By MARC MYERS
New York
[online.wsj.com]

During a recent private screening in his theater of his documentary "Gimme Shelter," director Albert Maysles leaned over to me and whispered: "Here it comes, watch this." In the film, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts is lost in thought listening to a playback of "Wild Horses." Then, slowly, his sleepy eyes look up and meet Mr. Maysles's camera lens straight on. "Right there—there," Mr. Maysles said. "For a split second we're in his soul."

Released on Dec. 5, 1970, this unsettling film captured the final leg of the Rolling Stones' 1969 concert tour and the escalating violence and a murder at the Dec. 6, 1969, Altamont Speedway Free Festival.

Overnight, "Gimme Shelter" revolutionized documentary filmmaking. Gone were the conventional on-camera interviews and narrator's voiceover. Instead, unfolding events told the film's story. "My films strive to expose the truth about life and people," said Mr. Maysles, 83, at his offices and theater in Harlem. "Audiences don't need opinions as much as they need information.

"Gimme Shelter" also stirred up its share of controversy. While the film provided an unfiltered look at the fast-souring 1960s and the reckless and naive decisions of early rock-concert promoters and lawyers, many critics slammed its neutral point of view. After the film's release, critics likened Mr. Maysles, his brother David and editor Charlotte Zwerin to cinematic voyeurs who exploited the violence for dramatic effect. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker compared the film to staged Nuremberg rally footage and questioned whether "freaked out" concertgoers would have behaved differently if the cameras weren't there.

"We were vilified for filming what we saw," Mr. Maysles said. "There was no manipulation on our part and no hidden message. Our only point of view was to have no point of view. This unnerved a lot of critics."

"Gimme Shelter" also altered public perceptions of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. The use of thuggish Hell's Angels for crowd control at Altamont and the Stones' stage performance of "Sympathy for the Devil," "Under My Thumb" and "Street Fighting Man" during the beating scenes cast the group as sinister and callous.

"Totally unfair," Mr. Maysles said. "Their song list was put together in advance. And the Stones clearly were horrified by what was taking place. They also feared that waves of stoned people were going to storm the stage." Some 300,000 fans attended the festival.

Today, Mr. Maysles continues the work he started in 1955 with his brother, who died of a stroke at age 54 in 1987. Over the past 55 years, Albert Maysles has completed 37 documentaries. These include "What's Happening! The Beatles in the USA" (1964); "Salesman" (1968), a look at door-to-door Bible peddlers; "Grey Gardens" (1976), which documented a reclusive mother and daughter; "The Gates" (2007), Christo's 2005 orange-fabric art project in New York's Central Park; and "Muhammad and Larry" (2009), Mr. Ali's 1980 boxing loss to Mr. Holmes. Five film projects are in development, including a self-portrait.

The opportunity to film the Rolling Stones in 1969 began that November with a phone call from the cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Unable to realize his own project with the group, Mr. Wexler urged Mr. Maysles to visit the band's suite the next day at New York's Plaza Hotel.

"When my brother David and I arrived, Mick asked us to film them in concert," Mr. Maysles recalled. "We weren't familiar with their music yet, so Mick invited us to join the group the next day at their Baltimore concert. We went."

Mr. Maysles was bowled over. "They had this tension and charismatic quality that I knew the camera would grasp immediately," he said. "I also knew this was going to be more than just a concert film."

From the outset, the Maysles brothers had full creative control. Albert with his camera and David with his tape recorder were accepted by the Stones almost immediately. "I didn't want to be invisible with my camera," Mr. Maysles said. "A fly on the wall is never the goal. That's contrary to what's natural. I'm obviously there. I want the interaction."

During our screening, Mr. Maysles became especially animated when his camera zoomed in on faces of the Stones. "You learn so much about someone through a close-up," he said. "I used to study my father's face as he listened to classical music and was fascinated by his reactions."

Mr. Maysles said everyone sensed that Altamont was going to be trouble. "When I walked with the Stones to their trailer at the speedway, someone had to stomp down a low fence," he said. "Keith [Richards] remarked, 'Whoop, first act of violence.' Talk about prescient."

As scenes of Hell's Angels arriving on their motorcycles unfold on the screen, Mr. Maysles leaned over and said with anxious excitement, "OK, here they come. Here we go." In short order, the mood turns ugly, with Hell's Angels beating back acid-tripping concertgoers who try to climb onto the stage. Meredith Hunter, one such audience member, is shown pulling a gun, followed by a Hell's Angel rushing forward and fatally stabbing him. "That guy Meredith was out of control and not happy about being roughed up initially," Mr. Maysles said. "When he pulled the gun, he looked as though he was going to shoot Mick or someone on stage."

Was Mr. Maysles ever fearful, given the mass of people out of control? "Events unfolded too quickly," he said. "The many cameramen we had filming there only had time to record what we saw. We shouldered 20-pound 16mm cameras that used film packs that lasted only 10 minutes before they had to be changed. Fear requires time."

Why weren't local police assigned to supervise and control the crowd? "The concert was on private property—and the police would have had to arrest half the audience for drug use," Mr. Maysles said. "The Hell's Angels were hired instead. But the Angel who was usually in charge of them wasn't there that day. His deputy didn't know how to keep the rest of them in line."

After their set, the Stones and their entourage are shown flying out by helicopter. Meanwhile, concertgoers are captured in silhouette, stumbling in the dark trying to leave the concert grounds. "George Lucas was one of our young cameramen and shot that," Mr. Maysles said. "It's like a sci-fi scene."

Back on the screen, the Stones watch footage of the film on Steenbeck editing machines. "We had agreed in advance to show them what we had filmed," Mr. Maysles said. "Naturally, we wanted to record their reactions to the Altamont scenes." After viewing them, Mr. Jagger gets up and looks directly into Maysles's camera. The frame on screen freezes momentarily, followed by footage of concertgoers arriving at Altamont.

Why add this material when the Jagger scene clearly is the stronger ending? "Charlotte Zwerin, our editor, wanted that in," Mr. Maysles said. "If the film had ended on Mick, it would have said that Altamont was his fault, which wasn't the case. The power of a good film leaves you without definitive answers and compels you to do more thinking."

Mr. Myers writes about jazz, R&B and rock daily at JazzWaxx.com.