Terrific little time capsule! The film's biggest strength is also it's weakness - it is constrained to the raw footage taken at the time, which paints an authentic portrait of the people at the time. Seeing many of these performers performing at early times in their careers is fascinating. Some of the performances are pretty raw and untamed (Janis Joplin gives a terrific, vulnerable performance), but also there's Otis Redding giving one of the best performances of his career. This specific performance is one of my all-time faves, I was so happy to see this was filmed.
While it's interesting to see this slice of life, the limited footage does relegate us to, well, what was filmed. The final performance goes on and on and feels like padding. Some of the performances were too short for my liking - I could have used another song from The Mamas and the Papas or Simon and Garfunkel. Some of the songs I also didn't really like - were those the best songs to pick from Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and The Animals?
All that aside, it gives you a good feel for the concert. Not using clear title cards emulates coming across a band you don't know at a concert, there's a good amount of people watching, and what little we see of the behind the scenes setup gave it a great human touch that I wish was present in more of the film. Many of these artists were stoked to perform here, but you get to see so little of that human side of what performing means to them. Again, limited by what was filmed at the time.
Terrific little time capsule! The film's biggest strength is also it's weakness - it is constrained to the raw footage taken at the time, which paints an authentic portrait of the people at the time. Seeing many of these performers performing at early times in their careers is fascinating. Some of the performances are pretty raw and untamed (Janis Joplin gives a terrific, vulnerable performance), but also there's Otis Redding giving one of the best performances of his career. This specific performance is one of my all-time faves, I was so happy to see this was filmed.
While it's interesting to see this slice of life, the limited footage does relegate us to, well, what was filmed. The final performance goes on and on and feels like padding. Some of the performances were too short for my liking - I could have used another song from The Mamas and the Papas or Simon and Garfunkel. Some of the songs I also didn't really like - were those the best songs to pick from Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and The Animals?
All that aside, it gives you a good feel for the concert. Not using clear title cards emulates coming across a band you don't know at a concert, there's a good amount of people watching, and what little we see of the behind the scenes setup gave it a great human touch that I wish was present in more of the film. Many of these artists were stoked to perform here, but you get to see so little of that human side of what performing means to them. Again, limited by what was filmed at the time.
