When is Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story released on Netflix?
Radio Times's Terry Staunton gives Martin Scorsese's rockumentary five stars
Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary is set to be released on Netflix in June 2019. It is the legendary director's first film for the streaming service, ahead of his next feature The Irishman, which is due out later this year.
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Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese will take viewers back to 1975, when the folk singer hit the road with a busload of musicians for one of the most extraordinary tours of his long career.
Scorsese has restored hours of footage to bring the story to life once again.
Find out everything you need to know about Rolling Thunder Revue below.
When is Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese released on Netflix?
The documentary will arrive on Wednesday 12th June 2019.
Is there a trailer?
Yes - it sees present day Bob Dylan discussing the tour in his first on-camera interview in over a decade, with clips of live performances interspersed.
"It wasn't a success," the singer says. "Not if you measure success in terms of profit." However, the cultural impact of the tour seems to have been quite significant. Check it out below.
What is Rolling Thunder Revue about?
The film takes a look at a particularly experimental period of Bob Dylan's career, during which he put together a ramshackle crew that included Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg and Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the inspiration for the song of the same name.
"Setting out across a 1975 America exhausted politically, economically and socially, a busload of musicians – assembled by Bob Dylan – hits the road in search of new creative horizons," a release from Netflix reads. "The resulting tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue, would reveal a Dylan rarely seen: playful, mask-wearing, intense, expansive, rejuvenated. Masterfully capturing both an icon and a nation in transition, director Martin Scorsese tells the tale using footage that was abandoned for decades, now gorgeously restored, taking viewers into the heart of a freewheeling, electrifying musical gamble. Inspired by Dylan’s own restless spirit, Scorsese performs some breathtaking sleight of hand, summoning nostalgic fantasists, boxers, magicians, starlets and testifiers of all stripes, and exploding the boundaries of what makes a conventional documentary."
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese - Review
"In late-1975, after almost a decade away from the touring circuit, Bob Dylan set out across America with a revolving line-up of musicians and guest singers as the Rolling Thunder Revue, to put on some of the most memorable and iconic shows of Dylan's lengthy career.
Martin Scorsese pieces together the atmosphere and excitement of the tour through new interviews with Dylan himself, as well as major players such as Joan Baez, the late playwright/actor Sam Shepard, and actress Sharon Stone (back then a teenage wardrobe assistant), interspersed with painstakingly restored archive footage of the trek itself.
Dylan and Baez in particular are witty and self-effacing in their recollections, but the meat of this absorbing documentary is the backstage eavesdropping by the cameras and, especially, the electrifying concert sequences showing Dylan at the height of his performing powers.
As with Scorsese’s previous music-related projects (the earlier Dylan study No Direction Home, The Last Waltz and Shine a Light) the director’s passion and innate understanding of his subject grabs the viewer from the start and doesn’t let go until the end credits. The result is a film truly deserving of the word 'classic'." – Terry Staunton
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