The Last Waltz (1978)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

The Last Waltz (1978) – M. Scorsese

Blues rock isn’t really my thing, so I haven’t watched Scorsese’s film about The Band’s last concert in 1976 until now.  It does come heralded by many others.  So, in watching, I focused on Marty’s directorial choices and the cinematography (by Michael Chapman but with assistance from László Kovács, Vilmos Zsigmond, and others).  The roving cameras are located onstage with the band and a lot of the footage is shot in extreme close-up on the performers (you can see how Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, 1984, owes a debt to this film).  Scorsese himself was part of the editing team for Woodstock (1970) and his choices here enhance the concert experience (even if we don’t see the audience – we ARE the audience).  Somehow he manages to keep things interesting as each successive guest musician turns up (Ronnie Hawkins, Dr John, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, The Staples Singers, Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison, and of course, Bob Dylan, who often played with The Band).  And it wasn’t long before the passion and joy of the players started to win me over; guitarist Robbie Robertson genially holds things together onstage and everyone contributes to the family feeling.  Interview clips with The Band (featuring Scorsese himself) take us back to a different era, as does the overall conceit of the “Last Waltz” itself, revealing that most of these guys grew up in the 1950s. As punk and disco and new wave broke on the horizon, this must have seemed like a farewell to an era (even if we subsequently discovered that old music and old genres can be renewed by younger bands and also streamed forever).