
An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu ci... (Full plot summary below)
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An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.
Leave your thoughts about Woodstock.
| Kansas City KansanSteve CrumWonderful document of its era; music reigns supreme still |
| Movie MetropolisJohn J. PuccioIf the film isn't the best rock documentary of the best rock concert of all time, it will do until something better comes along. |
| eFilmCritic.comRob GonsalvesAn important sociological document as much as a massive who's who of rock and folk in 1969. |
| San Francisco ChronicleMichael SnyderWadleigh crafted a film with a thoughtful flow; it tells the full story of the event, from the paranoia (and eventual acceptance) of the locals to the helpful attitudes (and eventual paranoia) of the throng. [1994 version] |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe remarkable thing about Wadleigh's film is that it succeeds so completely in making us feel how it must have been to be there. [2005] |
| VoxAlissa WilkinsonTerrific concert documentary...The film that resulted — a roughly though not strictly chronological document of the much-publicized event — is an outstanding documentary, a joyful musical experience and a playful artifact of an era. [2019] |
| Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDescribing Woodstock as a concert movie is a little like calling Notre Dame a house of worship. In its scope and grandeur, its feel for the paradoxical nature of an event in which half a million middle-class bohemians created their own scruffy, surging community — a metropolis of mud — Woodstock remains the one true rock-concert spectacle, a counterculture Triumph of the Will. [1994] |
| Washington PostRichard HarringtonA time capsule, yes, and a hallowed memory, perhaps. But gimme shelter. |
| TV Worth WatchingDavid Bianculli... this four-hour expanded Director's Cut edition... wasn't released until 1994. And in this case, more is better and the strained, overwhelming size of the film just seems to mirror the subject itself. |
| Cinema CrazedFelix Vasquez Jr.Packed to the brim with magnificent music of the rock and pop variety... |