A while back I posted a translation of the first chapter of "Bob Dylan's Hollywood". Following Maureen LeBlanc's advice, I decided to send the author a fax asking for approval before continuing with that thing. A few days ago I received her reply and guess...
She's thrilled of the idea!
All she asks is that I mail/fax/whatever the translation to her before posting it "to avoid misunderstandings". Fine with me, it's *her* work after all. She even asked me to keep her informed about the ongoing discussion because she hasn't got a home in the global village yet.
Included with her reply was a brief English summary she allowed me to post, so here I go (God bless OCR):
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---------- Of course her wish to review the translation will delay the whole thing a bit. Never mind, it will come anyway. So long,Bob Dylan's Hollywood
The American singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, is unquestionably one of the most influential figures in the history of popular music. The performer and recording artist was the first who brought literacy to the rough and rudimentary beat of rock music which was revolutionary in the 1960ies. Dylan, the spiritual tramp, was inspired by European and American poetry - from Arthur Rimbaud to T. S. Eliot -, the Bible, and traditional folk- and blues songs.There is one 20th century art which has influenced Dylan very deeply throughout his career - the movies. Bob Dylan's Hollywood identifies the cinematic sources and examins the impact that films has on the artist's movie songs and his own films. It takes Dylan only a few lines to create a western-scene or a scene from a silent movie. The rock poet applicates cinematic means to his Iyrics and produces his movie songs by a blend of popular movie scenes and his own stories. Bob Dylan's precise - often intuitive - and skillful use of contents as well as cinematic technical elements is striking. In the 1970ies the songwriter is telling the script.
His narrative movie songs from the album Desire are a journey back to the roots of the mythic western- and gangster film, the film noir and the adventure movie. The acting characters of the 1970ies are contrasted by the non-action songs of the 1980ies where Dylan only by (imaginary) dialogues projects a moving picture onto the inner screen of the listener's mind.
In the songs from Empire Burlesquesque magic and gloomy atmosphere of the film noir with its higger-than-life heroes and heroines is animated. Dylan's protagonists are talking the dialogues of Bogart and Bacall, Peter Lorre and Edward G. Rohinson. They are adding their own thoughts and words or just indirectly hint at some lines and scenes from a movie. The song "Brownsville Girl" which Dylan co-wrote with playwright and actor Sam Shepard is the poetic quintessence of all of the songwriter's movie songs and it is Dylan's hommage to the golden days of Hollywood when there were more stars on the screen than there were in heaven.
The counterpart of the movie songs are Bob Dylan's films. D. A. Pennebaker's cinema verite documentary Don't Look Back (1966) shows a (self) portrait of the artist as a young man. Being one of the first rock-documentaries the film initiated a new genre. Bob Dylan appeared as an actor in two major films.
In Sam Peckinpah's western Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid ( 1973) he played the allegoric part of Alias, a role which he didn't appreciate at all as he later said. In Hearts Of Fire, director Richard Marquand's cliche ridden view of the rock'n'roll circus, Dylan played the once famous and now down and out but true rock'n'roll hero Billy Parker with a good deal of irony and chaplinesque attitude. The two roles, dirty old man of rock'n'roll and outlaw, reflect the artist's (ironic) view of his own person.
Bob Dylan's debut as a director at the film festival Cannes was Renaldo & Clara (1978), a four-hour film which has been widely though unjustly forgotten. He is the only filmmaker who really managed to adapt his own songs and that of fellow musicians to the screen without forcing a narrow-minded interpretation on the viewer. The poor technical quality as regards light, camera and sometimes sound in a large part of the film is contrasted by Dylan's brilliant but hard to follow technique of montage. Renaldo & Clara 's cut is not that of a feature film, but it follows special items such as God, love and American history. But most of all the cut interacts with the rhythm of Dylan's lyrics and his music. Probably because of the lack of filming technique and because of the highly unconventional cut Renaldo & Clara - a masterpiece of montage - is one of the most understimated rockfilms ever.
Uncle Matilda aka Christian Zeiser
christian.zeiser@hamburg.netsurf.de
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/3436/
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