Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo: Unmasking the Myth in *A Complete Unknown*

This isn’t just about a movie; it’s about the stories we tell, the myths we build, and how easily the truth about real people, especially women, can be obscured by the dazzling light of male genius and the art it produces. This is an examination of the narrative surrounding Bob Dylan And Suze Rotolo, particularly as presented—or misrepresented—in the film A Complete Unknown, and a reclamation of Rotolo’s voice.

The film, directed by James Mangold and selectively based on Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric, charts Bob Dylan’s meteoric rise from 1960 to 1965: from a Woody Guthrie acolyte in New York City to a folk sensation grappling with fame, culminating in his controversial electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival. While the focus on Dylan’s musical evolution makes for compelling cinema, Mangold aimed for an “ensemble” piece, suggesting other figures wouldn’t be mere cameos but “significant players” acting as “prisms and keyholes” into Dylan’s complex persona. He wanted to explore “the wake that this person has left on others,” avoiding a simplistic reduction of Dylan’s character.

However, exploring that wake requires giving those “others” genuine depth. While characters like Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton) feel fully realized, the portrayals of Joan Baez and, most significantly, the woman representing Suze Rotolo fall drastically short. In the case of Rotolo, renamed “Sylvie Russo” in the film, the depiction strays so far from reality it borders on fiction—or perhaps, more accurately, fantasy. It’s a fantasy seemingly endorsed by Dylan himself, who reportedly approved the script.

The Film’s Narrative: A Complete Unknown‘s Take on Dylan and Rotolo

The decision to use the pseudonym “Sylvie Russo” for Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend during much of this period and his iconic companion on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was explained as a gesture of respect for her privacy. Elle Fanning, playing Russo, relayed Dylan’s reasoning: “he felt like she wasn’t a public figure. She always wanted to remain a private person…they had stayed close until she passed away in 2011.” Mangold echoed this, stating Rotolo “was the only one who wasn’t a celebrity… there was just a feeling for Bob of not subjecting her to that.”

This justification, framing the name change as protective, overlooks a crucial fact: Suze Rotolo did step into the public sphere by writing her own memoir, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. And the story she tells, corroborated by accounts in Anthony Scaduto’s biography Bob Dylan (which included interviews with friends and Dylan himself), paints a vastly different picture of Bob Dylan And Suze Rotolo‘s relationship than the one presented on screen. The film doesn’t just change her name; it effectively erases her documented experience and perspective, closing off a genuine “keyhole” into understanding Dylan himself.

“Sylvie Russo”: A Cinematic Fantasy?

In A Complete Unknown, “Sylvie Russo” embodies the trope of the supportive, slightly sidelined girlfriend. She’s introduced as pretty, political, smart, and fun, quickly captivated by the burgeoning genius. Their early relationship involves shared cultural moments, like watching Now Voyager, though Sylvie passively accepts Bob’s interpretation of the film. Soon, she conveniently departs for Italy “on a school trip,” allowing Bob space to create powerful songs and engage in a passionate (and invented) encounter with Joan Baez during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Upon Sylvie’s return, she senses the shift and fades into the background as Bob’s collaboration and fame, aided by Baez, grow. The film portrays her as vaguely connected to the art world but ultimately defined by her relationship with Dylan. Even after their breakup, she’s depicted as ready to jump back into his orbit whenever he appears. The climax of her story comes at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (an event Baez didn’t actually attend), where watching Bob and Joan perform together supposedly triggers the realization that she’s been replaced. Her eyes “fill with tears,” and she flees, telling Bob in a final, contrived exchange referencing Now Voyager: “It was fun to be on the carnival train with you, Bobby. But I think I gotta step off now… I was a plate… Don’t ask for the moon, Bob… We have the stars.” This portrayal reduces Rotolo to a heartbroken woman defined solely by her romantic entanglement and eventual displacement.

Suze Rotolo’s Reality: Beyond the Silver Screen

The real Suze Rotolo, as revealed in her own writing and by those who knew her, was far from the passive “plate” depicted in the film. While deeply in love with Dylan, she possessed a burgeoning sense of self and a desire for autonomy that clashed profoundly with the expectations placed on women, particularly musicians’ girlfriends (“chicks”), in the early 1960s folk scene.

Book cover for Suze Rotolo's memoir 'A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties', detailing her relationship with Bob Dylan.

Seeking Autonomy in the Folk Scene

Anthony Scaduto’s biography notes Dylan’s possessiveness, a common trait among artists demanding their partners come second to their art. But crucially, Scaduto adds: “Suze was not about to become that sort of vegetable. She didn’t simply want to hang around being Bob Dylan’s woman, completely swallowed by him and his career, even as she loved him.” Rotolo herself articulated this struggle in A Freewheelin’ Time, years before a mainstream feminist vocabulary existed:

“There was an attitude toward musicians’ girlfriends—’chicks,’ as we were called… that I couldn’t tolerate… the word chick made me feel as if I weren’t a whole being. I was a possession of this person, Bob, who was the center of attention—that was supposed to be my validation… I couldn’t find my way… Everything was centered on folk music… but it wasn’t my life’s work… I was very young, I was still forming myself, but I did know I wasn’t a musician, nor was I a musician’s ‘chick.’… I chafed at the notion of devoting my young self to serving somebody… I did not want to be a string on Bob Dylan’s guitar.”

