With this superb album Dylan found his way to a larger, more free and open space, away from the distorting restrictions of the dictating folk/political milieu that he was never really at home in.
He is more free here to be himself as an artist.
Dylan's first four albums (which all have something special to offer) seem very different from each other, but there is a strong double thread running through them all that leads directly to Brining It All Back Home: the continuing development of his unique speech-singing vocal style and the development of his unique poem-song art form. On the first album with his version of House Of The Risin' Sun he made it clear that he intended to create a new kind of vocal; and on the second album with A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall he showed that he was a poet/musician/performer above all else. These things remain consistently focused through the following albums in songs such as With God On Our Side and Chimes Of Freedom, to name only the greatest, and they reach a new plateau with Bringing It All Back Home: MR. TAMBOURINE MAN, his glorious ode to the liberating
(or at least intoxicating) power of art. GATES OF EDEN, the perfection of the metaphysical 'pop' song. IT'S ALRIGHT, MA, his poetic proclamation of freedom, even from life itself if necessary. IT'S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE, an always haunting gem of lyrical farewell to the past. SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES, the first and best of the 'underground' rock songs. SHE BELONGS TO ME, a visionary glimpse of anima/muse/wife, small scale, but one of the most perfect examples of his speech-singing delivery of a poem/song. MAGGIE'S FARM, no place for a boy like Bob. LOVE MINUS ZERO/NO LIMIT, more beautiful visions of the mysterious woman who keeps him free from small-minded restrictions. OUTLAW BLUES, don't ask that man in the dark sunglasses carryin' his black tooth nothin' about nothin', just let him sing. ON THE ROAD AGAIN, to wake up and find out yourself still on Maggie's Farm!
BOB DYLAN'S 115TH DREAM, Bob Dylan discovers (THE REAL) America.
If you want real art born in and relevant to the modern world, but not limited to it, then you have it here. If you are a younger (or older) listener and you are daunted by Dylan's more difficult lyrics, please don't give up on them, they will greatly reward persistent effort. I have been deeply familiar with them for over 35 years and would be happy to discuss them with anyone. I assure you they are not 'impenetrable', 'absurd', or 'meaningless'. Feel free to e-mail me.

There is not a single other live rock recording that can stand beside these discs. And it must be understood that this was not a one-night miracle, or a one-tour miracle, this was Bob Dylan in the mid 60's.
I attended one of the concerts in the American part of this 1966 tour. Even though it was 36 years ago, listening to these discs made me aware of how rawly and intensely this experience had remained in my nervous system and how deeply it had reached into my mind and soul. I was only a 15 year old musician, but I already knew by heart all of the songs on all of the albums without exception, from the debut Bob Dylan to Highway 61 Revisited. For me Dylan was in a heroic category by himself, separate from all other 'pop artists' and I was so excited about the upcoming concert that I was constantly in trouble at school for being "in another world" as one teacher put it. I was already in awe of all the Dylan recordings both in terms of composition and performance, but I was not prepared for Dylan live at the peak of his ability. The overpowering performance was so astonishing, so mind-blowing, that it was difficult to concentrate clearly on what I was actually hearing. Something very difficult for people who never actually saw Dylan at this time to really grasp is that Dylan was more than just a songwriter/performer like others, and I don't simply mean that he a was better than the others, which he was, but that Dylan as a performer was a phenomenal spetacle. This man was like something that stepped out of my own deepest imagination and more. My mind was altered simply by seeing him perform. I was not prepared, especially being only 15 years old, for the power of his presence. It was difficult for me to stay clearly concentrated on the details of the music I was hearing, but I struggled against the intoxicating atmosphere to do so. The sound system was good and there was no difficulty in hearing Dylan's voice and all the instruments during the electric set. And another interesting fact about this particular concert was that there was almost no dissention or protest from 'folk purists'. I heard only one disparaging comment the entire evening. But there was was the added challenge of hearing new, unfamiliar songs that would be on the not yet released Blonde On Blonde. Imagine trying to comprehend and retain a first hearing (live) of Visions Of Johanna. But I struggled mightily to listen and retain. The song list was very close to the one on these discs, but Dylan never performs a song the same way. He is always experimenting within the song's form. I remember fresh, wondrous, penetrating versions of Ballad Of A Thin Man and Desolation Row which I knew by heart and was amazed at how subtily and nimbly he moved around in them and further revealed their depths. The playing of the band was amazingly sensitive and strong and really inspiring for a young musician. And Dylan's voice was unbelievable. Please permit me to say that I am so sick of the fact that after all these years the question of Dylan's vocal ability still exists.When will it be ackowledged and established as a fact that Dylan created a new kind of vocal and a new kind of song from the depths of his artistic being and he single-handedly established its validity. It is not his fault if people don't recognize this or if no one else has had the ability to follow him into this still new musical domain. Even he sometimes lost track of it after John Wesley Harding. But it doesn't matter because we have his best work recorded and a central part of that is this double disc recording. Anyone who has not heard this recording and the three electic albums from the 60's does not know the frontiers that rock music has penetrated. Thanks forever, Bob Dylan.

