"Gimme Shelter" and the Absolution of Morality

 

On December 13th 1970, Albert and David Maysles released their documentary film Gimme Shelter, one year after the release of the Rolling Stones song that is the namesake of the film, as well as one year after the infamous Altamont Free Concert, which is the subject matter of the documentary. As part of the ‘Direct Cinema’ movement, Gimme Shelter was made with the intention of depicting the truth - or a truth - in regards to the events of the Altamont Free Concert and the circumstances that led to the tragedies that occurred, without an intervention from the Maysles Brothers, who positioned themselves as observers. This calls into question whether it would have been better for the Maysles Brothers to have taken a more active role during the events of the documentary whilst filming, or if it was their duty as documentary film-makers to stay back and only observe in their pursuit of document the ‘truth’ of the events without interference from an external factor (i.e. the film-makers).

The film opens with the first concert of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 tour at Madison Square Garden. This footage comes from what was originally to be a one-off recording of a concert, but the Maysles Brothers asked the band if they could continue to document their tour - including their meetings and rehearsals - to which the Stones agreed. This gives the opening more context and more significance, as not only is it the earliest point chronologically, but also emphasises that the Rolling Stones retained their ‘innocence’ in regards to the events depicted in the documentary, because they were yet to happen at the time of filming. It also helps inform the status and reputation of the Rolling Stones before the events of the Altamont Free Concert - this is further illustrated by the inclusion of shots of some Stones members dressing up and enjoying themselves during the photoshoot of their Get Yer Ya-Yas Out album cover on the empty freeway, demonstrating their carefree, rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, an image that would later be countered by showing the aftermath of the Concert. 

The opening is then proceeded by the first shots of the Rolling Stones with the Maysles Brothers in the editing suite, looking over the current cut of the documentary. This seeming breakdown of the fourth wall - as it shows that what we in the audience are watching has been manufactured in some way - is actually in keeping with the Direct Cinema movement that was popular in the 1960s. Paul Monaco describes it as; 

“… the result of two predominant and related factors - The desire for a new cinematic realism and the development of the equipment necessary to achieving that desire. …” (2003, pg. 206)

Direct Cinema, as a spiritual successor or sibling to the contemporary cinéma vérité, shares its goals of featuring real life and presenting it to an audience and the methods of filming that real life, primarily in a hand-held camera style. The difference between the two movements, however, is the role of the film-makers and the camera within the film itself; documentary film-maker and Roehampton University professor Michael Chanan writes;

“Nevertheless, there seemed to be a difference, and [Eric] Barnouw summed it up: Direct Cinema aspired to the camera’s invisibility, cinéma vérité considered it a participant; in Direct Cinema, the film-maker played the role of uninvolved bystander, in vérité, that of provocateur.” (2007, pg. 280)

Taking these definitions into account, it might be argued that Gimme Shelter is not purely Direct Cinema, taking elements of cinéma vérité for the sequences filmed after the main body of events at the Altamont Free Concert. The editing suite sequences not only break the illusion of the film being pure reality, but also include the Maysles Brothers interacting with the Stones, discussing the editing process. These traces of cinéma vérité are not surprising when considering the Maysles Brothers’, as well as their co-director and editor Charlotte Zwerin’s previous involvement in the cinéma vérité movement. 

But these sequences are the exception within the rest of the film, which is decidedly more Direct Cinema in the role of the Maysles Brothers and their cameras play in the narrative, as in a non-active role. The majority of the documentary shows the events of the tour as they progress, including the meetings with the Rolling Stones, the attorney Melvin Belli and the management team of the Altamont Speedway to arrange the Free Concert. These meetings may perhaps have been an opportunity for the Maysles Brothers to intercede with some advice or recommendations about the concert, particularly in regards to the hiring of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang as security for the event. 

This of course calls into question the objective nature of Direct Cinema and the morality of hindsight; if the Maysles Brothers knew what would happen, would they have acted differently? This cannot be answered simply for various reasons. Firstly, this moral question is based on the knowledge of the consequences of actions or inactions of individuals during the documentary, knowledge not available to those individuals at the time of the recording - in the context of Gimme Shelter, only the audience viewing the events after the fact are aware of what will happen, giving us a hindsight bias.

In the early 1970s, a study into the phenomenon of hindsight bias was conducted by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, where they asked participants to access the likelihood of different possible outcomes of President Richard Nixon’s visits to Moscow and Beijing. After the visits were complete, the participants were asked to recall what outcomes they had predicted were the most likely. What they found was that the recalled predictions were different from the original predictions, often overestimated in comparison, giving credence to what would be called the “I knew it would happen” or the “Knew it all along” hypothesis, the former being used as the title of the paper Tversky and Kahneman published on this experiment.

In relation to Gimme Shelter, because we in the audience are presented with the aftermath of the Altamont Free Concert before seeing the actual concert, we become predisposed to the hindsight bias, and because of this, we may also expect that same bias to be shared by the Maysles Brothers, the Rolling Stones and the other people present for the arrangements of the concert and the concert itself. And because of this, we may impose a higher - and probably unfair - moral standard on the people involved, and perhaps assign blame, despite the fact that they could not possibly know exactly what would happen. So determining the ethics and moral responsibility on the Maysles Brothers’ part is too nebulous and dubious to do justifiably and without any doubt in mind.

