Movie review, 'The Last Waltz'

By Michael Wilmington

April 18, 2002

 

Martin Scorsese's 1978 film of The Band's all-star farewell concert, "The Last Waltz," is the greatest rock concert movie ever made - and maybe the best rock movie, period. Now being re-released with restored picture and sound, for the original concert's 25th anniversary, "The Last Waltz" is a movie that exactly fits the words of Bob Dylan, who helps close the show with "Forever Young."

This movie - and the event it records with such rapture and passion - is forever young, despite the passage of 25 years since The Band (lead guitarist and backing vocalist Robbie Robertson, bassist/singer Rick Danko, keyboardist/singer Richard Manuel, organist/horn player Garth Hudson and drummer/lead singer Levon Helm) took the stage at San Francisco's Winterland Theater for what was billed as their farewell concert "with friends."

In this intoxicating movie - which has pungent Scorsese-led interviews with the lazily reminiscing Band members interspersed with their hard-rocking stage collaborations with Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters and many others - sight and sound play together magically, seamlessly. Scorsese's multiple cameras don't just capture the show, they enhance and magnify it, merge with it.

The film encapsulates a whole era in one bounteous Thanksgiving evening, with one great number after another: Dylan, dandy-hatted and fuzzy-cheeked, raging his way through "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" and plaintively keening "Forever Young"; Mitchell, ironic, cool and sweet as she trades sexually charged glances with Robertson on "Coyote"; Muddy Waters growling furiously though "Mannish Boy"; and Van Morrison summing up the essence of every seedy neighborhood bar between here and Dublin on "Caravan."

The Band members run through their own roots-rock repertoire ("Up on Cripple Creek," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down") - and serve as super backup band for their guests, including Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Paul Butterfield and their very first front man and employer, Ronnie Hawkins (for whom they toured as "The Hawks").

Despite its age, "Last Waltz" always seems to be happening now, on the instant. Scorsese, who worked on 1970's "Woodstock" (he edited the Sly and the Family Stone numbers), planned rigorously, matching every shot and move to the songs while leaving space for accidents. His main cinematographer was Michael Chapman ("Taxi Driver"). Manning the seven additional cameras were a stellar crew that included legendary Hungarians Laszlo Kovacs ("Easy Rider") and Vilmos Szigmond ("Deliverance"). Yet the movie never seems overplanned. Because Scorsese keeps his cameras focused on stage and not on the audience, we always seem to be with the performers, part of their special community.

The Band members kept their promise and never reunited on stage - shunning the stardom that "The Last Waltz" conferred on them. The movie reveals what top camera subjects they all were, especially Robertson (who had the offhand sexiness of a Brad Pitt) and Helm (who, unlike Robertson, sustained a later movie acting career).

The farewell concert is a grand finale with one showstopper after another, but the movie has an untoppable high point: a number that, oddly enough, wasn't part of the concert - The Band's studio rendition of their signature song, "The Weight," accompanied by that consummate gospel group The Staples.

Whenever I show "The Last Waltz" to film classes, I always stop the movie after "The Weight," rewind and play it again so that the audience can savor again that earthy rhapsodic beat, those gorgeous sliding camera moves to Danko and Helm as they begin their verses, Pop Staples' mellow purr on "Go down, Moses," and the impassioned heart-stopping cries of Mavis Staples. Everything comes together here: especially the whole melding of poor black and poor white country Southern subcultures that is rock 'n' roll - right up to the climax, when the music stops, Mavis crinkles up her face and, transported by the moment, whispers: "Beautiful!"

Oh, yeah.

4 stars
"The Last Waltz"
 Directed by Martin Scorsese; photographed by Michael Chapman; additional photography by Laszlo Kovacs, Vilmos Szigmond, David Myers, Bobby Byrne, Michael Watkins, Hiro Narita; edited by Yeu-Bun Yee, Jan Roblee; production designed by Boris Leven; music by The Band and their guests; produced by Robbie Robertson. A United Artists release; opens Friday, April 19. Running time: 1:57. MPAA rating: PG (language).

Michael Wilmington is the Chicago Tribune movie critic.

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