Gimme Shelter (1970)

From my favorite movies..

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time: The Rolling Stones decide to hold a free concert at Altamont Speedway in San Francisco, California in which the Hell's Angels were hired as security. Not surprisingly, the presence of the hostile bikers caused everything to degenerate into chaos and violence that culminated in the murder of an audience member that's often referred to as a bleak example of the dismal failure of the hippie love generation. However, the Hell's Angels alone can't be entirely blamed for what went wrong. For starters, the dark and harsh content of the music by the Stones comes across like an invitation to violence. Moreover, a lot of the people in the audience were clearly wasted on bad drugs that only compounded the severity of an already dire situation. Plus the whole thing was hastily thrown together at the last minute.Directors Charlotte Zwerin and Albert and David Maysles wisely let the footage speak for itself as well as vividly capture a potently unnerving sense of dread and unease. The Rolling Stones are in peak form, with Mick Jagger in particular strutting about on stage like a magnificent arrogant peacock. Better still, their performances of such terrific classics as "Satisfaction," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Street Fighting Man," and "Sympathy for the Devil" are quite exciting to behold. Sadly, this film also serves as proof positive that the naïve peace'n'love ideology of the hippie generation was basically destined to crash and burn; Jagger's sincere, but meek pleas for the crowd to cool it are especially heartbreaking to hear. A riveting and terrifying chronicle of the tragic end of an era.

A documentary crew tails the Rolling Stones for a leg of their 1969 North American tour and unwittingly captures one of the nastiest, bloodiest all-day concerts in music history - the infamous Altamont Speedway show. Mostly pieced together from ambient hand-held shots taken on the day of the festival and shown sans narration, it's a stunning stream-of-consciousness presentation of the crowds, cultures and events leading up to the angry, violent personality of the gig itself. It's stunning just how little foresight and planning went into this event, as two days beforehand organizers were still trying to settle on a venue with little or no mind paid to such vital elements as parking, waste management or security. Maybe that kind of mindset would have worked for a small or mid-sized show, but with a crowd in excess of 300,000 showing up to take in what was being portrayed as "Woodstock of the West," the only possible outcome of such an awful strategy is total, unmitigated chaos. And that's what they got, as a pushy, balls-tripping audience ran headlong into a moody, fight-spoiling security outfit and lit a set of tragic fireworks. A painfully slow degradation of civility and humanity set to music, it's a dark counterpoint to the radiant, optimistic attitudes seen at Woodstock.

October 1969 marked a month of tragedy for rock and roll. The Rolling Stones were on their US tour when they stopped to play a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in San Francisco. It was a concert event that was supposed to be the Woodstock of the West, but it ended up being just the opposite. Hell's Angels were hired for security and, as the chaos of the show ascended, the Angels became more and more violent towards the crowd until the night ended in the stabbing and murdering of at least one of the concert goers. Gimme Shelter is the documentary which focuses on this tragic occurrence in brutal detail. The film mixes concert footage of the Rolling Stones, footage of the night at Altamont, as well as the band watching and reflecting on that terrible night. It's an extraordinary and harrowing film which will shake you to your core as you watch the raw, unedited footage taken at Altamont and the unending brutality which seems so unnecessary and so easily preventable. It's a remarkably disturbing experience to watch Gimme Shelter.I honestly believe it was a stroke of genius to make this film so simple. There was no need to tamper with the Altamont footage or add anything extraneous to it. Gimme Shelter is perfect in the way it just shows us all of the actual footage from the concert, as well as leading up to the concert. There's no narration, no extra pictures or clips. It is just the footage put together in a way that details that terrible night in the straightest way possible. There could not be a more thorough account of the events at Altamont. This is the finest way to view something this out of the ordinary. The footage we watch in Gimme Shelter is stunning and unforgettable. It's safe to assume that 99% of the audience at that show was on acid, and the results are amazing to watch. There is an incredible amount of footage of people having wild acid trips, doing all sorts of bizarre things. It is amusing to watch at first, but quickly becomes deadly when Hell's Angels are introduced into the equation. Thus we have a scenario that is nerve racking to witness unfold and we are then filled with immense anxiety and dread as the situation grows into the tragedy it morphed into by the end of the night.Of course, what makes Gimme Shelter more than just a simple reflection on the tragedy at Altamont Speedway is the footage of the Rolling Stones watching the Altamont footage and reflecting on it all. The shock and awe is very obvious in their reactions and hearing what they have to say about it is fascinating. They don't say much about it because of all the shock, but they say enough and they display enough body language to convey their loss for words at this event and how horrified they are that something like this had to happen under their watch. This is possibly the saddest aspect of the entire situation. The fact that someone was murdered is horrific enough, but the fact that it had to happen in the name of rock and roll is deafeningly sad. It is painful to watch the messages of peace and love flourish in that concert audience, only to be violently contrasted by the over reactions of Hell's Angels. It's a sickening occurrence that seems to evoke more innate sadness than anger. It's terrible to watch but it makes Gimme Shelter one of the most powerful and provocative documentaries you will ever see. This film is an incredible experience that you will not soon forget.

It wasn't one of the Rolling Stones' smarter ideas to hire the Hells Angels as security for their Woodstock cash-in at San Francisco's Altamont Speedway Free Festival in 1969. Oh, and how do we pay them for services rendered? Hmm, let's see - $500 in beer ought to do it.David and Albert Maysles' notorious documentary-cum-snuff movie captures the madness - and murder - that ensued, as a young, black Meredith Hunter is stabbed to death by the Angels live on camera, while the Stones' frontman whimpers from the stage: "Who's fighting and what for? Everybody be cool now." Memo to Jagger: You're not some conduit for Satan, you're a mincing, top-hatted, former drop-out from the London School of Economics, and you're completely out of your depth.