Why the Band's 'The Last Waltz' Is the Greatest Concert Movie of All Time

THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD!

And then we begin at the end, with the weary members of the Band shuffling onstage to hoarse cheers. "You're still here, huh?" asks guitarist Robbie Robertson. "We're gonna do one more song, and that's it." Drummer Levon Helm stretches; bassist Rick Danko smokes a cigarette and wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. They've been at this five or more hours now, poring through their back catalog and backing every celebrity guest along for the ride. Along with pianist Richard Manuel and multi-instrumental mastermind Garth Hudson, they tear into a funky "Don't Do It," their customized cover of Marvin Gaye's "Baby Don't You Do It." After the last note, Robertson says, "Good night. Goodbye." Exit, stage left.

Graham often said that Scorsese and company "missed it," because the lack of attention paid to the people who paid their $25 to dig Bob Dylan looking like, per Roberston, "a Christ in a white hat." There was no sense of community, he griped. But there's an incredible sense of the community onstage that gets captured by making this a performance film first and foremost, and that was exactly what Scorsese was after. The director wasn't interested, he said, in showing two girls giggling and then cutting to Rick Danko looking like a Tiger Beat pin-up; he wanted to see Helm shooting Danko a glance as they lock into the beat and go into the bridge of "Ophelia." It's as cinematic a rendering of the alchemy that musicians – and especially those five Band members – produce when they're caught in that spotlight. 

Even if you don't know that The Last Waltz actually begins with the show's final number, you sense the one-more-for-the-road vibe. It's the film's very last musical interlude, however, that reminds you that you've watched both an extraordinary concert movie and something more than that. As the group plucks out the instrumental "Last Waltz Suite," the movie pulls back from Robertson's guitar to include Danko on an upright bass; we rotate and Manuel, playing a lap-steel guitar, comes in to the frame, as does Helm on mandolin and Hudson behind a bank of organs. They're playing together. The film is still playing it loud. The movie and the music are fused now. The camera pulls back farther and farther, until the shadows of these men loom larger, very large over the musicians themselves. Right before the credits roll, the Band have become dwarfed by the darkness around them, but they still keep playing. Until they don't. Good night. Goodbye.