1960s Come to Life on BluRay: ‘Woodstock’ marks 40th anniversary

The Crimson Creek Players’ energetic production of the classic 1960s musical “Hair” is winding up its run at 7:30 nightly through this Saturday at the historic Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks. For those who just can’t get enough of the Sixties, there are several notable films now on BluRay to keep the experience going.

Miloš Forman’s 1979 film of “Hair” is not yet on BluRay. Even if it were, however, it is no substitute for a live performance of the stage show. And it is nowhere close to recreating the era as vividly as it was captured in the 1970 documentary “Woodstock,” an amazing record of the 1969 rock concert held 40 years ago this weekend. The mere word “Woodstock” quickly became a symbol of a certain segment of a generation.

The expanded 1994 director’s cut of “Woodstock” came out on BluRay earlier this summer. The movie itself is interesting from several standpoints. Most obvious, of course, are the musical performances—a pleasing variety of folk, blues, classic rock, and hard rock, from a capella and acoustic to heavy electric sounds, and from Joan Baez to Sha Na Na to the Who, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. The audio recording was of a very high standard, especially for a documentary shot live on location as it happened, showing just how effective analog sound can be with good multitrack equipment. The film has a nice stereo mix, notably during split-screens.

As well as demonstrating effective use of multi-image editing (a monumental effort in pre-computer days, with over 100 hours of footage shot on five cameras), portions show how sharp that often-grainy 16mm film can be when blown up to 35mm and converted to high-definition video.

The wide theatrical screen sometimes contains the almost square original image in the middle, right, or left, and sometimes zooms that image out to make it look wider and emphasize the size of the crowd. Along with “push-processed” night footage, this is where the graininess of the 16mm film is most evident. Most often the screen holds two or three side-by-side simultaneous views of the action filmed from different angles. At other times one image is in the center with a second view shown in mirror-images on each side, much as French filmmaker Able Gance did for segments of his 1927 epic “Napoleon.”

But besides its impressive technical and musical aspects, “Woodstock” is a vivid document of a period and an attitude. It is not merely a concert film. It depicts a peaceful crowd of nearly half a million people gathered in one place, enjoying themselves, not getting into much trouble, and making a generally favorable impression on the local residents whose lives were disrupted for that weekend. It shows people coming together to make something happen, then adapting to the situation and not letting things get out of hand when it becomes much more than anyone bargained for or even dreamed of.

“Woodstock” is a film that calls out to be seen on as large a screen as possible with the sound turned up as loud as the system will bear. While it runs on for nearly four hours (with an “Interf*****gmission” near the two-hour mark), for fans of the music and/or era it’s easy to lose track of the time.

The BluRay edition, like the theatrical release, is in the 2.4:1 “CinemaScope” aspect ratio with split-screens letterboxed to 2.66:1, and the 1.33:1 bonus performances are “windowboxed” to fit their full height in the 1.78:1 TV image.

Among the numerous bonus materials (mostly HD) are an informative 90-minute 2009 retrospective on the film’s genesis and production (making up for the lack of a commentary track) plus over two hours of musical performances that did not make it into the final cut of the film. A special collectors’ edition throws in a bunch of memorabilia reproductions. [“Woodstock” BluRay: Movie A+ / Video A- / Audio A / Extras A-]

A more recent film that does a superlative job of recreating the atmosphere of the 1960s is Julie Taymore’s audacious experiment in musical romantic drama, “Across the Universe” (2007). Her plot and characters, well acted and sung by Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturges, among others, are ingeniously created from lyrics of numerous songs by The Beatles. Set against the Vietnam War and student unrest going on when the music was composed, the songs actually seem written for the film instead of the other way around.

It’s a must-have for any fan of the Beatles’ music or for anyone interested in the decade of the 1960s, and comes across as a sort of alternately realistic and heavily stylized rock opera. The disc includes a director’s commentary and a nice selection of behind-the-scenes featurettes, plus some of the artwork created for the film, all in high-definition. [“Across the Universe” BluRay: Movie A+ / Video A+ / Audio A+ / Extras A-]

A good complement to “Across the Universe” is Randall Wallace’s “We Were Soldiers” (2002), starring Mel Gibson and Greg Kinnear. It is an unflinching and unrelenting soldier’s point of view of young men’s first experiences fighting in the first battles of the Vietnam war. The war’s waste of lives and the unpreparedness of Americans’ military training for their situation become far more intense than the stylized but nevertheless moving emotional abstractions of “Across the Universe.” Extras include a commentary, a hi-def trailer, a featurette and ten short deleted scenes all in standard-def. Best of all, it’s available for only $10-$15! [“We Were Soldiers” BluRay: Movie A- / Video A+ / Audio A+ / Extras B+]

The Cold War was also still raging in the 60s, and Stanley Kubrick’s masterful dark satire “Dr. Strangelove” (1964) made its BluRay debut this summer. It’s got some good featurettes but all standard-definition, and no commentary (though there’s a booklet and an interesting picture-in-picture background info option). [Movie A- / Video A / Audio A / Extras / B+]

Various other aspects of 1960s life, concerns, attitudes, along with major movie stars show up in Dustin Hoffman’s “The Graduate” (1967), Steve McQueen’s “Bullitt” (1968), Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas” (1964), and four of the Sean Connery James Bond classics, not to mention the original “Star Trek” TV series, all preserved on BluRay with a clarity that looks as if you’re stepping back in time to watch them brand new.

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