However, through some of the editing decisions made do seem to implicant someone with the blame; Mick Jagger is the focus of two scenes which seems to imply this. In the early scene set during the aftermath, we see the Rolling Stones listening to the KSAN radio station’s report on the Altamont Free Concert, which included a call from the leader of the Hells Angels, Ralph “Sonny” Barger, who recalls, “They told me if I could sit on the edge of the stage so nobody could climb over me, I could drink beer until the show was over.” During this sequence, the camera focuses on Mick Jagger’s reaction, particularly when Sonny Barger explicitly names Jagger as the one responsible for what happened. Despite showing Jagger’s look of indignation and bewilderment by this, including this accusation - especially near the beginning - keeps Mick Jagger as a candidate for blame throughout the rest of the documentary, and makes the audience keep this in mind and almost look to pin-point the moments where Jagger does something that justified assigning the blame to him.

The second scene to implicant Mick Jagger as the responsible party is at the very end of the film, where he is reviewing the footage of the attack on Meredith Hunter by the Hells Angel Alan Passaro, which was incited by Hunter’s attempt to get onto the stage. Passaro, as part of an overzealous security team compromised of the Hells Angels, prevented Hunter from getting on stage, causing Hunter to draw his revolver, in turn causing Passaro to stab him at least six times, resulting eventually in the death of Hunter. After seeing this footage, Mick Jagger gets up to leave, and there is a freeze-frame and zoom on his face, done in a style reminiscent of how a criminal’s mugshot might be shown in other documentaries or on the news. It is unclear whether the Maysles Brothers truly believe that Mick Jagger is wholly responsible or if they were going off what footage they had, or if they were incorporating Jagger’s reputation as a culturally symbolic devil of the 1960s - having “referred to [himself] as ‘the devil’ and he even performed a song Sympathy for the Devil.” (Scheurer 1989, pg. 165)

This portrayal of Mick Jagger also calls into question whether it was responsible of the Maysles Brothers to do this, as it is not clear whether Jagger is the only one who should carry the blame. The Hells Angels are shown throughout the events of the concert looking and operating in an intimidating manner, armed with pool cues and alcohol, yet the documentary does not seem to explicitly assign responsibility to them for their part in what happened to Meredith Hunter. Nor does Hunter or the other members of the audience seem to be held accountable for how they behaved during the concert. The Maysles Brothers themselves were present for all the events in the lead-up to the concert as well as the concert itself, and as objective outsiders to the Rolling Stones, they could have interceded with some advice. Considering this, it might be argued that the Maysles Brothers are being unethical in this regard, only assigning blame to Mick Jagger when they were other parties who might also be considered responsible for the events of the Altamont Free Concert.

This may be countered by the Maysles Brothers’ position as the objective observers that absolves them of responsibility of what happens, as it was their job to not interfere and to document what occurred. This has been a debate within the documentary film-making community - Roger Graef is quoted as saying;

“What we’re doing with our vérité films is saying that in real life the way you learn is by experiencing things, by sharing things. Just simply being in a situation and decoding it. Your brain has to work to figure out what’s going on. [… ] We’re trying to make the viewer work hard. And they do work hard when they stay with our films and are surprised and delighted in the end that they have stayed through an hour’s struggle about an investment of ten million pounds in a steel mill or whatever.” (Rosenthal 1980, pg. 175)

We can apply this to the Maysles Brothers’ practise, as they document the events by experiencing them through the camera, and then take the footage and share it with us in the audience, and in Graef’s opinion, that is all the documentary film-maker is to do, especially those working within the Direct Cinema movement, as it is closely related to the vérité movement that Graef directly references. This stance can be supported by D.A. Pennebaker, who wrote;

“Neither side quite knows the rules. The cameraman (myself) can only film what happens. There are no retakes. I never attempted to direct or control the action. People said whatever they wanted and did whatever. The choice of action lay always with the person being filmed.” (Marcorelles 1973, pg. 25)

Taking this into account, we can determine that, at least within the documentary film-making community, the Maysles Brothers were obligated to remain passive and objective in their documentation of the events leading up to the Altamont Free Concert, as it would have been the only way to get a truly authentic and accurate depiction of what happened. However members of the audience may feel inclined to question this moral exception on the part of the Maysles Brothers, especially when considering that it is their and Charlotte Zwerin’s editing that leads us to come to certain conclusions about who is responsible for what is depicted in Gimme Shelter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Chapman, J. (2007). Documentary in practice; Polity Press.

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Grant, Barry Keith & Sloniowski, Jeannette (Ed.). (1998). Documenting the documentary: Close readings of documentary film and video; Wayne State University Press.

Bibb, P. (Producer), & Maysles, A. &. D. (Director). (1970). Gimme shelter. [Motion Picture]; Maysles Films, Cinema V (UK), 20th Century Fox (US). 

Radano, Ronald & Bohlman, Philip V. (Ed.). (2000). Music and the racial imagination; The University of Chicago Press.

Rosenthal, A. (1980). The documentary conscience: A casebook in film making; University of California Press.

Scheurer, T. E. (Ed.). (1989). American popular music volume 2: The age of rock: Readings from the popular press; Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

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Wiggins, D. (2006). Ethics: Twelve lectures on the philosophy of morality; Penguin Books Ltd.