--- title: "Woodstock" year: 1970 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/woodstock" fi1m_score: 80 critics_score: 77 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-17T04:46:12.737720+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T04:46:54.426998+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Woodstock (1970) Directed by Michael Wadleigh · 3h 44m · MPA R · Documentary, Music **Fi1m score: 80** · Critics 77 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* Nearly four hours in a wet field with 400,000 strangers, and nobody has a bad word to say about any of it > Wadleigh’s record of the 1969 festival is still the concert film all the others have to answer to, and its split-screen cutting is as sharp as it ever was. It is also 224 minutes long and never once off the festival’s side. ## Synopsis August 1969. A dairy farmer has let a group of promoters use his fields near Bethel, New York, for a three-day music festival. Michael Wadleigh’s cameras arrive before the crowd: carpenters build the stage, shopkeepers give their views, and the roads fill for miles. The fences never go up in time, so the promoters announce from the stage that it is now a free concert. Richie Havens opens on the Friday afternoon and Joan Baez sings to a dark field that night. By the next day there are more than 400,000 people, running short of food and water, with rain on the way. Joe Cocker, Country Joe McDonald and The Who are still to come. ## Review Michael Wadleigh took a film crew to a dairy farm near Bethel, New York, in August 1969, and came back with the concert film every concert film since has had to answer to. It runs 224 minutes, and for long stretches nobody is playing anything. People queue for the telephones, sleep in cars, wash in a pond and explain themselves to the camera with the seriousness of the young. That is deliberate, and it is the best thing in the film. We recommend it, warmly, with two caveats. It is long, and there are sets in the second half where we started counting. And it is entirely on the festival’s side. Every problem the weekend throws up, the rain, the food, the roads, the drugs, is met with a shrug and a shared blanket, and the film never goes looking for anyone who had a bad time. The famous thing is the split screen, and it deserves to be. Wadleigh cut the film with Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Warnow, Yeu-Bun Yee and Jere Huggins, and between them they turned one wide frame into two or three narrow ones. A guitarist’s hands on the left, his face on the right. The stage in one panel, the hill in the other. Malcolm Hart and Michael Margetts are credited with the photography, and the 16mm grain, the flare when a lens swings into a light and the moments when the operator is plainly being jostled are why it still looks like reporting. The music is uneven. Richie Havens opens it, soaked in sweat, thrashing at his guitar until he runs out of songs and has to make one up on the spot, and the split screen holds his boot and his face at once. Joan Baez sings to a field so dark the camera can barely find her. Country Joe McDonald leads a sing-along, and Wadleigh prints the words along the bottom of the frame so the cinema can join in, which we found funnier than we expected. Joe Cocker sings *With a Little Help from My Friends* as if trying to pull something out of the ground, hands clawing at nothing. The Who are the fiercest thing here: Pete Townshend’s arm comes round like a windmill in three panels at once and Keith Moon looks about to fall off his stool. Country Joe and the Fish, without the sing-along, are where we felt the length. What got to us was not a song. Between sets Wadleigh cuts to the people around the music: farmers, shopkeepers in the town who cannot decide whether they have been charmed or invaded, a couple who met on the road in, the men keeping the place clean and fed. They talk to the camera plainly, without trying to be liked, and we were moved by them more than by anyone on stage, because they are the only people in the film who are not performing. Without them this would be a long album with pictures. There is one stretch, later, which we will not describe, where the film admits that 400,000 people in a field with no shelter is a dangerous thing, and it admits it for about ten minutes. The rosiness is a real fault. Warnings about bad acid come over the PA as a joke; the food runs out and the town bakes; the traffic is a lark. Nobody is frightened, nobody is robbed, nobody is bored, and we do not believe it. *Gimme Shelter* (1970), made the same year about the festival at Altamont that went wrong, is the film to watch straight after this one, and it is the harder film. It could not exist without this one. Wadleigh and his editors worked out how concerts would be filmed from then on, and Scorsese took the lesson with him to *The Last Waltz* (1978). See it in a cinema if one near you ever shows it; the split screens need width, and on a television the third panel shrinks to a postage stamp. At home, allow it an interval. Certificate 18, 224 minutes, and the first half hour is mostly people arriving. *Fi1m score 80, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like it a good deal, and the praise gathers in one place: the editing. Nearly every review returns to the split-screen montage, several naming Thelma Schoonmaker, and treats it as the reason the film works at all. Beyond that, the reviews agree it is the most complete record of the festival on film, catching the crowd, the locals and the logistics as well as the music, and that Hendrix, Joplin, Havens and Cocker are the sets worth waiting for. The reservations cluster around length and tone. Vincent Canby in The New York Times finds the film’s rhythm produces its own fatigue, and Penelope Gilliatt in The New Yorker thinks it too eager to show only the sunny side. The Independent calls it form over content, with second-rank bands carried by the cutting. Time Out is the lone outright dissenter, preferring Gimme Shelter. The spread is otherwise narrow. ### Reviews we read (11) - **Los Angeles Times**, Chris Willman (90/100, inferred): The 25th-anniversary director's cut remains vital as a utopian corrective and the ultimate rock concert movie, with advances in filming techniques still unmatched after a quarter-century. The added footage enhances the documentary without making it feel unbearably long, and the film's power as a document of a faded dream leaves viewers unexpectedly sad at its close. