LEONARD COHEN: BIRD ON A WIRE, the 1972, never-in-theaters documentary from Tony Palmer, opens at NYC's Film Forum

Could there a more timely release of a fabled documentary from decades past that was never seen theatrically than this 1972 film about the 20-city European tour by the recently-deceased Leonard Cohen (who was only 37 at the time) and his talented crew of musicians? Beginning in Dublin and ending in Jerusalem, the tour, its highlights and discontents are all captured on the fly by documentarian Tony Palmer in a film that proves intimate, inclusive and full of Cohen's music -- which, heard like this and at this point in the artist's career (he had not yet given us Hallelujah, for instance), does register as sometimes repetitive and similar, one song to another. But his lyrics: Ah, these were and are as poetic. elusive and beautiful as ever.

Over the long haul, Cohen (below and further below) and his work proved about as "evergreen" as one could want, but back in the early 70s the artist was in his heyday, and his songs -- from Suzanne to Chelsea Hotel, So Long, Marianne to that title tune -- reflect the period so very well. Mr. Palmer (shown above) tells us at the beginning that his film is "an impression of what happened during the tour." From the outset, it is clear what a quietly commanding presence Cohen is. When an interviewer asks what success means for him," he answers quickly and succinctly, "survival."

Along the way we learn that the rights to Suzanne were stolen from the artist by a "friend," and we see a probably rather typical (but still surprising in its reality) near-hook-up between the artist and one of his fans (below) after a concert in (I think) Germany. "It's hard to come on to a girl in front of the camera," Cohen explains somewhat sheepishly.

The guy is very good at interviews -- even if he may dislike doing them (and even if the interviewer, as below, forgets to press RECORD) -- and he proves generally honest, direct and thoughtful. He calls himself a combo chansonnier, Euro singer and synagogue cantor, and at one point talks about how trying it can be to lose contact with a song's emotion due to the constant repetition of having to sing it at concerts. Later in the film we'll see this seemingly happen, with the result that Cohen simply stops performing, mid-show.

And while the guy seems willing enough to offer his audience its money back when the band's sound system goes haywire, he's not so hot to do the refund thing, after he's walked out mid-concert. Well, you can't always be a mensch, right?

Palmer's doc, with its unshowy, graceful style (the filmmaker both directed and edited), captures Cohen and his band, if not warts and all, certainly not in any hagiography-seeking sort of way.  We see Cohen, as well as his producer/band-mate Bob Johnston, taking showers; one band member casually confesses to actually nodding off during a concert; and Cohen himself can sound awfully silly sometimes.

"Loneliness," he tells us, "is a political act." Well, no, it's not an action, it's a passive state. And while his lyrics can be wonderfully artful and subtle, at least one of the songs we hear -- purportedly about Abraham and Issac -- is way too tub-thumpingly obvious.

Just like most of us, Cohen, too, could be occasionally full of shit. And as he himself admits during the course of several interviews we're privy to, he was not much of a singer, either. But there's just so much poetry and yearning and caring in those lyrics. And, boy, could the guy turn out some lovely tunes!

New York City's Film Forum will play Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire for two weeks, beginning this Wednesday, January 18. Elsewhere? One would hope so. I will try to do some digging -- and post the results as soon as I can discover them.

LEONARD COHEN: Live at the Isle of Wight takes us back to 1970

Longtime fans of Leonard Cohen (or latecomers and young-
sters who might won-
der what all the fuss was about) will want to see LEONARD COHEN: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
To view Mr. Cohen some 40 years ago is a revelation.

By now we have heard so many of his songs done by so many other performers (and usually quite well; these people are generally better singers than was/is Cohen), that to see him performing his own work casts a special spell. (That's Cohen now, below, left, and Cohen then, below, right.) As a performer in 1970 the man exuded an amazing quiet; the simplicity of his delivery -- combined with his ability to bring poetry to his lyrics -- puts to shame so much of the overwrought stuff we've been getting for the past several decades. Cohen's lyrics are the real thing: not the pseudo-poetry -- empty and full of the deliberate obfuscation -- offered by many lesser artists.

Musically, Cohen's work is fairly simple and repetitive, as befits his monotone voice. He seems to be going up or down the musical scale, one line at a time. Yet this serves him well (or maybe he serves it: singer/songwriters tend to compose what they are able to perform without challenging their vocal abilities).
The Isle of Wight is an island just off England's southern coastline where, in 1970, 600,000 gathered, many of them "crashing" this third annual music festival, breaking down fences and other barriers, even setting fire to structures and equipment. (Woodstock this was not.) Anarchy reigned, and by around 2 am that morning, just after Jimi Hendrix had driven the crowd into a frenzy, it was hoped that Cohen, with his quieter music, might calm it down.

No less a performer than Kris Kristofferson seems still amazed at Cohen's abilities in that dark arena to bring the crowd to a hush. "He was such an honest performer," "Kristofferson recalls. "He didn't scramble after anybody's attention." The crowd let Cohen finish his entire set. However, notes Kris with some envy, they didn't give him the same chance. In addition to Kristofferson, we hear from Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Bob Johnston, who all speak with deep affection for the man and his work.

The producer and director of this concert film, Murray Lerner (shown at left), was able to shoot his footage in a remarkably intimate manner. We're on top of Cohen and his crew with better-than-ringside seats. We see almost nothing of the crowd, however, though we do hear their applause. At one point Cohen asks everyone to light a match and wave it so he can get some sense of who and where they are in the darkness. A few lights begin to glow -- "We're sorely in need of matches," he calls out to them -- but there must not have been that many smokers among the half million or more.

There is a similarity to some of the songs -- No Way to Say Goodbye and Suzanne, for instance, that surprised me, yet all of them are so good they can easily be sung by others and sound even better (as the recent Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man soundtrack proves). At the end of his set -- the entire film, interviews and credits included, runs only 64 minutes -- the songwriter's simple "Good night, friends, and thank you. Really: Thank you," brings this beautiful little time capsule to a perfect close.

LEONARD COHEN: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT opens Friday, January 22, at New York City's Cinema Village.