“Give the anarchist a cigarette.”

I’ve been fascinated with Bob Dylan’s mystique for many years, beginning with a chance run-in with a greatest hits compilation in eighth grade. I had seen clips of D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 Dont Look Back scattered across the internet numerous times, but I had never sat down and actually watched the thing until now. I’m glad I finally did. A truly remarkable document, the film presents a cinéma vérité look at the musician’s 1965 tour of England, his last acoustic-only concert series.

The most remarkable thing about it (besides seeing Dylan do his rangy “behind-the-scenes” schtick, exhibiting a performative personality so divergent that the multiple Dylans of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There [2007]—the stoic poet, the tedious craftsman, the national prophet, the arrogant showman, the recalcitrant celebrity, the dyed-in-the-wool folk singer, the eager revolutionary—are pretty much on full display even at this early stage) is that it came at a time before the public relations of pop stars were filtered through brand managers, which means we get to see the wily songwriter relentlessly toying with the press and his contemporaries (poor Donovan—I’m glad he soon clawed his way out from under Dylan’s shadow).

While the playfulness, snippets of classic tunes, and appearances from the colorful personalities sucked into Dylan’s globetrotting vortex (Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Albert Grossman, John Mayall, Alan Price, etc.) encourage one to further explore this era of the artist’s career, the film is equally compelling as it pertains to the cinema of Pennebaker and other pioneer documentarians. It wouldn’t go anywhere if we couldn’t witness the enigmatic performer bouncing around between hazy dressing rooms, spotlit stages, taxi rides, languid hotel suites, and crowded sidewalks with a weary magnetism as he hashes through his creative process, but Pennebaker has an instinctive skill for intuiting peripheral dramas and briefly isolating them to produce poignant vignettes. As Robert Polito suggests, the film’s style parallels the songwriter’s life and music, with Pennebaker and Dylan having similar feels for “the mix of rawness and formal sophistication, innovation and tradition, the work simultaneously shaped and improvised, and the trust in immediacy, a detail, and the moment for revelation.”

Whether or not this direct cinema approach truly captures the real Bob Dylan, whether you find this frenzied version of the man insightful or insufferable, it’s a fact that Dont Look Back had a profound impact on both documentary filmmaking and the Dylan legend. It’s a shame that he would never again be this casual in front of a camera.