An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.

By most accounts, the makeup was inspired by the 1945 French film Children of Paradise.

Dylan's passion for film continued in New York, often at the Waverly Theater on Sixth Avenue, minutes from his pad. Two films impressed him during the year, he told me. Lonely Are the Brave starred Kirk Douglas as an individualist in a modern West that was being eroded by supermarkets and superhighways. The hero failed, pursuing ideals, being blotted out by "progress". The other film was A Face in the Crowd, from a Budd Schulberg story. It starred Andy Griffith as a guitar-picking "country boy" who became a celebrity, affecting advertising, TV, and, ultimately, national politics.

There was an art movie house in the Village on 12th Street that showed foreign movies – French, Italian, German. This made sense, because even Alan Lomax himself, the great folk archivist, had said somewhere that if you want to get out to America, go to Greenwich Village. I’d seen a couple of Italian Fellini movies there – one called La Strada, which means “The Street,” and another one called La Dolce Vita. It was about a guy who sells his soul and becomes a gossip hound. It looked like life in a carnival mirror except it didn’t show any monster freaks – just real people in a freaky way. I watched it intently, thinking that I might not see it again.

There was an art movie house in the Village on 12th Street that showed foreign movies – French, Italian, German. This made sense, because even Alan Lomax himself, the great folk archivist, had said somewhere that if you want to get out to America, go to Greenwich Village. I’d seen a couple of Italian Fellini movies there – one called La Strada, which means “The Street,” and another one called La Dolce Vita. It was about a guy who sells his soul and becomes a gossip hound. It looked like life in a carnival mirror except it didn’t show any monster freaks – just real people in a freaky way. I watched it intently, thinking that I might not see it again.

Dylan's passion for film continued in New York, often at the Waverly Theater on Sixth Avenue, minutes from his pad. Two films impressed him during the year, he told me. Lonely Are the Brave starred Kirk Douglas as an individualist in a modern West that was being eroded by supermarkets and superhighways. The hero failed, persuing ideals, being blotted out by "progress".

Bob Dylan’s high school classmate Larry Hoikkala, after the two of them saw “The Blackboard Jungle”: Bob couldn’t believe it. … he kept saying, “This is really great! This is exactly what we’ve been trying to tell people about ourselves… Looking back that film really changed our lives because for the first time, we felt it was talking directly to us.

Almost overnight Bobby metamorphosed from a wussy squirt into Hibbing’s protopunk. Ge redid himself from head to toe, like a fashion model undergoing a beauty makeover. Along with another impressionable school chum, Bobby made a beeline for Feldman’s basement, the uncharted bluye-collar section of the store, where he picked out stuff Levi’s, black biker’s boots, and a leather motorcycle jacket similar to the one Brando wore in The Wild One.

It was at the State Theater, in the fall of 1955, that a movie and its enigmatic star gave Bobby the first peek at the combustible properties of attitude and self-expression. On a crisp autumn day, he sat mesmerized by the premier showing of Rebel Without a Cause, a stagy morality play about teenage restlessness in suburbia… It ever the term “born-again” applied to Bob Dylan it was then, following this celluloid revelation. He had gotten a glimpse of the future up on the screen in the form of James Dean, teenage rebel, and it appealed to his sensibility.