Woodstock ****

If you have any desire to watch a live conniption, just mention “It’s All True” to Orson Welles and watch the memories flow back.

This seed was planted in 1942 when the folks at RKO were a little worried about Orson’s new film, The Magnificent Ambersons. Orson believed this was going to be his masterpiece and if the last two hours were anything like the first fifteen minutes I would be inclined to agree. The studio thought the whole thing was a little avant guard and asked Orson to edit it. Of course the dogmatic director said no and instead of pressing the issue, RKO sent him to Brazil to do a documentary about Carnival. While he was gone, “those pigs” did a complete reedit and “destroyed my beautiful film.”

As much as he hated it due to the above reasons, It’s All True, ended up being a good film as well as his other documentary, F is for Fake, where he looks at con men.

I often talked with Orson about It’s All True for two reasons. First, his vitriol on the topic always amused me.

The second and more important reason for our discussion here, is that he is one of the few directors that I know of that is equally adept when working on documentaries or feature films. One night, I asked Orson how he succeeded where others failed and he said, “It both cases, you’re just telling a story. In a documentary, you just have to find it.”

This brings up two subdivisions of documentaries - the propaganda film and cinema verite. Propaganda is not the correct word for the first type of film, but I can’t think of a better one. The basic difference between the two films is that in propaganda films you know what story you want to tell ahead of time and you manipulate the film to tell that story (think Michael Moore), in cinema verite, the film itself tells the story.

The one of the best cinema verite documentary that I’ve seen is Woodstock. As an aside, you might have noticed this if you have read many of my reviews, but I’ll take this moment to put it in black and white – I don’t care about politics in movies. What I mean by that is I will only look at how effective a director is in getting his point across, what that point is doesn’t concern me. I’m not a political writer. It’s not my job. (I will make an exception to this rule when I get to On the Waterfront, because politics has something to do with the actual making of the movie).

The key to filming an event like Woodstock is to capture the moment. The director’s job here is to convey the energy and passion being experienced by those who were there. This has really only been effectively done twice while capturing a once-in-a-lifetime event like this. One was a pseudo documentary called Medium Cool which contained live segments from the Chicago riots at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The other time was Triumph of the Will, where Leni Riefenstahl captured the fury of the 1934 Nazi convention in Nuremburg. I think Michael Wadleigh, a director who hasn’t done much of note aside of this, accomplishes that goal here.

There are some editorial decisions that Wadleigh makes that serve as an unwanted distraction, such as his habit of using the mirror split screen for no apparent reason or putting on Arlo Guthrie (a musical criticism, not a political one) at all, but overall he gives his viewers an idea about what it was like to be at the 3-day event. The editing job must have either been tortuous or a labor of love because I can only image the amount of film they went through.

In addition, Wadleigh either must have had cameras everywhere or he’s a very lucky man because he was about to get some great footage of the rains and the mudslides.

To focus on the music here would have been a massive mistake because the music is almost secondary to the event if the director is looking to make a truly great documentary. Unfortunately you could have made many concert documentaries about Country Joe and the Fish (another musical criticism), but there is only one Woodstock. The crowd is probably even more of a story here than the musicians and Wadleigh correctly emphasizes that here.

Wadleigh also makes some interesting decisions in filming the bands. He changes styles which each new band, using the extreme close-ups on Country Joe, then going to the wide shots of Santana, giving each band a distinctive visual appearance.

One key to finding out if a music documentary is great is if a viewer can watch and enjoy the movie without having to love the music accompanying the movie because movies are a visual medium at heart and if you can’t enjoy the pictures first, then the director failed. I sat through two songs by Country Joe and his little tirade; so I guess that means Wadleigh succeeded.