When I was almost 15 years old, in late 1965, I heard new song on the car radio. I didn't know what it was, or who it was, and I had never heard anything like it. I was riding in a car with a friend whose mother was driving. (Earlier that year this friend and I had seen The Rolling Stones at the city auditorium for the staggering price of $3.50 a ticket and we were committed lovers of the new rock and roll. I had a little single pick-up, solid body Epiphone that would take my poor mother forever to pay off and I had learned the Keith Richard licks and played them until my little amp overheated. It was passionate love.)My friend's mother didn't like this music, but she tried to be understanding and let us listen to it on the car radio if it wasn't too loud. But this new song that was playing on the radio that day, the unusual blending of the instruments, the distinctive organ, and especially the voice and the words... I was so confused and thrilled... I overcame my natural shyness and embarrassment and said, "Mrs. Richardson, could you please turn up the radio?" She turned it up a little with an uneasy look on her face. What I heard... "Ahhhhhh, how does it feel?"... pierced into me so deeply and in such a new way that I honestly felt dizzy. I forgot where I was and said, "Gregg, who the f---- is that?" Mrs. Richardson scolded me and I didn't hear a word she said. I spent days in record stores trying to figure it out. I finally called a radio station and tried to describe what I heard and the DJ told me, Like A Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan! I went back to the record store and found his albums. I looked at them for hours, looking at the photos, reading the backs. They cost $2.50 each which was more than I ever had on me. I would go back to the store every day and look at the album covers. Finally, I told my mom that I would do anything if she would give me the money. (It took me all day to clean out the garage.) I bought the album, Highway 61 Revisited, and my life was turned upside down and inside out. I spent after after hour listening and learning the songs. I learned to play all the songs, I memorised all the lyrics. I couldn't think in school, I couldn't think about anything but this album. No one had to tell me why or how it was great. I saw immediately that he had created a new kind of vocal, new kind of song that gave voice to things that had always burned silently inside me. For me it was like a ...miracle. Bob Dylan first taught me about art and its real value. About six months later I saw Dylan in concert and he played some of the new songs that would be on Blonde On Blonde. I loved these new songs, but the songs on Highway 61 Revisted would always be special for me. And looking back after all these years, it is still my favorite Dylan album.

I am sure that what is frequently described as coldness and austerity in Bresson's work is merely the extraordinary precision of his compositions combined with his refusal to play the childish make-believe games of conventional cinema. There is certainly a genuinely austere aspect to Bresson's style, but it has nothing to do with morals or a lack of sensual sensitivity. This masterpiece, Pickpocket, which Louis Malle correctly described as history-making, is actually almost frightening in its sensuality. If this film is watched carefully it is almost embarrassing in how intimately the camera brings the viewer into contact with the bodies of strangers. And precisely what is disconcerting about it is that this contact is completely lacking in feeling, sensitivity, or respect. The embarrassment that the viewer feels is that which the pickpocket, Michel, should feel, but doesn't. And it reveals why Bresson has always steered clear of eroticism and pornography in his work: because what gives sensuality its deeper meaning and value is the mysterious spiritual connecting quality that is possessed by Jeanne, the young woman who cares for Michel's invalid mother and whom Michel, in his blindness, calls "very naive". The absence of this quality in sensuality gives a false sense of power and security and it reduces sensuality to being merely a form of invasion and theft, just as if one were a pickpocket! Michel, "in his weakness," goes to the bottom of this illusion and finds himself in real jail. Then he understands that what he was really seeking, in his darkness which he mistook for light, in his countless, highly-skilled violations of other people, was freely offered to him by Jeanne. But what is really amazing here is that Bresson gives this story of redemption not in a novel or a play, nor in a filmed imitation of these things, but in a precise sequence of sound accented images that define true cinematic art and reveal again why Bresson is The Master.

