Purely as a piece of cinema, it is one of the finest documentaries ever
made in the U.S. (Time)
Altogether, the film is a valuable piece of contemporary documentation, by turns funny, sad and provocative and it will probably be ten years before we can assess its significance. (Moira Walsh)
Woodstock is also notable because it tries to do more than photograph a concert, it wants to be a film. (Stanley Kauffman)
So without sacrificing all the world's connotations, it wouldn't really be legitimate to describe Woodstock as a new kind of musical, but it does point one way in which the American cinema is developing. (David Pine)
Woodstock provides an accurate insight into the "blow-your-mind," drug-oriented nirvana of what its proponents like to call a "sub-culture." (Tatiana Balkoff Drowne)
The remarkable Joe Cocker, whose waltz-dirge-dirvish version of With a Little Help from My Friends, elevated me to a realm of primal ecstacy (it's not quite as mystique-laiden as it sounds: I simply forgot I was representing a serious journal of opinion, tapped my feet, sang out loud, and was happy), needed no multiple posures or witty editing. (Richard Corliss)
As I staggered out of the three-hour documentary overview of one of
the more notable sociological phenomena of our era, a company functionary
asked me how I liked the picture. With somewhat more mental agility
than I usually muster when asked for an off-the-cuff answer to an impossible
question, I replied: "I would have to say this. It was a total environmental 
experience."
(Moira
Walsh)
In effect, the festival is still going on -- with stunning good humor
and relentlessly -- in this movie. (Vincent
Canby)
Copyright (c) 1999 by James Anthony Clewley, Undergraduate at Lehigh University.
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