The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival

2007

Documentary / Music

6
IMDb Rating 8.1/10 10 502 502

rock 'n' roll folk festival folk music folk singer

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Plot summary

An unvarnished chronicle of Bob Dylan's metamorphosis from folk to rock musician via appearances at the Newport Folk Festival between 1963 and 1965.

Director

Murray Lerner Photo
Murray Lerner

Top cast

Johnny Cash Photo
Johnny Cash as Self
Bob Dylan Photo
Bob Dylan as Self
Mike Bloomfield Photo
Mike Bloomfield as Self
Jerome Arnold Photo
Jerome Arnold as Self
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
765.27 MB
1280*960
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 23 min
Seeds 8
1.53 GB
1440*1080
English 5.1
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 23 min
Seeds 26

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Quinoa1984 9 / 10

as a documentary it's decent; as a companion piece to No Direction Home it's fantastic material

For any Bob Dylan fan this is a must. One gets to see his progression from the new darling of the folk scene (elevated to the point of ultimate pretension by the line "He has his finger on the pulse of a generation") to breaking out the electric guitar for Maggie's Farm in 1965. It definitely helps to know what the circumstances were with Dylan's presence at the Newport Folk Festival over those three years when watching the film; if you go into it expecting the director Murray Lerner to spoon-feed multitudes of facts then you're bound to be let down. Only Joan Baez has a scene with some comments on Bob Dylan at the festival - the rest is just concert footage, with some sporadic bits for the announcer and shots and sounds of the audience or Dylan in a car surrounded by fans.As for the songs themselves, they are what they are: it's Dylan in both his prime as a strong storyteller and folk singer and as a burgeoning rock star that got a lot of "pure" fans very angry. The argument can be made both ways with 1965: taken out of context the performance of Maggie's Farm is one of the most highly charged live rock songs ever recorded, taken in context it wasn't exactly the right time with such a picky crowd. It took guts on Dylan's end though, which is something that does come through consistently in the documentary. I mean this by what he sings about: his range is incredible when it comes to writing lyrics and relaying his stories and ideas, from Medgar Evers to his World War 3 Dream to Blowin' in the Wind, and then on to something traditional but powerful like Chimes of Freedom... leading all the way up to what many consider his masterpiece, Like a Rolling Stone. If nothing else, the performances are essential, even if the film overall works better alongside Scorsese's No Direction Home, which is, of course, the definitive Dylan doc.
Reviewed by Chris Knipp 10 / 10

Indispensable Bob Dylan

The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival (2007) is a compilation for TV from Murray Lerner's extensive filming at Newport in the early Sixties, It was a sidebar at the 2007 New York Film Festival and is being shown in some theaters; it's already available on DVD.The more you look back at the Bob Dylan of 1963, 1964, and 1965, the more clear it is that he was a wunderkind, a singer-songwriter at 23, 24, and 25 of genius proportions. The songs just poured out of him with breathtaking speed, and more often than not they were brilliant and powerful. You don't get to see that very often in a lifetime, or in an age. He also revealed ever-increasing authority as a performer capable of delivering his work better than anybody else, though others, including Joan Baez and Johnny Cash in these films, were going to pay homage by delivering their own versions.This seems to be Dylan time. Again and again recently there is an important new look at the man. No look is more concentrated and unadulterated than the one Lerner provides us with here. No narration or analysis gets in the way. It's just Dylan on stage.The final moment is a key one in modern American pop music history (one described and shown in Scorsese's terrific documentary from 2005, No Direction Home): the historic booed electric band performance. When Dylan sings "Maggie's Farm," he's transforming his protest songs about worker independence into a declaration of his own freedom from the folkie tradition:I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more./ No, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. /Well, I try my best To be just like I am, /But everybody wants you To be just like them. /They sing while you slave and I just get bored. /I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.He also performs with the electric rock band "Like a Rolling Stone," another declaration of being free-standing and independent, burning his bridges:How does it feel /How does it feel /To be on your own /With no direction home /Like a complete unknown /Like a rolling stone?They boo him but they applaud him too. Dylan was already a rock star --because the audience was beginning to treat him like one--when he was performing in skinny jeans and a plain short-sleeved shirt with hair combed to one side in 1963, as this film begins, with "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger standing admiring in the background. But this was just one step on the way. Dylan was into style, he liked leather, and he loved performing. It was essential that he would have a band, a rock band (this is before The Band, with Robbie Robertson, however). In 1965 after the booing that follows the electric band performance, they still want him back, and he comes out with an acoustic guitar and asks for anybody to throw up "E" harmonicas on the stage. He grabs one off the floor, fits it in the holder, and performs "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Baby Blue." This moment says that he hasn't forgotten the past. Though he speaks ironically in the car speeding away, fitting on the dark glasses, when he says of the hordes beating on the back "those are my friends," he nonetheless recognizes with that ironic remark the power the public has and the responsibility he is going to have to it.To see this film after recently watching Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is particularly cool, because all the big transitions and facets in it are jammed together in far more subtle and yet concentrated form here. Haynes' movie is like a training film, going through the motions slowly and emphatically so we can distinguish them and get them straight. Here in the three years of the Newport Festival all the Dylans are there but you have to watch closely. They're there. There are also Johnney and Joanie. And Joanie coming up to sing with Bobbie more than once. Bobbie and Joanie don't really sing together very well, though--they seem at odds with each other--it's an indication of their relationship, affectionate but uneasy., eventually to be a casualty of Dylan's mercurial stylistic evolutions.Joanie was in love with Bobbie and you can see why. He has the special sex appeal of intelligence, talent, and edge, and those beautiful deer eyes, those sharp features--the whole iconic face but in its freshest, most cherubic form. It's hard not to love it. I'm in love with him myself, as he was then. He was everything I ever wanted to be: creative, cool, lovable, ruthlessly independent, sexy, brilliant, and inapproachable but appealing. He had it all, and this film shows that.Indespensable.Seen at Cinema Village, NYC, December 18, 2007.
Reviewed by michaelingp 10 / 10

NOT Disappointing

I cannot believe that this film has only 82 votes and 3 comments! This is an amazing concert film. If you're frustrated with all the music movies where you only get to hear 30 seconds to a minute of each song, this is the film for you. There is no fancy camera work, no distracting lighting, no peripatetic moving the camera from place to place, like we'll be bored if we just see the singer singing the song. Much of the time you see Dylan's face in close up, as if you were sitting on stage. And every song he sings you hear from the opening to closing chords. It's a special treat to see the young Johnny Cash, but he's not the focus of this film, so we only see part of a song. Same for Joan Baez. Other than that, no other performers than Dylan.There are no interviews, no crowd closeups, no explanation of anything. The performances just speak for themselves in a way you probably haven't seen before, even if you've seen all the other Dylan films. You might even hear a song or two you haven't heard before, and you get not one but two complete performances of Mr. Tambourine Man. The change in Dylan's appearance, voice, and music in the course of just three years is amazing, and seeing it without commentary just seems "right" to me. You don't always need to hear someone explain what you can see for yourself.The sound and picture, while black and white, is amazingly high quality, even without considering the era from which it was all recorded.
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