Robbie Robertson's Big Break. A Reevaluation of Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz

The Last Waltz represents a dramatic reimagining of the possibilities inherent in the "rockumentary" genre. Ostensibly, the film chronicles the final concert given by The Band in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, but ultimately it stands as much more than a simple documentary. It may be the best film ever made about the music scene, but rather than celebrating the now fabled rock group, what The Last Waltz really does is foretell is death. Yet as a film that moves beyond the music to engage with ideas about imagemaking (both that of the guitarist, Robbie Robertson, and, more indirectly, that of the filmmaker himself), it has resonance beyond its own history. Recent screenings of the re-released and digitally remastered print have engaged unexpectedly large and varied audiences. United Artists has also released the remastered film on DVD, complete with extra footage, audio commentary from Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and liner notes by Robertson.

Earlier concert films such as Gimme Shelter and Woodstock featured relatively low-quality footage and unimaginative camerawork. Their rudimentary approaches implicitly question the importance of the very events that the films attempt to capture, as though they were just rock concerts and did not deserve the expense and care given to more serious subjects. But from the outset, Scorsese and The Band commited to making The Last Waltz the first concert film shot in 35 mm. It is crammed with astonishing visual depth and unexpected images -- the stage presences in intimate and overwhelming close-ups set against a dark and brooding background. The influence of the film's clarity can be clearly traced in such later works as the Talking Heads' Stop making Sense (1984) and U2's Rattle and Hum (1987). Moreover, Scorsese's camerawork further confounds the expectations of the genre by essentially eliminating the audience from the film, thus focusing all the attention on the musicians themselves.

Beyond its obvious importance as a concert film, The Last Waltz deserves renewed critical attention simply as a film, because no thorough explication of its basic thematic contruction has yet appeared. It has long been relegated to the margins of Scorsese scholarship and generally merits only a passing mention, alongside his 1978 documentary American Boy, as a minor diversion for the director that helped to fill the gap between New York, New York (1977) and Raging Bull (1980). This is unfair, because The Last Waltz marks a crucial turning point for Scorsese and is the first installment in a tetralogy of films that dominate his mid-period of work. It stands as his first exploration of the manner by which image may be manipulated as a means for eliminating risk, a thematic obsession which continues in The King of Comedy (1982), The Color of Money (1986) and Casino (1995).

In addition to critical neglect, The Last Waltz has also been the victim of general misinterpretation. It is often viewed in idyllic terms as an embodiment of nostalgia for the past, when in reality its focus is the future. Seeing it as a film built around a musical event reveals a calculated, commited and personal narrative. The movie's real subject is not The Band as a whole, but Robbie Robertson. The film represents a highly crafted and complex exercise in image-making. There is ample filmic evidence to suggest that Robertson influenced Scorsese's contruction of the film in order to establish himself as a star within the Hollywood community and launch his post-Band career. Robertson was the only member of the group to work with Scorsese during the 18-month postproduction period, and in drummer Levon Helm's estimation the duo "edited the movie to please themselves.". To his credit, Michael Bliss does pick up on Robertson's overwhelming presence in the film and argues that "given the amount of footage devoted to Robertson, the film might just well have been titled Robbie Robertson Speaks.". The guitarist's dominance goes far beyond the amount of camera time allotted to him, however, because virtually every visual and thematic aspect of The Last Waltz is designed to showcase his talents at the expense of the other members of the group. Because of this, the movie has no interest in simple nostalgia, despite the presence of numerous luminaries from the Woodstock era who approach their performances with an air of hushed reverence, as though they were taking part in the last hurrah for a rapidly evaporating age.

Robertson took a tremendous risk when, in 1976, he decided to disband the group because of its commercial failures and late keyboardist Richard Manuel's burgeoning drug and alcohol problems. He himself needed to establish an identifiable public persona; his talents as a songwriter, guitarist, and producer were widely acknowledged, but the group had publicly avoided the usual egotistical posings of rock stars. The Band enjoyed a reputation as a cohesive whole, which served to downplay Robertson's individual identity. But in reality, The Last Waltz represents an exercise in self-mythologizing -- through the interviews with their distinctive camerawork and settings and the on-stage footage of the actual concert -- for Robertson, and the deconstruction/destruction of the group as a whole. (...)

