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| Ten Thousand Motels |
A lightning rod for an entire generation
REAR VIEW | Gimme Shelter a movie about the making of a movie and the murder at Stones' Altamont concert.
By Geoff Pevere
Apr 29, 2007 04:30 AM
Toronto Star
GIMME SHELTER (1970, Criterion Collection)
Who made it?
Albert (b. 1926) and David Maysles (1931-87) were born in Brookline, Mass. Both studied psychology at university and served in World War II. Turning to documentary production in the mid-1950s, the brothers collaborated in what came to be known as the cinema vérité style (which they called "direct" cinema), a school of filmmaking that attempted to capture heightened realism by eschewing narration in favour of a non-interventionist approach characterized by the use of location sound (recorded by Albert) and hand-held 16mm camera (operated by David).
After generating a considerable impact with Salesman (1969), the Maysleses went on to make the highly controversial and enduringly popular Gimme Shelter, a vérité document of the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour that culminated with the disastrous events at the free concert offered at Altamont Speedway near San Francisco.
What's it about?
After the murder of 18-year-old Meredith Hunter by Hells Angels "security" guards near the front of the stage, the Maysleses invited the Stones to watch the footage of the movie the brothers began recording at the band's performance at Madison Square Gardens in New York on Thanksgiving 1969. Gimme Shelter is thus both a movie about the events leading up to the killing (which one of the crew captured on film), and a movie about the making of the movie.
What's the context?
It was the Stones who first approached the Maysles about the possibility of doing a film about the band. The North American tour (the Stones' first in three years) was already well underway by the time the filmmakers joined the band on and near the stage for the Thanksgiving show. As events proceeded to steamroll headlong toward Altamont (a free concert beset with organizational hassles, last-minute venue changes, and general confusion), the brothers followed the Stones in concert, backstage, and during the recording of the album Sticky Fingers. By the time the movie was released (which was delayed by the Stones, who had invested in and partly controlled the rights to the film), Altamont had already come to symbolize both the death of '60s countercultural idealism the band's image as pop culture's resident Satanic Majesties. Because the death of Hunter (who was wielding a gun at the time he was stabbed) was perpetrated by Hells Angels gang members engaged as stage security, much criticism was levelled against both the Stones and the Maysleses for the role – frequently misrepresented and overstated – each played in the tragedy.
How was it received?
Despite its popularity with young audiences, Gimme Shelter became something of a lightning rod for moralistic critical attacks. Freighted with death-of-a-generation symbolic baggage, the movie came to represent everything that had suddenly turned sour for the misbegotten hopes and dreams of the 1960s. The Stones were widely accused of arrogance, cynicism and indifference (accusations that stung Jagger for years), the Maysleses of exploitation. In an especially scathing review, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael charged the film with having relished in the real-life death it documented, and the Maysles of having "hit the cinema vérité jackpot."
So what's the big deal?
Both as an expression of vérité style and as a movie about the medium itself, Gimme Shelter assumed a potency that resonated well beyond the actual content of the film. Produced at a time when the debate over media and its messages (think not only McLuhan but Godard, Medium Cool, the Zapruder film, Blow-Up, Warhol and Vietnam) was at a fever pitch, Gimme Shelter seemed to light a fuse on a decade that had been ticking ominously in the months leading up to its release. Viewed today, it plays not only as an electrifying artifact of its day – and a mesmerizing record of "the world's greatest rock `n' roll band" when it deserved the name – but also the pinnacle of a certain kind of documentary style.
Most endlessly quotable line?
"Who's fighting and what for?" (Just minutes before the murder, Jagger fruitlessly attempts to placate the unruly mob.)
Most endlessly watchable scene?
While the slow-motion replaying, on a flatbed editing table, of the murder for Jagger and drummer Charlie Watts has become the movie's signature sequence, the film's other slow-motion passage – depicting a rapturous Madison Square Garden crowd swooning and surging to the slow, bluesy strains of "Love in Vain" – nails everything Altamont destroyed: the fusion of audience and performer, the sense of collective joy, and the power of music to deliver us all from earthly pain.
Most cogent critical appreciation?
"Altamont was supposed to be like Woodstock, only groovier, and their movie would be groovier still. Instead, the Stones got what no one had bargained for: a terrifying snapshot of the sudden collapse of the '60s." (Godfrey Cheshire) |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
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| fireontheplatter |
....lets stop keep fucking up...
i think grace slick says this from jefferson airplane at some point in the movie...makes me laugh all the time.
what can i say....all stones movies are great, but this on i think is the best.
just look at all those very stoned fucked up people....unbelieveable. |
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| Riffhard |
The fact that the writer refers to the killig of Meredith Hunter as "murder" has immediatly rendered the article irrelevant to me. I had to stop reading after that line. While I certainly don't think that the Angels acted like a bunch of choir boys it's just a falacy to state that they murdered Hunter. The guy did pull a gun afterall! At that point the Angels killed him. It was not murder.
Riffy |
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| sirmoonie |
Meredith Hunter did pretty good hooking up with the white womens - you got to give him that. You got to give him that, if nothing else. I mean seriously, you go to. Just fucking give him that, okay? Fucking give the fucker that, goddammit! Fuck you if you don't give the fucker that! |
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| Bloozehound |
See that's what happens when you mess with the Stones, they were all about worshipping the devil, before worshippin' the devil was cool, and if you ain't sauvy, they'd jack your ass in a flash, cause that's how they roll
stick that up your paul mccartney and smoke it ~ 666
[Edited by Bloozehound] |
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| corgi37 |
Hunter's chick obviously liked dark meat. Nothing wrong with that, and yes, i give him that. |
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| EELPIE |
Joey?
IMG]http://www.sf360.org/features/samguy2.jpg[/IMG] |
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| Bruno |
I´ve watched GS with a friend last week and I admit we laughed a lot at that guy trying to calm down Meredith´s girlfriend with those "it´s gonna be alright, everything is fine" when the dead body was on the ground just a few meters away.
[Edited by Bruno] |
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