Film
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
- Musical
- Strange
Scorsese's wildly inventive nonfiction film about Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder tour—a traveling carnival of musicians, poets, and artists crisscrossing America. It's part concert footage, part mythology, part puzzle-box, with period interviews blended into something deliberately slippery and dreamlike. For lovers of Dylan, restless cinema, and the moment rock and roll became something stranger.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love loose, looping rock footage that blurs memory and performance, and enjoy a filmmaker playing tricks with what is real and what is invented.
Skip it if you want a tidy, chronological concert film with clear context, since this one drifts, repeats its moods and rarely explains itself to anyone outside its circle.
What it asks of you: Settle in for over two hours of shifting moods, where the rhythm is loose and the attention needs to wander with the camera rather than lock onto a plot.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
The Last Waltz1978
Scorsese's other masterwork of rock apotheosis: The Band's farewell concert with luminaries dropping in to play. Gorgeously shot, reverently paced, a perfect time capsule of what serious music film could be.
But It's devotional in a way that can feel dated; if you're not already moved by the songs and faces, the three-hour runtime might feel like church.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan2005
Scorsese's earlier Dylan documentary is more straightforward—a chronological biography of the artist from Minnesota kid to electric controversy. Essential if you want context; illuminating even if you know the story.
But It's a conventional doc where Rolling Thunder is a fractured poem. After this film, it might feel too neat and explanatory.
Monterey Pop1968
D.A. Pennebaker's festival film captures music at a hinge moment: Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, all loose and discovering themselves live. Pure energy, no artifice, the ancestor of everything that follows.
But The image quality is period-authentic, which means soft and sometimes unclear. Patience required; rewards given.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both are films about the machinery of creation itself—not the finished work, but the circus, doubt, and madness of making something real.
Charlie Kaufman's fractured, epic film about an artist building an impossible art piece inside a warehouse. Like Rolling Thunder, it's about the creative act as mystification, performance as reality, the self multiplied and distorted. Dizzying in the same way.
But It's demanding and sometimes opaque, three hours of a man's artistic obsession potentially collapsing into narcissism. Exhausting as much as exhilarating.
More like this (6)
Renaldo and Clara1978
Dylan's own film, with Bob and Sara playing themselves and not-themselves, shot on 35mm black and white, disorienting and urgent. If Rolling Thunder intrigued you about his artistic mind, this is him thinking out loud onscreen.
But It's almost four hours of Dylan doing exactly what he wants, which means it meanders, repeats, digresses. Some will call it indulgent; some will find that indulgence the point.
Woodstock1970
Michael Wadleigh's tripartite portrait of the festival—performance, music, and moment. Dylan didn't play, but the film captures the spirit his '60s work helped summon: a generation believing music could change the world.
But At nearly four hours and split between music and cultural documentary, it can feel like two films stitched together. The pacing is leisurely by modern standards.
Masked and Anonymous2003
Dylan starred in this fictional film by Larry Charles: a post-apocalyptic concert film where Dylan plays a mysterious musician. Cryptic, funny, loaded with his own art-world logic applied to narrative.
But It's deeply uneven, sometimes brilliant and sometimes baffling, with a plot that actively resists coherence. Not everyone will trust the experiment.
Bob Dylan – Don't Look Back1967
Pennebaker's portrait of Dylan's '65 UK tour, filmed in black and white, catching him young and sharp and surrounded by hangers-on. The ancestor of the modern music documentary: intimate, observational, unsentimental.
But It's a different Dylan—electric-era, famous, sometimes cagey with the camera. If you want him warm, look elsewhere.
Shine a Light2008
Scorsese and The Rolling Stones for a Lincoln Center concert film. Energetic, affectionate, and a reminder of what Scorsese does best: make musicians look like gods without losing sight of what makes them human.
But It's a straightforward concert doc, not a vision or interrogation. If you want cinema to challenge you, this is cinema that serves the music.
Festival Express2003
A train tour of Canadian festivals in 1970, carrying Dylan, Janis, The Grateful Dead, and others. Archival footage resurfaces decades later, offering glimpses of musicians at play, relaxed and unguarded between sets.
But The footage is fragmentary and the film was completed long after the fact. It feels like wonderful outtakes rather than a complete statement.
People
Cast
Bob DylanSelf
Allen GinsbergThe Oracle of Delphi
Patti SmithThe Punk Poet- Martin von HaselbergThe Filmmaker
Scarlet RiveraThe Queen of Swords
Joan BaezThe Balladeer
Roger McGuinnThe Minstrel
Larry SlomanThe Rolling Stone Reporter- James GianopulosThe Promoter
Jack ElliottThe Sailor
Sam ShepardThe Writer- David MansfieldThe Innocent
Directing
- Martin ScorseseDirector
Writing
- Bob DylanLyricist
Production
- Ellen LewisCasting
- David TedeschiExecutive Producer
- Rick YornExecutive Producer
- April HayesLine Producer
- Lauren BelferLine Producer
- Jeff RosenProducer
- Margaret BoddeProducer