Although Scorsese handled the planning for the filming of the concert, the idea to do interviews came from Robertson. They were conducted in 1977, almost a year after the event. The guitarist also suggested that Scorsese do the interviews, but in retrospect the director feels that this was "not a good idea" -- finding the members of the band to "very quiet and very formidable.". But in fact the interview segments constitute the most facinating part of the movie: this is where the construction of Robertson's image and the deconstruction of The Band's really occur. Scorsese talks with the members of the group, both singularly and together, at different locations at Shangri-La, their studio/headquarters in Malibu. In keeping with his own reservations, he truly is a terrible interviewer -- nervous, tentative, and clearly in awe of Robertson. Scorsese's deficiencies, however, only serve to acceuate Robertson's skills as a rhetorician: although he frequently bandies about pseudo-intellectual cliches, he is always articulate and well-spoken

Conversely, Scorsese's inexperience as an interviewer hurts the other band members, whose answers betray their relatively limited vision or their reluctance to speak. Manuel and Danko seem like precocious children who offer up amusing anecdotes about stealing bologna, and suggest that women are the real reason The Band stayed on the road for 16 years -- "not that I don't like the music." Compared with Robertson's artistic posturings and grand designs, Manuel's admission that "I just wanna break even" seems downright refreshing, but it's also sophomoric. Similarly, Scorsese admits that Helm proved a "formidable" subject who was not interested in talking. Helm himself is less reserved in his judgement of the situation: "I already had a bad attitude when I realized that the cameras had completely ignored the spirit of the event... I said, 'This shit don't mean nothing to me.' Nothing. I was just coarse and rude, country rude, because I was so damn angry." 

Organist Garth Hudson, however, stands as the exception, speaking with a quiet intensity and perspicacity about The Band's attraction to the rustic lifestyle of Woodstock and the role of street musicians as a healing force. Unfortunately, he only speaks twice, and in both cases, he is surrounded by the other four band members. Scorsese never approaches him in a more personal and revealing setting, and it must be noted that of The Last Waltz footage, Scorsese cuts short only the performance of "Genetic Method/Chest Fever," a pairing of songs which had long served as Hudson's concert showcase. Helm laments that The Last Waltz includes nothing to show "how Garth Hudson led the band and inspired us all." Perhaps Robertson felt threatened that the keyboardist's undeniable talent and quiet leadership would overshadow his own contribution to the group, and used his influence with Scorsese to marginalize Hudson's presence in the film. (...)

Quite different strategies are applied for the other members. While discussing how The Band got its name, Manuel curls up on a coach in the fetal position, looking, in Helm's words like "Che Guevara after the Bolivians got through with him," Conversely, Helm is never interviewed alone; Robertson is always present, although at times he is off-camera and only his voice is heard. During two conversations that take place in the backyard at a picnic table, Scorsese carefully frames Helm with the pool table in soft focus in the background. The central metaphor of cutthroat remains ever present. (...)

Thus Casino, The Color of Money, and The King of Comedy all revolve around the complicated relationship between image and risk. But Scorsese had already begun to examine this issue through the persona of Robertson in The Last Waltz. And the difficulty in applying the term "documentary" to The Last Waltz derives from its decidedly non-objective presentation of the demise of The Band. The focus of this film is Robbie Robertson; Scorsese built it around him and built it for him. After screening the movie for the first time, Ronnie Hawkins, the Canadian singer for whom The Band played back-up in the early 1960s, joked sarcastically, "The goddamn movie'd be awright if it only had a few more shots of Robbie" [emphasis original].

by Stephen E. Severn | Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: Call Me Levon (The Bitter Southerner):]

“My joy is to play the drums,” Levon told CBS News in 2007. “The singing part is just something I glommed my way into.” I hear that.

And I recall that Levon attended Berklee School of Music, which happens to be exactly 5.7 miles from my house, for a semester in 1972.

“I'd always had a complex about my total lack of musical training — beyond several million hours of field work," he writes in his autobiography, “This Wheel’s on Fire.” And so he shaved his beard and enrolled with his given name, Mark L. Helm. Why he only lasted a semester, I don’t know. But I love that this bona fide rock star gave education the old college try. (...)

Hollywood is more than ready for a movie about the very troubled Band — we don’t just have the Robbie-Levon drama: The Band backed Dylan when they went electric; singer and pianist Richard Manuel hung himself in a hotel room; bassist Rick Danko pegged out at 56. And of course it will come — complete with an amazing re-mastered soundtrack and maybe a few new songs written and sung by Robbie Robertson.

This film will directed by Martin Scorsese, who, of course, made “The Last Waltz,” and who lived with Robbie when they both got divorced. Levon says that during the editing of “The Last Waltz” the two became “blow buddies” and “their wives kicked them out and they moved in with each other, and they just … poor guys. You know, that looks OK in Hollywood, but it just looks weird everywhere else.”

Well.

Robbie now does the music for each and every Scorsese film, and is an executive at Dreamworks. Nice work if you can get it.

Levon didn’t get it. And neither did the rest of them. Instead, he got cancer.