Overlong Thoughts from The Last Waltz

 

Today I went to the 45th anniversary re-release of "The Last Waltz." Here are some unorganized thoughts.

With all of these "see it on the big screen" releases, I try to find visual details that weren't apparent before. Here are some things I noticed for the first time. 

• During the "Old Time Religion" piece, Rick Danko is wearing a black hat but I never noticed that it appears to be plastic. Shiny plastic, like it's a party favor. Is it a joke, is it a 70s style that I don't understand?
• Scorsese made it a special point to not show the audience much. But various shots throughout the movie, I noticed, out in the audience, there's someone displaying numbers that keep incrementing. My guess is that's the cue for the brass section that they're on "song 38", "song 39," etc. Or maybe it's for everyone, not sure.
• When "Bet Your Balls" Neil Diamond comes on to do "one song but do it good" there's also a second drummer. Who is that? Why?
• 70mm vs. 35mm film were previously meaningless terms to me. This is the first concert film to be recorded in 35mm film and you can see there is a fuzziness to it with a pronounced grain.
• Laszlo Kovacs worked on this film as "additional director of photography."

So those are some visual things, let's talk about what I didn't notice visually. "The Last Waltz" is famously a concert film with a special effects budget. During his performance, Neil Young had a visible piece of cocaine in his nose which had to be optically removed (which wasn't easy in 1978 - I believe it was a frame-by-frame job). While watching the movie on the big screen, I forgot to look up his nose to see if anything looks photoshoppy about it. Oh well.

I always skip Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the DVD but had no choice here. Garbage. And what is The Canterbury Tales doing in this movie? Neil Diamond's presence in this concert/movie is (rightfully) controversial but at least it's music. Cut out the poetry.

In "This Wheel's on Fire," Levon Helm recalls that somewhere in the middle of the concert (after Joni Mitchell), the energy of the audience seemed to flag but once Van Morrison was done high kicking he had breathed new life into everyone. There is some (weak) evidence in the film to support this. Toward the end of "Further on up the Road" the camera zooms out to reveal the audience in the lower left cheering, fist pumping and hopping. Then during Van Morrison's performance (pre-kickoff) we get a head-on shot of the audience, not very animated, fairly subdued. Thin evidence but it's there. I think with a 5 hour concert and a full-course turkey dinner, it would be impossible to not have some lulls in the action.

The most interesting thing that struck me on this viewing is the way Scorsese makes a point of making obvious the artificiality of documentary-making. This is established by the very first sounds of the movie - technicians rolling sound and Rick Danko saying "cut-throat." This is followed by Scorsese asking (off camera) "Ok, Rick, what's the game?" to which Rick replies "cut-throat." Usually, you cut the first part and leave just the "real" part. But starting a few seconds earlier reveals that the question and answer are not casual conversation happening in real life, they are part of a movie. After explaining the rules of the game, Danko gives a look that suggests his hyper awareness of being filmed. This is all staged.

Then look at the first few seconds of Robbie Robertson's first interview of the film. Robbie answers the question, asks if Scorsese wants him to rephrase and then answers again. All of it is left in.

Later on in the film, Martin starts his awkward, pointless interview with Rick Danko at "Shangri La." The shot starts a few seconds before "action" as if it's an amateur film.

It would be apparent to everyone that these flaws should be edited out. Scorsese is a perfectly competent filmmaker so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that this is a choice. The film is an artificial construct and he's deliberately pointing out the artifice. He's purposefully taking you out of the "reality" of the scene to remind you that it's not real. But why? What is he saying?  The only thing I can guess at this point, is that it's merely for "style."

And if you're looking for an idea for a research paper, you could try exploring this "revealing the artifice" as a continuation of the ideas of Antonin Artaud and his "Theatre of Cruelty", through to Jack Hirschman's UCLA career in the 60s who then influenced Jim Morrison. And if you can make it work, this thread would continue later, reaching a climax in the 1990s on MTV. You may recall that MTV would, for instance, film a person talking into the camera but suddenly cut to a second shot that shows the person, the camera filming them, and the overhead microphone (preferably in black and white.) Why did they do that? As far as I know, it was merely "style." It's a thought. But there is a Criterion release of "The Last Waltz" with a director's commentary and so the real explanation is probably there.

In a few songs, most powerfully in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," the crowd applauds at the climax of the song rather than wait for the song to be over or nearly over. I think that was a 70s trend but I'm not sure. It's definitely not just this concert, the example that comes to mind for this is Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets" (though that one is simulated, still the same idea). Like I said, I think this was a thing in the 70s but I don't know for sure. Was it? Did it happen in other eras? For what it's worth, I like it, it makes the crowd another element in the song and seems to take the emotion over the top.

Last thing: watching it again I was struck, as I'm always struck - to the soul - by the perfection of "It Makes No Difference" so I'll end with that.