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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Winstar
Salesrank: 52144
Released: November 16, 1999 |
| Our Price: $33.88 |
| Used Price: $19.32 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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| Features:
Black & White Color DVD NTSC | |
Editorial Review:
This 1965 Canadian documentary captures Leonard Cohen just as he was poised to translate his notoriety as a novelist and poet into a parallel identity as a singer-songwriter. If the latter role would bring him his broadest and most enduring audience, these glimpses of a still youthful Cohen underscore the Montreal native's prevailing literary sensibilities--even when his poetry readings verge on standup routines, both for his impish wit and the adulation it inspires among his listeners, Cohen's serious craft shines through.
Indeed, the film--shot in black and white and laced with a jazzy instrumental score that suggests a Québecois spin on European cinema--argues that Cohen began as both a peer and an inversion of Bob Dylan. Whereas Dylan's deceptively rough-hewn songs were transcended by their poetry, Cohen transformed his poems into songs. Cohen's self-conscious intellectualism now seems conservative alongside Dylan's cagier, more ambivalent slant on culture, which he lampooned even as he revealed its influence.
Given the film's evident preoccupation with Cohen's poetry and novels, we're given only brief snippets of his music, which confirm his primitive skills as a performer. More interesting is the eerie resemblance the young poet bears to Dustin Hoffman. This home video release augments the original documentary with four animated shorts based on Cohen's songs and poems. --Sam Sutherland
Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen Reviews:
So Young, Yet So Deep, And So Modest 
2009-05-20 - Montreal, 1964. Black and white. Streets, studios, lecture halls, cafes, his home. It's amazing to me how Leonard Cohen was so very, very wise at so young an age. It's also amazing to me how much his poems even then show how much he knows about the Torah. The Raven and The Dove is recited to a full house listening intently to his words and voice. Leonard Cohen transends description.
Leonard Cohen, what a legend.
2007-03-08 - I really enjoyed this intimate insite into the early years of Leonard Cohen's life. He allows an opportunity to see the world as he sees it, and allows the viewer an opportunity to see how he shapes those observations into poetry. I was unexpectedly surprised at all sorts of things in this dvd, and was so disappointed when it ended. Long live Leonard Cohen, he is a gift to us all. A great watch.
Ladies and Gentlemen...Mr. Leonard Cohen 
2007-01-19 - Love Leonard Cohen, but this particular item disappointed us immensely.
Well done movie 
2006-08-25 - I enjoyed this movie. Nice to watch after seeing the I'm Your Man movie in the theatre.
Leonard Cohen as a young man.
2006-08-14 - When the new movie on Mr. Cohen came out in June "I'm Your Man" I wanted to see this CBC Documentary. It is a fantastic look at Leonard when he was an up and coming poet. You will never again get a look at the man as a contemporary in the mid 1960's. Paired with the new movie at the end of his career in the 21st century you will have an amazingly true biography.
The Alpha and the Omega as it were.
