Gimme Shelter (1970)

After watching Gimme Shelter, you can’t fault Americans both young and old for thinking their country was on the verge of burning itself to the ground in 1969 – in fact, you can’t help but be shocked that it didn’t. The celebrated documentary follows The Rolling Stones ’69 American tour which culminated at Altamont, a Woodstock-inspired outdoor concert that turned tragic. There’s plenty of ways to enjoy Gimme Shelter: as a fantastic music documentary featuring incredible live Stones footage (after watching this, I think the first thing I’d do with a time machine is travel back to ’69 and catch a non-riotous Stones show); as a time capsule of the frighteningly tumultuous and ludicrously silly late 60s; and as a filmic analysis of an infamous event. I’ll never forget some of the faces, overcome with ecstasy and fear and rage, that documentarians Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin found in that crowd of 300,000 Californians partying on the precipice of disaster. I’ll also remain eternally gratefully that I live in age where crowd control has evolved beyond stoned performers getting on a mic and begging rioters to, “Be cool everybody!”