The most important talking head missing from “Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation” belongs to Bob Dylan, whose career was made in the basement clubs and coffeehouses this documentary explores.
Dylan’s already been here, in fairness. His wonderful 2004 memoir “Chronicles” was partly about New York’s Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, a folk-music haven that frankly comes to life more vividly in Dylan’s writing than in this nicely intentioned movie.
The film has its appeal, however. It’s a string of anecdotes and music from the people who were on the scene, and while the combination feels slightly disorganized, it creates a mosaic that conveys the era.
Greenwich Village became the epicenter of this moment in part because it offered affordable housing, and in part because of a hang-loose attitude that allowed people to be different: oddballs, eggheads and beatniks were encouraged, not ostracized.
The folk music boom of the 1950s segued naturally into the protest-music movement of the 1960s, spearheaded by people like Pete Seeger. Now a nonagenarian, the once-blacklisted Seeger can still turn a radical phrase with the best of them.
An early high point for the film focuses on a 1961 day when folk met protest head-on in the Village’s Washington Square. The singers who gathered on Sunday afternoons to perform their songs were faced down by policemen enforcing a new anti-singing law (instigated, one assumes, not as music criticism but as a way of quashing suspicious-sounding ideas about world peace).
The group began to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” out loud, which was deemed provocation enough for the authorities to crack down. The day, documented on film, marks a useful moment for how music can fuel dissent.
Dylan’s not present to comment, but of course he’s talked about here. We learn a lot about the other folkies on the scene, too. Interview snippets include Judy Collins, John Sebastian, Carly Simon, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Peter Yarrow, and a couple dozen other witnesses to the moment.
Director Laura Archibald strings together these vignettes with lines from a memoir by Suze Rotolo (read in voiceover by Susan Sarandon). Rotolo is best known as the Dylan girlfriend who walks with him on the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” but she played a large role in his political awareness, too.
Alas, these excerpts are mostly generic. A lot of the movie plays that way: generally interesting, occasionally inspirational, and — importantly — with good examples of the strong music that was wafting out of the Village streets.
If you’re a music fan, or interested in the history of culture, that’ll be enough to justify checking out the film. You had to be there — but if you weren’t, this is a good start.
“Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation” (three stars)
Despite this documentary’s disorganized feel, it’s a good starting place for learning about the New York folk music scene in the early 1960s. The list of talking heads is led by the likes of Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and Carly Simon (no Bob Dylan, but we hear a lot about him), and thankfully there’s a lot of good music around.
Rated: Not rated; probably PG-13 for subject matter.
Showing: Grand Illusion.
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