This is certainly one of the great events of cinema history. Director Peter Brook wanted to re-create the play by Peter Weiss, The Persecution And Assassination Of Jean-Paul Marat, with the multiple-view possible only in cinema but without losing the immediacy of the stage. So, he used a stationary camera for long shots and hand-held camera for close-ups and the result, somewhere bewteen cinema and stage, is phenomenal. Everything in the production is first-rate. There are large exquisite performances by Patrick Magee as Sade, Ian Richardson as Marat, and Glenda Jackson as Corday and equally fine smaller performances down to the most anonymous lunatic. The script is very fine and well translated from the German. The music is wonderful.
This film was released in 1966, one year after Grove Press issued its handsome 750 page paperback volume The Marquis De Sade (...) which, along with this film, really began the popular American interest in Sade which has continued up to the present. But the picture of Sade in this 1966 film is much more interesting, deeper, and closer to the truth than anything that has come since then. Sade was not a pornographer or a smut peddler, he was a literary philosopher whose books were not intended to arouse sexual desire, but rather to overthrow conventional premises and assumptions about reality itself. The endless sadistic/masochistic sex scenes in his books are really not about sex at all, they are about breaking down the illusions in the human mind and seeing reality for what it is: an endless, bottomles process of creation and destruction that is utterly indifferent to any human desire or feeling. Sade's 'perverse criminals' are merely people attempting to identify with this transcendent force as individuals because that is the only real power and 'dignity' that they have. Sade believed that the world was destined to become one vast mad slaughterhouse and the film conveys this very well. But what Marat/Sade really captures is Sade's passionate and prophetic position in modern history. Who could deny that this film is at least as relevant now as it was in 1966 and that its relevance will probably continue to deepen? Where is the modern philosopher who can prove Sade wrong? Whether one likes it or not this is what makes this film still such an urgent work of art. Only in Bresson or Tarkovsky can the negative force of its revelation be countered by a different perspective. It remains a crucial masterpiece. Highly recommended.

Once again Chaney proves that he was the King of silent cinema and more. A very interesting fact about this film is that its quality is almost entirely the result of the consistent refusal of Lon Chaney (the Phantom)to cooperate with the director, Rupert Julian. Chaney felt that Rupert was an ignorant hack and feared that he would ruin the film if left on his own. At a certain point in the filming Chaney refused to even speak any further with Julian. The undeniable power of this film, in spite of certain structural and acting weaknesses, comes from Chaney's insistence on doing his part and some entire scenes according to his own vision of what the film should be. Note also the extreme contrast between the superior acting of Chaney whose every gesture of face and body are truly thrilling with the very poor acting of Mary Philbin (Christine) who is often simply laughable. It is important for viewers who are not familiar with silent acting to know that it is not all the same. Philbin's inferior performance has been recognized as such since the release of the film and Chaney saw it from the beginning. Contrast this with how well Chaney's great performance in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame is balanced by the performance of Ruth Patsy Miller as Esmerelda. Chaney worked very closely with Miller in that film and the difference is immense. Chaney was not an egotist, unlike many stars then and now, and he cared deeply about the quality of the entire film. I can only imagine what films we would have if Chaney had been allowed to direct his films. Also Chaney was not simply a 'horror actor', he was a complete and consumate dramatic artist. It is very unfortunate that what was probably his greatest filmed performance in the silent non-horror drama, He Who Gets Slapped, is not available in any format. In fact, Chaney did several great performances that are not available. I believe that that Chaney was the greatest of all American screen actors and his complete work should be made available to interested viewers. I hope for the best. Long live the man of a thousand faces!

