Woodstock: The Director's Cut

The film deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and it's still a stunning achievement. Abundant footage taken among the massive crowd ("half a million strong") expresses the human heart of the event, from skinny-dipping hippies to accidental overdoses, to unpredictable weather, midconcert childbirth, and the thoughtful (or just plain rambling) reflections of the festive participants. Then, of course, there is the music--a nonstop parade of rock & roll from the greatest performers of the period, including Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Canned Heat, The Who, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, and many more. Watching this ambitious film, as the saying goes, is the next best thing to being there--it's a time-travel journey to that once-in-a-lifetime event. --Jeff Shannon

Not having been alive in the 60s, I only know what I've read and been told by those older than myself, but I'd guess that the first assessment is a bit idealistic, while the second is unfair, and that the truth is "somewhere in between," to fall back on the cliche.

What the film does successfully document, I gather, is what it felt like to be young and hippie and excited about music and social protest and all the things Woodstock at least appeared, at the time, to represent. The feeling is what's embodied in the filmic techniques, the scenes chosen, and the performances themselves, and this makes Woodstock a successful documentary.

The 60s were many things, and no film could capture all of them. Actually, in spite of the fact that it allows itself to get very much caught up in the excitement, I think the film has its moments of ironic distance and sobering reality, such as the port-a-san scene (particularly the extended shot of the average joe cleaning the things).

For a good counterpoint, I recommend the Isle of Wight festival film, which captures the darker, more selfish side of the hippie generation.


Beautiful and dirty   June 27, 2004
Gavin Wilson
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Although I was a teenager soon after this concert, I somehow never got around to seeing the moving until this year. (I guess concert films don't get screened frequently on terrestrial TV.) So over the years I've become more familiar with the triple LP of the movie and, of course, the many posters the rock stars in heroic poses that dominated the early 1970s -- i.e. the Who's Roger Daltrey, Jimi Hendrix and Ten Years After's Alvin Lee.

Despite the mud and the squalor, this is an extraordinarily beautiful film, with the screen often breaking up into two or three segments. (Note on the closing credits the name of Martin Scorsese on the production team.)

It's well worth contrasting this movie with the DVD of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. Only a year separates the two concerts, but the late 1960s idealism of Woodstock gets replaced by prototype British vandalism. The Who perform at both concerts, and make an equally good account of themselves. Daltrey's emotional delivery of 'See Me, Feel Me' helps to explain why 'Tommy' became such a phenomenon in America. Hendrix also performed at both, but his meandering solo at Woodstock was not of the highest standard.

The other highlight of the show was Santana, a Latino band only just beginning to establish themselves in California at the time. As others have noted, the drum solo by Mike Shrieve is impressive for one so young. As with the Who, Santana's album sales will have multiplied as a result of their Woodstock performance.

It's interesting how many great acts weren't at Woodstock -- e.g. Joni Mitchell (despite her song about the concert!), the Doors, Bob Dylan or the Stones. The first two clearly realised how important these festivals were in the breaking of artists into markets, and so they appear on the Isle of Wight DVD.

For most of my life, Woodstock has been a set of static images, largely taken from the cover of the album. But as this film reveals, there is so much more imagery than pictures of beautiful women bathing in the lake. Quite apart from all the idealism of passing whisky bottles and reefers around, of sliding in the mud, the film shows the flip side: of people queuing in the mud to phone home, of helicopters rescuing the sick, of helpers cleaning toilets, and of barefoot stragglers looking for a pair of shoes amid a post-concert site that looks more of a wasteland than the trenches of the First World War.

Enjoy it in all its glory and all its grime.


Woodstock   May 18, 2004
Bill Gorman (Boston)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Woodstock was a great documentary. It had everything from split screen to wonderful music. The sound was great. So many bands in only 3days. It was a time where skinny diping and doing Pot and acid was ok and understandable. Police were not filling the jails with people who did drugs and broke laws. They were letting them be free and discover peace. Woodstock is something that will go down in history as a time of love and peace and understanding. In the end it was more then just the music it was the love and the way freedom brought it.


awsome!   May 16, 2004
c.nikolaidis (newton, Ma usa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This documentary was brilliantly filmed. The split screen although not new to filming was a great was to show how much was going on at once. The music made my feet tap and my head bounce, it was great. It captured the mood and feelings of the young people of America trying to break through old ways. The first Woodsotck was the best most creative, spirtual, and nonviolent of all time. There will never be another repeat. I can watch it over and over and never get sick of seeing a culture changing infront of me!


I felt like I was there   April 15, 2004
Donna Di Giacomo (Philadelphia, PA)
This isn't your run-of-the-mill concert video packed with edited performances. This is loaded with performances from the original (and, as far as I'm concerned, the ONLY) three-day festival of peace, love, and music. (...)it's loaded with interviews of kids coming into town for the festival, enjoying it, and leaving it (I felt really sorry for the cleanup crew). A lot of the time, it's a split screen so you'll find yourself using the rewind button quite often to catch anything you may have missed.

Interesting to find out that Woodstock was the second performance for Crosby, Stills, and Nash (in the days before Young). Ritchie Havens was out of sight, Jimi Hendrix far out, and Country Joe McDonald a blast. Rock and roll and folk music came together for a once-in-a-lifetime event that could never be duplicated (why did people botther trying?) and, truth be told, I'm deeply jealous of the people who were there.

The coolest part of all was when Max Yasgur, owner of the farm the festival was held on, got on stage and said that Woodstock was proof that young people could get together and have three days of peace, love, and music and nothing but three days of peace, love and music.

This video is a first hand glimpse into the turmoil that was the 1960's (e.g. older people arguing amongst themselves that the festival was wrong because the young kids were having sex and getting high while others thought it better that they were there instead of being in Viet Nam). You can feel the tension and the too cool atmosphere of the festival through the TV.

Ah, nothing like the 1960's. What a decade!