1001 Movies Club - Gimme Shelter (1970)

#519. Gimmy Shelter (1970)

Why It's In The Book: "Rock documentaries are generally prosaic affairs, at best good extended promotional films for their subjects, at worst overlong pop videos with bad interviews. There are noble exceptions… The most alarming and dramatically satisfying rock documentary must surely be the Maysles Brothers’ Gimme Shelter, released in 1970, a film of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 tour. With its narrative structure – partially imposed rather than vérité-style inherent – and its climax, the disastrous, tragic free concert at Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969, Gimme Shelter is a harrowing, exciting social commentary and rock-‘n’-roll all at the same time… This is a directed narrative, product of Albert and David Maysles’s (and editor/codirector Charlotte Zwerin’s) belief in Direct Cinema, which uses techniques drawn from “fictional” movie-making and applied them to nonfiction works… The movie helped seal the image both of the Stones as rock devils and, more important, of Altamont as the Anti-Woodstock, as negative closure to the 1960s… That may be debatable, but the force and the drama of this documentary are not." -1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Member Ratings

Nicolas Krizan - 9/10
"how the largely improvised free mega-concert at Altamont becomes a logistic nightmare, effectively murdering the sixties"
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Movie Guy Steve - 8/10
"It’s a powerful film, but I’ll humbly suggest that it’s easier going down if you love The Rolling Stones."
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Squish - 8/10
" Gimme Shelter is a documentary about the world’s best music ruined by its own dark context - on purpose."
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Adolytsi - 7/10
"This would otherwise be a typical documentary, until the story of the Altamont Free Concert comes into play,  where the film crosses into uneasy territory as it presents what happened as objectively as it can."
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Kim Wilson - 7/10
" 'Gimme Shelter' is my all-time favorite Rolling Stones’ song, so I had exceptionally high hopes for this 1970 Maysles Brothers’ documentary—I was sorely disappointed.  Now, I’m not saying Gimme Shelter is a bad film—because it’s not—but is it really one of the 1001 (1089 as of last count) movies I must see before I die? I think not."
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Siochembio - 7/10
"I don’t need any crotch shots of Keith Richards."
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Jay Cluitt - 5/10
"Sadly all this film left me with was an increased desire to re-watch Spinal Tap."
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Overall Rating: 7.2/10