This beautiful film, one of Bunuel's personal favorites of the many films he made, is shot in a soft, but clear, b&w that has an almost organic feel to it and is so very easy on the eyes that as the fascinating story flows along one can lose track of the consistent beauty of its detailed composition. Of particular note is a brief shot in which a solitary child is approaching along the dirt street of a village that has been ravaged by plague. A ghostly white sheet suddenly obscures the view and all at once the deathly atmosphere is fully created. Very powerful.
This film, not seen in America nearly as much as many other later Bunuel works, is so much more than a mere sardonic satire. It is Bunuel's most severely penetrating and compassionate look at religion. It follows the story of the indigent village priest, Father Nazario, who is prepared to completely sacrifice himself in order to show the villagers the radically giving, humble, selfless way of life that he believes is the true Christian calling. But he discovers that most of the peasants are incapable of understanding him and the Church itself is appalled by this true Christian. Bunuel leads Father Nazario through some very deep shadow and finally lands him in jail for the crime of taking Christian teaching too seriously. Never once does Bunuel mock or scorn Father Nazario. The sharply humorous and satirical blades fly everywhere in this film, but none of them ever strike the priest. Instead Bunuel leads the priest to an encounter with ruffian criminals in which the priest sees that in fact there may be no God watching over him. It is a harrowing moment of revelation very sensitively unfolded by Bunuel. After this Father Nazario is no longer certain of what he believes, but he discovers in the last frames of the film that in spite of his mental and emotional confusion he can not turn his back on compassion. Bunuel rejects the priest's religion, but embraces him in a compassionate human solidarity. Very moving. Highly recommended. Certainly one of the greatest films ever made. Bunuel was more than his legend.

To begin with, I openly admit that this film about the Nazi destruction of Byelorussian villages brought tears to my eyes. It is a very powerful film utilizing a variety of film techniques to forcefully make its point that Nazism was a mass psychosis that led to many examples of profound horror and cruelty. But, without denying for a moment the reality of what this film portrays, I could not keep from thinking about certain ironies that hover around this film. One being that even though the number of various groups of Russians that the Nazi military killed was enormous, the number killed by the Stalin government itself was even larger. I do not point this out to diminish the horror portrayed in this film, but rather to point to the fact that this type of madness was much more widespread than what is
shown in this film. When you add fascist Italy, the nightmare of the south Pacific, the dropping atomic bombs on Japan, then the depth and reach of this madness becomes almost incomprehensible.
But perhaps it is the more narrow focus of this film which allows one to absorb and process the horror at all. The larger picture is perhaps too much. But then the larger picture is also more real. The essential point seems to be that it is much easier to find examples of mass corruption than it is examples of mass goodness. And a last very interesting irony about this fine Soviet era film is that its unusual coloring, including the prismatic effects of the light surrounding objects, and the unusual mobility of the camera are things that do not originate with this film. Watch Sergei Parajanov's great Ukrainian film Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors to see their point of origin. The irony here is that Parajanov was imprisoned for five years by the Soviet authorities for making films that encouraged the independent cultures of Ukrainians and Georgians and Armenians. It is indeed a dark and hellish world.

It is a measure of the greatness of this film that it is still so deeply moving in spite of the atrocious quality of this recording. Surely it is worth the cost of making a good print.
As it is, it's a disgrace.
The superior quality of this film is mostly the result of the team of Lon Chaney Sr.(Quasimodo) and the director, Wallace Worsley. There is nothing significantly dated about this film.
Its power as truly cinematic (image-based) art is still far beyond most films and nothing in the budget-obsessed Hollywood of today can touch it. Lon Chaney's incredible performance, without the aid of sound(voice)and so well captured by Worsley, is the molten core that radiates its heat and energy to everything else in the film. For me Chaney's Quasimodo is a deeper, more compelling and more truly cinematic creation than that of Charles Laughton. Chaney's Quasimodo is not just pathetic, he is truly frightening, vastly more so than Laughton's, and yet he is utterly heartbreaking. This is one of the few examples of genius captured on celluloid and it should be protected for coming generations. America needs to learn to take care of its precious little real art. This film gets 5 stars, but this recording deserves no more than 2. Nonetheless, I must still highly recommend it. I hope there is someone who cares who has the means to save this great film

Though this is admittedly a small scale, low-budget work, this exceptionally beautiful film is one of my favorites because there are few films, of whatever scope, that succeed in creating real depth almost purely by the evocative power of their images
and Les Yeux sans Visage (Eye Without A Face) does this.
Edith Scob's Christiane is one of the most truly dream-like, forlornly resonating, hauntingly poetic images in the history of cinema. In this it is comparable to Lon Chaney Sr.'s Quazimodo and John Hurt's Elephant Man. There is a purity in her image that penetrates deeply into the viewer and summons up strong emotions.
The plot of this film may seem at first to be merely typical, hackneyed, horror material, but its theme of blind and domineering science running rampant over the feelings and lives of both animals and people was a subject that the director, Georges Franju, took very seriously. The last frames of this film, with the appropriately horrid death of the amoral scientest and then the masked Christiane freeing the animals and silently drifting away into the night, are a serious statement created purely in images by one of the world's most underrated
director's. A wonderful film. Highly recommended