Word: wadleigh
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DIRECTOR Michael Wadleigh has insisted time and again that he retained total control over Woodstock. Now if the people who write about movies in this country knew anything about them, he wouldn't dare make that admission; but as it is, the Woodstock movie is being hailed as imaginative moviemaking. It's not; it's poorly shot, clumsily edited, has no new ideas about the event, nor any on how the event should be presented. If you were at Woodstock, you'll know the film for a shuck; if not, you'll suspect...
More than half of Woodstock directly records the musical performances, and considering the ones Wadleigh has chosen the emphasis is fatal (one film we didn't need was a grainier Monterey Pop ). The rest is taken up with sundry interviews in which predictable subjects-freaks, police, old folks, etc.- make predictable commentary (predictable, that is, if you know the Woodstock myth-i.e., the police man will say these are a great bunch of kids, etc.), and a variety of material which aims at revealing the life style of the populace. With the exception of the initial interview, in which...
...know from the film that Wadleigh and company don't like movies: and you'd have a hard time convincing me that they have any love for rock music either. What's missing from a sound track whose reproduction quality is very fine (and happily played very loud) is precisely the intense visual experience one gets from concerts. Two facts: the best seats at concerts are not the ones besieged by the best sound-they're the ones which afford the freest view, permitting the eye to wander at random; and great groups have great visual styles. This...
There may be an explanation. Wadleigh claims to have shot more film than any other twenty-seven year old alive, and perhaps if he's spent less time behind the camera he'd have a better sense of structure. For Woodstock is an object lesson in how important formal control remains in even the most straightforward of shooting situations...
BEFORE the filming began, Wadleigh told his crew that when something turned them on they should stay with it. Now we know that this charmingly democratic principle wouldn't work in say, a stage production or a ballet, and there's no reason to suppose it's responsible for good movies either. Cameramen are, after all, spectators like the rest of us. When you shoot film you naturally want to have something nice and cinematic to look at as long as you're working; therefore cameramen are drawn to certain types of shots. Unfortunately, from the look of Woodstock , everyone...