Woodstock (film)

Artists by appearance

* studio recording from an album by the artist
** director's cut only, not in the original theatrical release

Reception

Woodstock received universal acclaim from newspaper and magazine critics in 1970. It was also an enormous box office smash. The May 20, 1970 edition of Variety reported it was doing well in its third week in Chicago and San Francisco. (The trade paper used the insider term "lap" to mean "week" in the headline that cited Woodstock's $52,000 profit in Chicago.) In each of those metropolitan areas the movie played at only one cinema during that week, but many thousands showed up. Eventually, after it branched out to more cinemas including more than one per metropolitan area, it grossed $50 million in the United States. The budget for its production was just $600,000, making it not only the sixth highest-grossing film of 1970 but one of the most profitable movies of that year as well.

Decades after its initial release, the film earned a 100% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.

Roger Ebert added Woodstock to his "Great Movies" list in 2005.

25th Anniversary "Director's Cut" (1994)

Upon the festival's 25th anniversary, in 1994, a director's cut of the film — subtitled 3 Days of Peace & Music — was released in cinemas and later on DVD. It added over 40 minutes and included additional performances by Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix's set at the end of the film was also extended with two additional numbers. Some of the crowd scenes in the original film were replaced by previously unseen footage.

After the closing credits — featuring Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Find the Cost of Freedom" — a list of prominent people from the "Woodstock Generation" who had died is shown, including John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mama Cass Elliot, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Max Yasgur, Roy Orbison, Abbie Hoffman, Paul Butterfield, Keith Moon, Bob Hite, Richard Manuel, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. It ends with the epitaph to the right:

40th Anniversary edition (2009)

On June 9, 2009 a 40th-anniversary edition was released in two-disc sets on Blu-ray and DVD, available as both a "Special Edition" and an "Ultimate Collector's Edition". The latter included copious memorabilia. The director's cut was newly remastered in high definition and provided a new 5.1 audio mix. Among the special features are 18 never-before-seen performances from artists such as Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald, Santana, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat and Joe Cocker; five of the artists included -- Paul Butterfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Winter and Mountain -- played at Woodstock but had never appeared in any film version.

The bonus songs, a 143-minute collection of 18 performances presented in standard definition, are entitled "Untold Stories":

Bonus featurettes, also in standard definition, last 77 minutes. Entitled "Woodstock: From Festival to Feature," they cover the festival itself, the challenges of making the film, its reception and legacy, and other topics:

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music - The Director's Cut, 40th Anniversary Revisited (2014)

This edition contains the same Blu-ray version of the film released in 2009 along with the second Blu-ray disc of bonus features, but the latter are now presented in high definition. The set also adds a third Blu-ray disc with "Untold Stories Revisited," sixteen previously unreleased performances that run 73 minutes, plus eight more featurettes. The performances include:

The featurettes are entitled "Woodstock: From Festival to Feature Revisited." They run a total of 32 minutes in length and cover the festival behind the scenes, its history and legacy, and the restoration of the film: