several rather ropey
dupes that found their way into my own collection over the years. What didn’t disappoint were the memories and asides
that Stoner would re-live and share as the near four-hour epic that is Renaldo & Clara unspooled, once
again, before our eyes.
The old saying suggests “truth is stranger than fiction.†I personally believe that truth is, more
often than not, actually far more interesting
than fiction as well. Which leads me
into this discussion of Martin Scorsese’s Rolling
Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, newly released as part of the white-glove
Criterion Collection series. There were
plenty of reasons to be excited by this release. Scorsese is an unabashed Bob Dylan fan. Anyone who saw “Life Lessons,†the director’s
segment of the 1989 anthology film New
York Stories, will recall Nick Nolte’s emotionally-wrought artist fiercely thrashing
away at his canvas as Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone†plays angrily on the
stereo in his studio loft. More
importantly, it was Scorsese that also gave us – via a PBS broadcast in 2005 -
the celebrated and highly recommended 207 minute long two-part documentary film
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home.
So when it was announced in 2018 that Scorsese would be
tackling a film recounting Dylan’s legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour for
Netflix, my expectations ran pretty high. But on the evening of the film’s streaming premiere, I switched off the
TV at the program’s conclusion with, at best, a sense of
half-satisfaction. The footage of
Dylan’s musical performances was stunning, an affirmation of the legendary
status long affixed to these shows. On
the other hand, I admit to being totally dismissive of the film’s faux
documentary aspects. As a huge admirer
of Dylan’s music and career, it only took a few minutes in to see that the
feature’s sub-title “A Bob Dylan Storyâ€
was a literal one. It was exactly that,
a story: an uneasy blending of factual items with fantasies and outright
deceptions.
The problem with the folks who involve themselves on Bob
Dylan’s various film projects is that they allow themselves to get personally sucked
into his personal orbit of playful disinformation and obfuscation. His film collaborators become, in effect, coconspirators. The reason that D.A. Pennebaker’s seminal
documentary of Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, Don’t Look Back (1967), will very likely remain the most honest
portrait of the artist is that this director didn’t allow himself to be
manipulated by the bard - to any great degree, at least. I’m not of the camp to pretend that the
Dylan we’re introduced to in Don’t Look
Back (magnetic, abrasive, playful, rude, gifted), is the “real†Bob
Dylan. Once Pennebaker’s cameras begin to
roll, Dylan may or may not have consciously play-acted before them. But at least audiences were allowed to decide
for themselves whether or not Dylan was the ultimate brat or a musical genius
or, perhaps, a confusing and peculiar mix of both.
Scorsese’s Rolling
Thunder Revue takes a much different path. We are deliberately misled throughout, introduced to actors and
actresses pretending to have participated with or have actual connections to
the original Rolling Thunder Revue. I
won’t go into any detail regarding these falsifications and trapdoors that are so
unnecessarily littered about the narrative sections of the film. If interested, readers can search out all of
these transparent trip-wires in great detail on various websites. I’m disappointed that Scorsese decided to go
this route, as the story behind the conception and actual history of the
Rolling Thunder Revue – and its many players – are far more interesting than anything
this purposefully contrived tale could ever offer.
Which brings us full circle back to that afternoon in
Nyack with Rob Stoner. Stoner was
actually there. He was on-stage, off-stage, on the bus, at
the rehearsals, in the midst of the glories of the madness. He had great memories of those days – most of
his recollections were good, some were tinged with a hint of bitterness, but
all were real. Sadly, many of the folks
on the road with Dylan in ’75 are no longer with us, unable to share their
stories. I’m thinking here of Sam Shepard,
Allen Ginsberg, drummer Howie Wyeth, guitarist Mick Ronson, singer-songwriter
David Blue, filmmaker/cameraman Howard Alk – even Rubin “Hurricane†Carter,â€
the accused murderer and subject of one of Dylan’s most famous “protestâ€
songs. These are figures who could no
longer contribute, but there are an equal number of Revue veterans who still can. Some are featured here, but seemingly
permitted to share memories that barely go beyond cameos: Joan Baez, Ramblin’
Jack Elliott and writer Larry Sloman come immediately to mind. It’s all very vexing… which was, very likely,
Dylan’s raison d’etre.
But, OK, enough of my petty, personal complaints. I don’t wish to throw the baby out with the
bathwater. On the bright side, Scorsese’s
Rolling Thunder Revue is chock full
of incredible curated on-stage performances culled from Howard Alk’s rolling cameras. Dylan fans will swoon from the raging concert
footage rescued and presented here in glorious quality. Though there are only a handful of 100% complete
performances captured, most of the in-concert footage is of extended
performances. If you weren’t fortunate
enough to attend one of the thirty-odd concerts that Dylan played between October
and December of 1975, this film will bring you as close to the experience as
one could possibly wish for some four decades on.
The set also generously provides us with twenty-four
chapter stops, so music fans can (more-or-less) fast-forward through some of the
completely pointless and fictional “Stefan van Dorp,†“Rep. Jack Tanner,†and
Sharon Stone nonsense to isolate several of the brilliant musical
performances. In the course of the 142-
minute film, we get to enjoy dynamic – often blistering - renditions of such
Dylan classics as “Isis,†“When I Paint My Masterpiece,†“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna
Fall,†“One More Cup of Coffee,†“Simple Twist of Fate,†“Just Like a Woman/Oh,
Sister,†“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,†“Hurricane,†and Knockin’ On
Heaven’s Door.†There are also all sorts
of musical snippets sprinkled through, both in performance, in rehearsal,
backstage and on the bus. Most feature
Dylan, of course, but there’s a bit of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell’s music to
savor as well, amongst others. I won’t
lie. It’s pretty aggravating when so
many of these intimate musical moments are cut short so the “story†can move
forward. The songs, I’d argue, are the story.
The Criterion set offers a 4K digital master with 5.1
surround DTS-HD Master Audio, and comes with a brilliantly constructed 56-page
booklet. The booklet features rare
photographs from the tour and an array an essays. There’s one by novelist Dana Spiotta, there
are excerpts from Sam Shepard’s diary-style Rolling
Thunder Logbook (first published 1977), there’s a collection of Allen
Ginsberg’s poems written while on the tour and first published in Rolling Stone, and even Anne Waldman’s
“long journal poem†written when she too rode the bus. The disc itself includes a dizzying array of
special features and commentaries. There
are interviews with Scorsese, the film’s editor David Tedeschi, and Larry
Sloman, as well as a trailer and restoration demonstrations. Dylan fans will most assuredly head straight
toward the bonus musical performance tracks included: “Tonight I’ll Be Staying
Here with You,†“Romance in Durango,†and “Tangled Up in Blue.†This Blu-ray is, unquestionably, an essential
collection for Dylan fans. It’s,
hopefully, not the last visual and audio record we’ll get of the Rolling
Thunder Revue. But it’s more of a start
than a last word.
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