--- title: "Gimme Shelter" year: 1970 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/gimme-shelter" fi1m_score: 78 critics_score: 64 critics_reviews: 8 published: "2026-09-17T04:46:36.003972+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T04:46:59.250247+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Gimme Shelter (1970) Directed by Charlotte Zwerin, David Maysles, Albert Maysles · 1h 32m · Documentary, Music **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics 64 from 8 reviews *In a sentence:* Mick Jagger asks a crowd stretching to the horizon to be cool, from a stage about the height of a kerb > The Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin filmed the Rolling Stones at their peak, then filmed the concert at Altamont that ended the decade. Superb for an hour, frightening after that, and it lets the band off more lightly than it should. ## Synopsis It is late November 1969 and the Rolling Stones are finishing an American tour with two nights at Madison Square Garden in New York. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and new guitarist Mick Taylor play to a packed hall while tour manager Sam Cutler runs the show from the wings. In a San Francisco office the lawyer Melvin Belli works the speakerphone, trying to find a site for a free concert in California to close the tour, and speedway owner Dick Carter offers his track at Altamont. Between these scenes Jagger and Watts sit at an editing machine watching the footage. Something at Altamont went badly wrong, and the film is heading there. ## Review In November 1969 the Rolling Stones ended an American tour with two nights at Madison Square Garden, and somebody had the idea of a free concert in California to round things off. *Gimme Shelter* is what Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin came back with. For about an hour of its 92 minutes it is one of the best concert films we know. For the rest it is something harder to sit through and harder to name. We think it is worth your evening, and we think you should know what you are sitting down to. The film’s device is to put the band in the cutting room. Jagger and Charlie Watts sit at an editing machine and watch the footage we are about to see, and the directors cut back to them at intervals. It is a shrewd piece of construction. It tells us early that something went wrong at Altamont, so the Garden shows arrive with a shadow over them, and it lets us watch Jagger’s face as he takes in what his audience did. Watts, who says almost nothing, is the one we kept looking at. Albert and David Maysles shoot the New York concerts from the stage with handheld cameras, close enough to catch the sweat, and they let the songs run. Robert Farren, Joanne Burke, Ellen Giffard and Kent McKinney do not chop a performance into fragments to prove they were there; “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” plays through and we see how a band this good actually works, which is by watching each other. The best scene has no audience at all. In a studio in Alabama the band listens to a playback of “Wild Horses”, Richards lying back with his boots on the console, and nobody speaks, and the film is content to let a room be quiet. Then the business. Belli, all cufflinks and telephone, negotiates a venue as if it were a property deal, which it was. Dick Carter offers his speedway a day or two before the show. Cutler tries to hold it together. What the film shows next is a stage barely above head height, a crowd stretching to the horizon, and the Hells Angels, hired to keep order, standing on the stage with pool cues. Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane is knocked down mid-song. Jagger steps off a helicopter and is punched in the face before he has reached the trailer. We were frightened, and we were watching a film made fifty-odd years ago about people we knew had gone home. The Maysles cameras are in the crush, and they cannot always see what is happening, and that is what frightened us: a cue comes down, a body goes over, the frame shakes and loses it. Jagger stops the music again and again to ask everybody to cool out, in a cape, in a voice that has never sounded younger, and it does nothing at all. Here is the complaint, and it is a fair one. The film asks the Stones to judge their own footage and then accepts their silence as a verdict. Nobody asks who hired the Angels, who built the stage that low, who let the crowd wait through a cold day for a band that arrived at dusk. Sonny Barger of the Angels gets to make his case on a radio phone-in; the people who signed the contracts do not have to make theirs. The camera also cannot leave Jagger alone. Richards, Wyman and Taylor pass through the film mostly as hair and hands, and a documentary about a band’s worst night might have wondered what the rest of the band thought. [*Woodstock*](https://film.one/film/woodstock), released the same year, is the sunny version of this decade, three days of mud and goodwill. *Gimme Shelter* is its answer, and the two make a grim double bill. See this one for the Garden shows, for the quiet room in Alabama, and for Watts at the editing machine, looking at the screen as if it might change its mind. *Fi1m score 78, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come down in favour of Gimme Shelter, though not by a wide margin. The praise gathers around the Maysles brothers and Zwerin’s construction: the film moves from tour footage towards the Altamont concert with a dread several reviewers find hard to shake, and it does so without commentary or talking heads. Jagger’s performances are singled out again and again, mesmerising