Warner Bros. | 1970 | 224 mins | Rated R
Is it just me, or does 1969 seem like a long time ago? The idea of peace and free love seems like such a foreign concept to me, a person born in the early seventies who grew up in the midst of the Aids crisis and various international crises. However, having studied the sixties and heard about the Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) more times than I can count, there’s no denying that this one event held in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969 was something special. Clearly, most of the people there were driven by the music and their sincere belief in the values of peace and love.
Thirty-two of the best-known musicians of the day appeared during the sometimes rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. Performers included: Richie Havens, Santana, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Grateful Dead.
Michael Wadleigh started working in the film business as a cinematographer on independently-produced low-budget films including David Holtzman’s Diary and I Call First both released in 1967. Though he received some positive notices from critics who followed underground films, none of his projects were financially successful. One could say Wadleigh bit off a little more than he could chew when he arrived on the concert site in Bethel, New York with over a thousand reels of film and a crew of several camera operators. Amazingly, he took the terribly disjointed concert schedule and made sense out of it with his documentary, Woodstock. The result is a revelatory, non-biased bird’s-eye view of the entire event; from the stage construction to the thrilling confusion of the actual event.
Still a fairly young man, Wadleigh was eager to capture the sights, sounds and the feel of the festival. Among his crew was a then-unknown Martin Scorsese and Scorsese’s long-time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. The director used 16 cameras to record more than 100 miles of celluloid. The resulting split screens was a stroke of genius; effectively conveying the total Woodstock experience–music, mud, traffic jams, skinny dipping and the infamous bad brown acid that prompted a warning from the stage. The split screens allowed Wadleigh to capture the comments and reactions of onlookers, without taking the camera off the action that was happening on and around the concert stage.
Wadleigh’s long, uninterrupted shots enhance some of the spectacular musical performances. Richie Havens opened the concert and his performances of “Handsome Johnny” and “Freedom / Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” are nearly hypnotic in their intensity. Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone and Ten Years After are equally riveting, while Hendrix’s guitar assault on “The Star-Spangled Banner” remains one of rock ‘n’ roll’s singular milestones. Of course, not every performance is top of the line. Though Janis Joplin does a serviceable job on well known songs such as “Piece of My Heart” and “Ball ‘n’ Chain,” it can hardly be considered one of her better vocal performances. Jefferson Airplane runs through several of their hit songs, including “Volunteers” and “White Rabbit” at a manic pace.
Still, Woodstock – 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director’s Cut) is a must own for any film collector or music fan. What makes this film resonate forty years after the event is the time Wadleigh spent with his cameras away from the stage. The Sixties’ youth movement is captured for posterity, in all its tiedyed, psychedelic, glassy-eyed glory. Many of the young people interviewed are inadvertently hilarious. One conspiracy-minded young man blames the rain on governmental cloud-seeding. A yoga instructor promises her pupils, “If you do it right, you’ll be flashing momentarily. The film perfectly captures one brief, yet fascinating moment in America’s history.
However, no matter how good Wadleigh’s film is, it probably doesn’t come close to the experience of actually being there. But, in some ways, this makes the documentary all the more impressive. Even at four hours, the film just doesn’t quite give you the experience of being at Woodstock. Nothing really can. The festival the culmination of the hippie generation– their voices heard loud and clear here–but the event itself feels like a lifetime ago. Woodstock now remains as a touching epitaph for an era and culture that’s changed with the rest of the world.
The remastered 70mm print preserves Woodstock’s inventive blend of single and multiple screens that fill the 2.20:1 aspect ratio. Details are strong and colors are bold. There is slight grain and the occasional scratch here and there but these signs of age don’t affect the viewing experience.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 is first-rate. The audio is crisp and clear, with immersive sound and solid use of rear speakers, such as the whoosh of the helicopters that transported musicians to and from the stage.
Optional subtitles are available in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese and Thai.
The third disc has the bulk of the special features:
• A short featurette for The Museum of Bethel Woods, which plays more like a cheap commercial for the museum. It’s not very interesting or insightful. Skip it.
• Woodstock: Untold Stories which consists of eighteen additional Woodstock performances by Joan Baez (“One Day at a Time”), County Joe McDonald (“Flying High”), Santana (“Evil Ways”), Canned Heat (“On the Road Again” and “I’m Her Man”), Mountain (“Beside the Sea” and “Southbound Train”), Grateful Dead (“Turn on Your Love Light”), Creedence Clearwater Revival (“Born on the Bayou”, “I Put a Spell on You”, and “Keep on Chooglin'”) The Who (“We’re Not Gonna Take It”, and “My Generation”), Jefferson Airplane (3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds”), Johnny Winter (“Mean Town Blues”), Paul Butterfield (“Morning Sunshine”), and Sha Na Na (“Teen Angel”). Due to technical problems with the original audio, some of these performances were partially dubbed for this release using performances recorded well after Woodstock.
• Also included are five minutes of opening and closing festival clips and seventy-seven minutes of reflective featurettes from many of the surviving filmmakers, festival producers, and musicians. The majority of the segments cover the making of the film itself and principally feature director Michael Wadleigh and associate producer Dale Bell but Martin Scorsese, editor Thelma Schoonmaker and others also weigh in. Festival producer Michael Lang reflects on the festival itself and several of the surviving musicians discuss their recollections and the impact of the film on their careers.
• A short feature on the provision of food and social services by Wavy Gravy’s Hog Farm Commune.
• Excerpts from Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 appearance on Hugh Hefner’s TV talk show Playboy After Dark to promote the film.
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