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-06-29-ca-9717-story.html) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): The film is an archeological study of the Woodstock nation that captures the style and feel of the mass event better than any other American documentary. It succeeds in making viewers feel how it must have been to be there through intimate filming of the music and the crowd's cooperative spirit amid challenges. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/woodstock-1970) - **Sight and Sound** (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as one of cinema's great time capsules and one of its most imaginative showcases of editing. They highlight the improved picture and sound in the 40th-anniversary edition along with substantial extras including additional performances. [Read](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/5084) - **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (A-): The critic views the film as somewhat overrated due to decades of myth-making but notes that reissues with extra footage allow fresh appreciation. Wadleigh is praised for the thoughtful structure that contextualizes the event beyond just performances. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/woodstock-1798206354) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): Woodstock is a virtually perfect record of the music festival and a milestone in artistic collation of raw footage into a dazzling multipanel montage. It is an absolute triumph in its marriage of cinematic technology to reality, engaging the senses with barely a let-up thanks to outstanding musical talents. [Read](http://variety.com/1969/film/reviews/woodstock-1200422038/) - **Slant Magazine** (75/100, inferred): The review highlights Wadleigh's success in capturing both the beauty and chaos of the festival, including local reactions and attendee interviews. It focuses positively on the restored presentation of the director's cut while noting limitations in the extras for this edition. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/woodstock-3-days-of-peace-and-music/) - **The Independent**, Peter Guttridge (75/100, inferred): The re-released Woodstock is a triumph of form over content, with Thelma Schoonmaker's split-screen editing still delivering excitement despite mostly standard performances by second-rank bands. The longer director's cut has inevitable longueurs for new viewers, though Joplin's section and Hendrix's closing performance stand out. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-time-the-acid-test-plus-if-you-can-remember-it-you-missed-it-first-time-out-peter-guttridge-on-the-rereleased-woodstock-and-the-week-s-other-new-films-1416925.html) - **The New Yorker**, Penelope Gilliatt (70/100, inferred): The film is a completely affable documentary that ropes everybody together in a sunny, romanticized view of the festival's luck and harmony, mirroring the beatified mood with split screens and 3-D sound. It reflects a hope in going back to the bucolic but is obsequious in hammering home only the positive aspects while ignoring tawdriness or ill humor. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/04/11/the-current-cinema-9) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (50/100, inferred): The movie records the extraordinary festival event with good humor but is somewhat less extraordinary than the event itself, using split screens and effects to present performances in context. Its length and visual rhythm produce a fatigue that approximates the nonstop togetherness orgy of the festival. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/27/archives/screen-woodstock-ecstasy-caught-on-film.html) - **Time Out**, SG (40/100, inferred): The review sees the film as a legendary piece of trend-setting opportunism and a time capsule of the era. It acknowledges strong performances from Hendrix, Havens, Cocker and others but concludes by preferring Gimme Shelter. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/woodstock-3-days-of-peace-music) - **Collider**, Jackson Jackson (85/100, inferred): The review praises the film as the definitive concert documentary and a balanced window into the 1969 festival's music, logistics, and counter-culture impact. It highlights the Blu-ray's solid transfer and extras while noting the authentic imperfections of the original 16mm footage. [Read](https://collider.com/woodstock-3-days-of-peace-and-music-blu-ray-review/) ## Details - **Director:** Michael Wadleigh - **Director:** Michael Wadleigh - **Screenplay:** Michael Wadleigh - **Cinematography:** Malcolm Hart, Michael Margetts - **Editor:** Jere Huggins, Martin Scorsese, Michael Wadleigh, Stanley Warnow, Yeu-Bun Yee, Thelma Schoonmaker - **Cast:** Richie Havens as Self; Joan Baez as Self; Roger Daltrey as Self - The Who; John Entwistle as Self - The Who; Keith Moon as Self - The Who; Pete Townshend as Self - The Who; Joe Cocker as Self; Country Joe McDonald as Self - Country Joe and the Fish - **Runtime:** 3h 44m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 26 March 1970 - **Genres:** Documentary, Music - **Budget:** $600,000 - **Box office:** $50 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrfrRqOSZVI ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CL, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, IN, IT, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1971: Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Sound (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Gimme Shelter* (1970), Fi1m 78: The same year, the other festival, and the one where it all went wrong — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/gimme-shelter.md) - *Monterey Pop* (1968): Two years earlier, a tenth of the crowd, and Hendrix setting fire to a guitar - *Summer of Soul* (2021), Fi1m 87: The Harlem festival of the same summer, filmed then and unseen for fifty years — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/summer-of-soul-or-when-the-revolution-could-not-be-televised.md) - *Wattstax* (1973): Los Angeles, 1972, Stax soul on stage and Richard Pryor between the sets - *Glastonbury* (2006): Julien Temple’s thirty-five years of British mud, arranged by neither date nor sense --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/woodstock