GIMME SHELTER
Dir. Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin | USA 1970 | 91min.

WITH SPECIAL VIDEO INTRODUCTION FROM ALBERT MAYSLES

This 1970 release benefits from a horrifying serendipity in the timing of the shoot, which brought the filmmakers aboard as the Rolling Stones' tumultuous 1969 American tour neared its end. By following the band to the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco for a fatally mismanaged free concert, the filmmakers wound up shooting what's been accurately dubbed rock's equivalent to the Zapruder film. The cameras caught the ominous undercurrents of violence palpable even before the first chords were strummed, and were still rolling when a concertgoer was stabbed to death by the Hell's Angels that served as the festival's pool cue-wielding security force. By the time Gimme Shelter reached theater screens, Altamont was a fixed symbol for the death of the 1960s' spirit of optimism. Gimme Shelter looks into an abyss, partly self-created, from which the Rolling Stones would retreat - but unlike its subject, the filmmakers don't blink. (Sam Sutherland)

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