Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4769 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-01-08
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 216 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The three-day Woodstock music festival in 1969 was the pivotal event of the 1960s peace movement, and this landmark concert film is the definitive record of that milestone of rock 'n' roll history. It's more than a chronicle of the hippie movement, however; this is a film of genuine historical and social importance, capturing the spirit of America in transition, when the Vietnam War was at its peak and antiwar protest was fully expressed through the liberating music of the time. With a brilliant crew at his disposal (including a young editor named Martin Scorsese), director Michael Wadleigh worked with over 300 hours of footage to create his original 225-minute director's cut, which was cut by 40 minutes for the film's release in 1970. Eight previously edited segments were restored in 1994, and the original director's cut of Woodstock is now the version most commonly available on videotape and DVD.

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, mid-concert childbirth, and the thoughtful (or just plain rambling) reflections of the festive participants. Then, of course, there is the music--a non-stop parade of rock 'n' 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, Amazon.com

Special Features
2.35 Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1

Synopsis
The best rock stars of the sixties captured in some of their most brilliant moments during the communal experience called Woodstock, the most celebrated rock concert of all time. The film version, which runs over three hours, manages to capture the unique spirit of the once-in-a-lifetime event, and in turn, captured the mood of an entire era. Includes amazingly volatile performances by Richie Havens, Joan Baez, The Who, Sha Na Na, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and The Fish, Arlo Guthrie, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Ten Years After, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Canned Heat, John Sebastian, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin.

Customer Reviews

A piece of history
Everyone has their own ideas about Woodstock: the high-point of a golden age of optimism, a chaotic, badly organized mess, an uneven mixture of performers and performances, a clash between the conservative townspeople and a vast invasion of hippies, a religious experience... the list goes on. This movie does an excellent job at capturing all these aspects (and others) of the event, sometimes using multiple images to represent more than one of them simultaneously. The intermingling of the performances with other scenes creates a well-rounded picture, and makes this much more than just a concert film. Sometimes the juxtaposition is magical - one of my favourite moments is, while one camera is showing Carlos Santana as he grimaces his way through a characteristically melodic guitar solo, another is focussed on a girl in the audience as she responds to - it seems - each and every note.

There are other buried treasures in here as well - for example, I'd never realised how beautiful Grace Slick was (probably because I'd heard so many tales about her unpleasant personality) or, for that matter, how much Janis Joplin reminded me of Ozzy Osbourne in his earlier days. To be sure, some of the music is more dispensible than others (and some of the performances have clearly been cleaned up - or completely overdubbed - after the event): I could never see the point of Sha Na Na, and I still find myself nodding off during Ten Years After's "Going Home" (sure, Alvin Lee's a fantastic guitarist, but he seems to spend 90% of the song not playing it). But they're more than made up for by the magic: Country Joe getting the crowd on its feet with his impromptu "Fixin' To Die Rag", Pete Townshend swaggering through "Summertime Blues", Joe Cocker's catarthic "Little Help From My Friends" and Hendrix's appearance right at the end, as if just descended from a spacecraft: "I see that we meet again, hmmmm...".

Woodstock was a milestone
People gripe about the quality of the sound, the picture and about having to sit through too much footage on crowd scenes, etc. They are missing the point of this movie.

For starters, this was filmed towards the end of the sixties, the technology used at the time was as good as it could have been. Obviously by today's standards it falls short. Regardless, a momentous event was recorded. This was the last cry of the Summer of Love. The movie is a much about the people who attended as those who performed on stage. This is typical of a festival goer's experience. The world had not seen anything like if before and probably will never again. As Dickens would have put it: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

Enjoy this movie for what it is, not what you would like it to be.

Not forgotten
Given the media's quick move to marginalise and mock the hippie era, it's great to see this sprawling movie to remind everyone what it was all about.

Some of it has dated badly - check out Sly Stone's wonderfully cheesy looking organ on "higher", and the rambling tuneless warbles of Grace slick - but some remains as stunning as ever.

The highlights are the Brits: The Who's performance, shot in eerie slow motion at the beginning - is simply breathtaking. Ten Years After, who made a lucrative career from their Woodstock triumph, may be long forgotten but Alvin Lee's quicksilver guitar is still a joy to hear. Joe Cocker, an unlikely candidate for survivor, went for it in a big way with his impassioned "Little Help from my friends".

What the film doesn't really let on is how near to disaster it almost came. But it made huge stars of virtually all the main protagonists.

The documentary stuff is alo fascinating to look at. Yes, there are a few incoherent hippies here and there, but what really strikes home is the sheer normalcy of the crowds.. mostly collage kids on vacation having fun.

In less than 6 months the media had pronounced the era dead and gone after Altamont. But it stands as one bright shining moment the world should not forget. Maybe not heaven, certainly not hell.. just something human and endearing about it.

The directors cut includes a few performances left out of the original. Hendrix' portion is included, but the man was having an off day with a pick-up band and had not played in public for a while. Canned Heat get a shot at a great "leaving this town" plus a guy who crashed the stage. Yet the saddest of all is Janis, fading out in a desperate series of pleas and sighs.. melancholy baby.