

THE ROLLING STONES GIMME SHELTER MOVIE
Stream It or Skip It: 'A Christmas Proposal' on CBS Resurrects the Old Fashioned Major Network TV Movie Here Are the 6 Movies Being Released on Christmas Day 2021 Gimme Shelter leaves the viewer to decide which party was holding the hammer.Where to Watch ‘It's a Wonderful Life’ Online in 2021 Altamont, you could say, was the final nail in the coffin. Many people saw the Manson Family murders of actress Sharon Tate and her friends in August 1969 as the death of the ’60s dream. His expression is as empty as a jar of air. Near the end of Gimme Shelter, there’s a haunting freeze-frame of Jagger’s face as he walks away from watching the murder footage. While the approach distorts the tenets of direct cinema, it leads to revealing flashes of character. She had not joined the Maysles brothers during filming and thus had a more objective eye as an editor. It was co-director Charlotte Zwerin’s idea to have the Stones face their failures by viewing the footage. On some level, the concert’s uniquely chaotic locale was a result of the organizers’ desire for a little more money.

Gimme Shelter left out a crucial detail: Altamont Speedway was chosen in part because its operators weren’t asking for a cut of the film’s distribution rights, unlike another venue. The film’s non-interventionist stance led some reviewers to argue that the directors also had blood on their hands. In this moment, the Stones seem profoundly out of touch with the people they wanted so desperately to reach. During the band’s performance, the cameras drift over to a goateed man silently but distinctly pleading for help Jagger just keeps on dancing. While the Hells Angels play the film’s obvious villains, the Rolling Stones also emerge as unwitting enablers of the tragedy. There are no simple truths here, and no one is let off the hook. By showing the events without commentary, it places the power of judgement in the viewer’s hands. Gimme Shelter’s restraint in casting blame is both its greatest strength and its downfall. That both brothers studied psychology before turning to filmmaking seems a relevant detail.

Several years later, Albert and David Maysles would push direct cinema to its extremes with their portrayal of the reclusive Beale women in Grey Gardens. Unlike its French counterpart cinema vérite, which involves a greater degree of filmmaker intervention, direct cinema is strictly observational and strives to present the unaltered truth without analysis. By the late ’60s, the Maysles brothers were making waves as pioneers of direct cinema, a new type of documentary filmmaking driven by the rejection of traditional structures and the recent portability of AV equipment. The Maysles’ crew (including a young George Lucas) may have captured riveting performances by the Stones and their tourmates Ike and Tina Turner, but the final film reads more like a psychological study of power. Needless to say, Gimme Shelter is only somewhat a concert movie. “A young black man murdered in the midst of a white crowd by white thugs as white men played their version of black music-it was too much to kiss off as a mere unpleasantness,” critic Greil Marcus later wrote, chillingly. The film was repeatedly offered as evidence during the 1971 trial. Passaro claimed self defense himself, and in a horrific tale as old as time, he was acquitted of Hunter’s murder soon after the release of Gimme Shelter. Weeks after Altamont, a Rolling Stone exposé established that Hunter was trying to run away from the Hells Angels, who had just assaulted him after removing him from atop a speaker.