on stage and withdrawn off it, and more than one critic ranks the film among the best rock documentaries made. The reservations are about ethics rather than craft. Pauline Kael in The New Yorker argues the film shapes events to let the Stones and the filmmakers off the hook while trading on the violence, and Time Out faults it for staring at Jagger and never asking what the musicians owed the crowd. The New York Times finds it skilfully shot and edited but bleak to the point of being unwatchable. The spread is wide, from outright dismissal to landmark. ### Reviews we read (8) - **Film Comment** (90/100, inferred): The critic hails Gimme Shelter as the Maysles brothers and Zwerin's greatest film, centering on the Rolling Stones' catastrophic 1969 Altamont concert. It praises the film's clear construction, the way it forces the Stones to confront their image, and its status as a landmark of nonfiction cinema. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/albert-maysles/) - **The Guardian** (80/100, inferred): The critic highlights how the restored documentary captures the dread surrounding the Altamont concert and the Rolling Stones' music-making, while underscoring the limits of the era's peace-and-love ideals. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/06/gimme-shelter-rolling-stones-dvd) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (**): The film offers a riveting close-up of the Stones in performance, with Jagger emerging offstage as withdrawn and onstage as mesmerizing and petulant. It builds to the violent Altamont finale captured in the documentary. [Read](https://variety.com/1969/film/reviews/gimme-shelter-1200422222/) - **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (50/100, inferred): The review questions the ethics and structure of the cinéma-vérité approach, noting how the film shapes events to whitewash the Stones and filmmakers while exploiting the Altamont violence and Jagger's performances. It highlights the disturbing pathos and the complications of filming events staged for the camera. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/12/19/beyond-pirandello) - **Time Out**, GA (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a bummer, criticizing its near-constant focus on Mick Jagger and its failure to probe the musicians' responsibility for the Altamont murder. It nonetheless serves as a reminder that the 1960s were not solely about peace and love. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/gimme-shelter) - **The New York Times** (30/100, inferred): The film is described as one of the most unpleasant, bleak, and depressing movies encountered, despite skilled photography and editing of the Altamont events and Stones tour. It questions the profit motives and quasi-factual presentation of the disaster. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/13/archives/making-murder-pay-gimme-shelter.html) - **NME**, Jeremy Allen (90/100, inferred): The post calls Gimme Shelter one of the greatest rock documentaries ever made for capturing the Stones' Altamont concert and the murder that occurred there without commentary or talking heads. It contrasts its raw, committed approach with more polished later music docs. [Read](https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/leave-music-documentaries-to-the-amateurs-23611) - **The Skinny**, Lewis Porteous (70/100, inferred): The piece describes Gimme Shelter as a documentary heavy on concert footage of the Rolling Stones leading to the disastrous Altamont concert. It highlights how the event's violence and logistical failures mark the end of the 1960s counterculture dream. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/cineskinny/stop-making-sense-talking-heads-top-five-concert-movies) ## Details - **Director:** Charlotte Zwerin, David Maysles, Albert Maysles - **Director:** Charlotte Zwerin, David Maysles, Albert Maysles - **Cinematography:** Albert Maysles, David Maysles - **Editor:** Joanne Burke, Robert Farren, Kent McKinney, Ellen Giffard - **Cast:** Mick Jagger as Self - The Rolling Stones Member; Charlie Watts as Self - The Rolling Stones Member; Keith Richards as Self - The Rolling Stones Member; Mick Taylor as Self - The Rolling Stones Member; Bill Wyman as Self - The Rolling Stones Member; Marty Balin as Self; Sonny Barger as Self; Melvin Belli as Self - **Runtime:** 1h 32m - **Release (the US):** 6 December 1970 - **Genres:** Documentary, Music - **Box office:** $252,570 ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - The Criterion Channel: streaming - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, sd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $19.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, EE, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, IE, IL, JP, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PH, PL, PT, UA, US, VN. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Salesman* (1968): The Maysles brothers follow Bible salesmen door to door; same patience, smaller rooms, no band - *Woodstock* (1970), Fi1m 80: The same summer, the same country, and everybody goes home; watch them back to back — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/woodstock.md) - *Dont Look Back* (1967): Pennebaker’s Dylan on tour in England, another star being watched and knowing it - *Stop Making Sense* (1984): Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads film, the concert documentary with everything under control - *Meeting People Is Easy* (1998): Radiohead on tour and miserable about it; fame as a job you cannot leave --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/gimme-shelter