1965/2012. Ireland/USA. Peter Withehead/Mick Gochanour. 65 min.
1966/67. Great Britain. Peter Whitehead. 8 min.
1965/2012. Ireland/USA. Directed by Peter Withehead/Mick Gochanour. The most anticipated movie of MoMA’s Rolling Stones retrospective has, at long last, been synched and digitally restored after an absence of some 45 years. We end with the band just getting their start, as 29-year-old “direct cinema” documentarian Peter Whitehead—the most astute chronicler of cultural upheaval in sixties London—follows the Stones during their two-city tour to Dublin and Belfast. Having been invited only the week before by manager Andrew Loog Oldham, Whitehead ostensibly records four concerts, but finds his richest and most spontaneous material behind the scenes, capturing generational and class tensions, and a kind of inchoate longing, that followed the Stones wherever they went. The idolatry of fan worship is evoked in starry-eyed teenybopper-in-the-street interviews and in the frenzied mods who storm the stage, anticipating the violence of Gimme Shelter only four years later; while the musicians themselves, adjusting to their newfound fame, offer up aperçus that are at times funny (Mick Jagger doing his best Elvis impersonation), at times endearingly awkward, but always revealing. “The title, of course, refers to Charlie Watts, the tall, taciturn drummer of the crew,” wrote the Variety critic in 1966. Josef von Sternberg, of all people, pronounced Charlie Is My Darling “a very beautiful film; it is, and will remain, a very valuable social document.” This new 2012 version of the film with added never-before-seen footage was directed and restored by director Mick Gochanour and producer Robin Klein. Courtesy ABKCO Music & Records. Digital projection. 65 min.
1966/67. Great Britain. Directed by Peter Whitehead. 8 min.
