Word: waltzing
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TECHNICALLY, The Last Waltz is by and large superb. Scorsese is one of the most talented directors to come along in several years, and here he tried his hand at something entirely new. The concert footage is never boring; Scorsese carefully selects his shots and sequences so that the same pattern is rarely repeated. We are spared the usual audience shots and moronic neo-groovy short interviews with way-out folks in the stands. Scorsese's emphasis decidedly falls on the music, to the benefit of the final product...
...Band is so consistent that these songs always sound great, but there is a slight difference between their 1977 renditions and the sound of their 1974 "Before the Flood" tour with Dylan. Four years ago, Garth Hudson's wailing organ played a more central role in The Last Waltz. Robertson's lead guitar dominates most of the songs. Either way, the sound is worth the price of admission...
STILL, THE LAST WALTZ suffers from conditions endemic to big-time rock and roll. The American music industry has grown to monstrous proportions, so much so that much of its fabled opulence has become a narcissistic orgy, celebrating the joys of popularity and immense wealth. The vulturistic entrepreneurs, represented in an earlier era by the smarmy Dick Clark, have been succeeded by the slicker, if equally self-inflating and profit-minded Don Kirshner types. Had The Last Waltz somehow fallen into the hands of such a producer, the movie would have been a shlocky disaster regardless of the music...
...this film is an in-house job, produced by Robbie Robertson himself. While Robertson respects some boundaries of taste and discretion, the film bears the entirely self-centered stamp that characterizes the music business. If this taint is unavoidable, The Last Waltz keeps it to a palatable minimum. Nonetheless the self-consciousness of the whole effort continually strikes a negative chord. There is nothing as cheaply obvious as a singer directing his eyes and gestures solely to the camera and ignoring the audience. The atmosphere of the film is suffused with an inescapable sense of heady profiteering--remember, boys, this...
...Last Waltz has some minor flaws other than this somewhat self-indulgent tone. The opening and closing scenes feature a schmaltzy waltz, played by The Band. The music is reminiscent of a player piano in an Old Western saloon. The visual accompaniments--particularly the closing shots of The Band, alone on a strangely-lit stage, playing the insipid theme--attempt to evoke a feeling of free-floating nostalgia. This final scene adds an untoward note of solemnity to the affair; Scorsese would have been better off closing with the final number of the concert, the full-company rendition...