This yearning for independence directly conflicted with Dylan’s desires. “He won’t let me do anything,” Rotolo confided to a friend, according to Scaduto. “He just wants me to hang around with him all the time… he doesn’t want me to do anything for myself. I have to be myself, too, but he can’t understand that.”

The Truth Behind the Italian Journey

Rotolo’s trip to Italy wasn’t a simple “school trip.” She initially traveled with her aunt but stayed on longer specifically to study Italian in Perugia and, significantly, to create distance from Dylan and his “incessant needs.” As she wrote: “Bob was charismatic; he was a beacon… He was also a black hole. He required committed backup and protection I was unable to provide consistently, probably because I needed them myself… I loved him, but I was not able to abdicate my life totally for the music world he lived within.”

Dylan’s reaction to her departure, completely absent from the film, was one of fury and devastation. Friend Mikki Isaacson recalled him being “totally down after Suze left. Kind of lost… He didn’t eat and he was neglecting himself… He started drinking… We were all trying our best to keep Bobby together. I know he was falling apart at the seams.” Far from embarking on a new romance, Dylan was reportedly writing desperate letters, begging Suze to return.

Reading Between the Lines: Art, Life, and Picasso

While in Italy, Rotolo read Françoise Gilot’s memoir, Life with Picasso, and found striking parallels between Picasso and Dylan. She noted Picasso’s tendency to “do as he pleased, not worrying about the consequences,” taking no responsibility and making it difficult for the women in his life to move on. “He was a magnet… His art was the main function of his life.” Rotolo reflected: “The same feeling kicked in that I had felt in New York: that men could always have it both ways… Women, on the other hand, were sidelined.” This reading solidified her understanding of the power dynamics at play.

Reinterpreting the Songs

This context reframes songs written during Rotolo’s absence, like “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” Dylan described “Spanish Leather” as “girl leaves boy,” capturing the pain of her departure and his desire for her return “unspoiled,” ending with the resigned request for material goods when her return seems uncertain. “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” often interpreted as Dylan asserting his own freedom against a clinging lover, takes on a different resonance. Dylan stated it was “not a love song… It’s a statement to make me feel better.” Perhaps it was an inversion: Dylan casting himself as the one rejecting commitment to cope with the reality that he was the one tormented by Suze’s independence and his inability to control her.

The Hidden Dynamic: Possessiveness and Need

The film’s portrayal of “Sylvie” as the one left heartbroken by another woman conveniently masks a deeper, less conventionally masculine aspect of Dylan’s personality that Rotolo experienced directly. Scaduto describes Dylan, outwardly cool, breaking down “as a youngster might, shouting and screaming and crying” with Suze. He needed constant reassurance, whispering “Hey, it’s me and you against the world.” His neediness stifled her: “She was unable to work or paint, when Dylan was around,” a friend noted. Even during brief separations for tours, he telephoned constantly. “It was like an addiction,” Rotolo wrote, “he needed to know I would be there for him.”

Conclusion: Preserving the Myth, Eclipsing the Woman

By substituting the complex, independent Suze Rotolo with the heartbroken, passive “Sylvie Russo,” A Complete Unknown perpetuates a simplified myth of Bob Dylan. The film embraces the trope of the girlfriend left behind due to infidelity, a narrative that keeps Dylan’s conventional masculinity intact. It avoids exposing the vulnerability, the possessiveness, and the profound emotional neediness that Rotolo’s own account, and those of others close to them, reveal.

This erasure isn’t just a disservice to Suze Rotolo; it ultimately offers a less complete understanding of Bob Dylan himself. Hiding the demanding, childlike dependency behind a veneer of rebellious cool obscures the multifaceted reality of the artist. Dylan’s later admission about choosing Sara Lownds because she “will be there when I want her to be there,” unlike Joan Baez, reinforces the picture of a man prioritizing control and presence. Admitting deep love for a young woman (Rotolo was 17 when they met) who insisted on her own life, her own path, was perhaps a vulnerability the myth couldn’t accommodate. In his memoir Chronicles, Dylan glossed over the breakup: “Eventually fate flagged it down… It had to end. She took one turn in the road and I took another.” The film follows suit, choosing neat fiction over messy truth. Understanding the real story of Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo requires looking beyond the cinematic fantasy and listening to the voice that refused to be just a string on his guitar.

References

• Rotolo, Suze. A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. Broadway Books, 2008.
• Scaduto, Anthony. Bob Dylan: A Biography. Grosset & Dunlap, 1971.
• Wald, Elijah. Dylan Goes Electric: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties. Dey Street Books, 2015.
• Thal, Terri. My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob and Me. Board and Bench Publishing, 2023.
• Gilot, Françoise, with Carlton Lake. Life with Picasso. McGraw-Hill, 1964.
• Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume One. Simon & Schuster, 2004.