Word: renaldo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...earlier this year, surfacing in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and New York, was the new Dylan movie, Renaldo and Clara. It even hit Cambridge for two weeks, and you know that if it bombed here it's probably not going to go over that well in the hinterlands. The reasons Renaldo and Clara is a bad film are well-documented; it seems there is little reason to go into there here, at least at length. But Dylan-watchers are like sinologists--what is the significance of this wall poster, that party member's rehabilitation? And it is my private contention that...
...sign of instability within the regime--to Rolling Stone, New Times, and to John Rockwell of The New York Times. But soon a spate of interviews appeared--in Playboy, in lots of places--and to Dylan-watchers it indicated panic in Malibu. It did not bode well for Renaldo and Clara. For the first time, Dylan was downright solicitous of interviewers, especially the simpering Jonathan Cott of Rolling Stone. It seemed Dylan only wanted free ink; the rebellious posture that had led him to attack a Time Magazine reporter in Don't Look Backwas revealed as only a posture...
...three hours, 52 minutes worth. It opens with Dylan singing "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and closes with "Knocking on Heaven's Door," and every song between those two clicks; Dylan singing with demonic intensity as he did on neither the Rolling Thunder television special or the live album. Renaldo and Clara also contains some of the best concert footage ever shot, including the Rolling Stones in Gimme Shelter. But as relief from the concerts we get documentary-style interviews, the best of which--David Blue and his speed freak raps at the pinball machine, an interview with black street...
...Nixon mask, which he pulls off. Dylan grins--the first of may shots of his incredibly bad teeth--but revealing...ah hah, this is art now mind you...masks within masks. You see, Dylan doesn't play Dylan in this film; corpulent Ronnie Hawkins does. Dylan plays Renaldo, a somewhat logical cross between the Jack of Hearts and the lone rider of "Romance in Durango"--"Hot chile peppers in the blistering sun/Dust in my face..." Sara Loundes Dylan plays Clara, while Ronnie Blakelee plays Mrs. Dylan, and Joan Baez is the Woman in White. Basically, this is the movie...
...Joan Baez manages to come out from under the weight of Dylan's cynicism with her dignity intact. There is one long scene--perhaps we could call it "Diamonds and Rust Comes to the Silver Screen"--in which Baez and Sara stage a tug of war over the bemused Renaldo. Sara is shown as a made-up 35-year-old housewife, a sort of pushy Zelda Sayre; it is hard to believe that Dylan could have written "Sad-eyed Ladies" for her, let alone describe her as "So easy to look at, so hard to define." The characters are stuck...