By EDWARD WYATT
LOS ANGELES - Patti Smith burst onto the cultural landscape in the early 1970s with poetry readings in Lower Manhattan and musical performances at a new downtown club called CBGB. Her 1975 debut album, “Horses,’’ is now viewed as a rock ‘n’ roll classic.
According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, where she was inducted in 2007, the album arrived “at a time when rock ‘n roll needed a jolt from its unadventurous rut and upwardly mobile arena-rock pretensions.’’
“Dream of Life,’’ a documentary shown last month on the PBS television network and screened at more than 30 film festivals around the world, provides glimpses into that creative prime of her life, via archival footage and film of recent performances captured by the fashion photographer and film neophyte Steven Sebring. He spent more than 11 years making the film.
“I haven’t changed all that much as a performer,’’ Ms. Smith, 63, said. “I still have the same visions, and I still like to make a lot of noise and a lot of loud feedback on my guitar.’’
But the film also delves much deeper. It begins with her goodbye to the house in Detroit where, in a retreat from fame into a new role as a mother, she lived for 16 years beginning in the early 1980s. From there the film documents Ms. Smith’s return to New York and to performing a decade ago, after a trio of unexpected deaths that affected her deeply - of her husband, the guitarist Fred Smith; of her brother, Todd; and of her longtime pianist, Richard Sohl.
“I had to leave Detroit,’’ Ms. Smith said. “I don’t drive, and I didn’t want to live in Detroit alone, and so I brought my children back to the East Coast.’’
“But I had to get a job, to take care of them, and to send them to school,’’ she added. “You know it’s a lot more expensive to live in New York City than in Detroit. And so I went back to performing.’’
She was encouraged by a few close friends: Bob Dylan, who drafted Ms. Smith to tour on the East Coast with him in 1995, and Allen Ginsberg and Michael Stipe, the R.E.M. frontman.
Mr. Sebring said he basically made up his vision for the film as he went along. “I’m not a historian, you know,’’ he said. “I didn’t have any set plan what it was going to be. As soon as we started cutting it, I knew it wasn’t going to be a typical documentary.’’
He filmed performances and tours in Israel and Japan and Washington. And as he was editing the film, he set up a 16-millimeter camera in her bedroom to capture Ms. Smith telling stories about herself and her life.
“We were always in her bedroom,’’ Mr. Sebring said, “because that’s where she thinks, that’s where she creates, where she could show things and talk about them.’’
Those scenes provide the film’s faint narrative, revealing a person who to many people under 40 is little more than a name or a stock character - “the godmother of punk,’’ as she is often called.
“My main hope for the film is that people see the work that Steven does, and that Steven is appreciated for the work,’’ Ms. Smith For Designers, Africa Is the ‘In’ Continent MERRICK MORTON/UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS George Clooney in the noir caper “Out of Sight’’ (1998). A look that evokes both authenticity and exotic jungles. Being Clooney: Not as Easy as It Looks Punk Poet As Legend And Muse Trying to Grow Up And Fidgeting Off Chairs said. “My own personal hope is just that people get some sense that I have more dimensions than is sometimes reported. Sometimes all people know about you is, No. 1, your work, but through the media they often will be given one aspect of a human being.’’
“I’m happy for people to get a more humanistic view,’’ she said. “I have a really great life. I’ve had, for me, really great tragedy in my life. I still mourn my people that I lost. I miss my husband. But I’ve had great opportunities in my life.’’
Patti Smith, seen in 1996, is the subject of a documentary. / STEVEN SEBRING
