Monterey Pop (1968)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Best movie ever!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Rewatching Monterey Pop.At the moment (these things don't last) you can watch the Criterion Collection version of this film on YouTube and I just finished watching it. The Woodstock film may be more extensive, and the event more historical, and some of the songs and acts seem dated now. But. . . this is the quintessential Sixties moment, the Summer of Love in pure simple unspoiled form. The Hells Angels sit quiet. The cops smile and welcome. Several of the sequences of music paired with audience are beyond brilliant. Notably Big Brother and the Holding Company and Ravi Shankar, both evoking blissed-out peace and meditativeness.Whatever he was on, and he was on plenty, Jimi Hendrix's performance of "Wild Thing" seems like mindless exhibitionism and provocation. On the other hand, you can't forget this act. Shankar's music is eternal and timeless, its blend of rhythm, improvisation, sparring and unity reducing music to its universal essence - and its unifying spirit of pleasure and fun.From a Wikipedia article about the film: "Among Pennebaker's several camera operators were fellow documentarians Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles. The painter Brice Marden has an "assistant camera" credit, and Bob Neuwirth, who figured prominently in Pennebaker's Bob Dylan documentary Don't Look Back, acted as stage manager. Titles for the film were by the illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Featured performers include Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, The Mamas & the Papas, The Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose namesake set his guitar on fire, broke it on the stage, then threw the neck of his guitar in the crowd at the end of "Wild Thing"."Watch just the 18-minute Ravi Shankar sequence, also currently available on YouTube by itself. . This is a classic musical performance movie sequence.

I wasn't at Monterey in '67, and neither were 99.999% of the people now commenting on this film. To read so many of these comments you'd think that the entire audience was now online and writing reviews. They criticize the song selections, the blaring omissions, the crowd scene inserts, and even the haircuts. They seem to be saying that this film doesn't quite present an accurate picture of the unprecedented 3 day phenomenon that was the Monterey Pop Festival. Well, WHAT would present an accurate picture of that amazing event? I suppose, maybe, hearing someone who was ACTUALLY there tell us his or her story of those wild days. Someone like, I dunno... D.A. Pennebaker? Hey, right, he WAS there, and this film is HIS story (history). At only 78 or so minutes it's more so his impression, his true reaction, in condensed user friendly form, like a good story is supposed to be.It was a powerful moment in pop culture - something of an evolutionary turning point. Monterey Pop was very soon understood to be the coming-of-age party for the next generation of cultural leaders. As I watched it the first time some 25 years ago I remember feeling like I was witnessing a natural birth. The birth of a new social order that cherished and honored peace and love above all else. Like all births it wasn't all pretty. Often it's messy and painful and even scary.Pennebaker opens his story with the splendid Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's up tempo "Combination of the Two" playing over pre-concert footage. The hippy dippy love and peace vibe was so thick and fun. Appropriately, Scott McKenzie is then heard over more concert prep footage singing "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)", which festival co-founder John Phillips wrote to promote the event. The first stage act we see are The Mamas and The Papas doing "California Dreaming" - a fine expression of the spirit of the day. Sensational rock acts including Canned Heat, Simon & Garfunkle, and Jefferson Airplane follow. Big Brother & The Holding Company really get things deep with Janis wailing a remarkable "Ball and Chain." The romance sours a bit as Eric Burden and The Animals perform a sinister "Paint It Black." It then gets very rough when the Who really beat up the crowd with what sounds like early Punk, their ultra loud hooligan posture in stark contrast to the relatively mild preceding sets - ominous signs of a possibly troubled pregnancy. Destroying their instruments at the end of their set in a fit of hyper adolescent rage seems to be a not-to-be-topped show-ender. This may be a stillbirth.And it would have been if The Who hadn't been later followed by the yet not well known Jimi Hendrix who then assumes total control of The Delivery. The water's broken, The Baby is coming and Doctor Jimi is Chief Physician. But he's not your typical Md with an axe. He is transforming before our eyes, mutating, expanding into enormous dimensions and capacities into a monumental Shaman. A molten force from prehistorical depths erupting and reforming endlessly, now being entirely recreated. He writhes and coils as if caught in the throws of powerful contractions. An electric, sonic fetus has instantly developed on stage into a gargantuan, cosmic sound. His symphonic offspring, now fully formed, complete, gorgeous, pure like Apollo, the god of healing who taught man medicine. The god of light. The god of truth, who can not speak a lie. And then Jimi sets fire to his guitar - a ritual sacrifice, appeasing the greater gods that this brand new, better, infant world he has just ushered in might live and prosper.Pretty heady stuff, aye? And the truly amazing, wonderful bit that still thrills me is that Ravi Shankar outdoes Jimi. Ravi had done it earlier on the preceding Sunday afternoon, but realizing the awesome achievement of Shankar's act, Pennebaker wisely saves this astounding performance for last. Time, after all, is just an illusion. In what starts like a modest and polite display of a bygone technique, Ravi's raga soon has summoned the attention of everyone and directed it to the Here And Now. The rhythmic syncopation building upon itself, repeating and quickening, everyone's awareness now finely focused on the increasingly heated, emphatic call and response between Ravi's Sitar and Alla Rakha's Tabla. The pace and intensity increase and hold the entire population helplessly captive. It's a formidable, inexorable current that has grasped everyone's consciousness as the pace continues to build and grow. Each pass seems to be the limit but the next surpasses. Everyone's psyche is pummeled with ferocious spasms of rhythm. We are not just witnessing but actually experiencing the conception of our new life. A great cosmic mind f*** with the potent seed of eternity being implanted into the open, pulsing, unsuspecting, tender minds of all.Tho they didn't know it yet, on that Sunday afternoon of the final scheduled day of the Monterey Pop Festival, a roundish, dark skinned, simple cotton cloth swaddled gnome had very thoroughly, graciously ravished the collective mind of that naive bunch. And you can see it on the stunned, gaping faces of anonymous spectators and fellow performers alike. They just didn't have the words or ideas or emotions to grasp what was happening.So it was in such a fertile, pregnant state that Janis, and Pete and Jimi took that evening's and next morning's stage and completed the inevitable, miraculous act that Ravi had so cunningly initiated.This is what I felt when I first watched that edited, incomplete personal tale that is "Monterey Pop." That deformed near-abortion is, to me, perfect. As perfect as any life can be.

Without rubbing our face in visual gimmicks like split-screens, Monterey Pop captures the sweaty, bodacious force of a live rock concert-the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Director D.A. Pennebaker does not try too hard to increase the performances' liveliness; why would you try to increase the liveliness of Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Mammas and the Poppas, and Simon and Garfunkel? Instead, he films them with a wonderfully gritty photographic style, zooms in to so we can see their perspiring faces, and then lets them do the rest. As for 'defining a generation', the film doesn't do so in the kind of exhaustiveness of Michaek Wadleigh's Woodstock but it does give us a feeling of the life of a sixties radical. If there is one problem with the film, it is Pennebaker's idiotic choice of showing us the confusion as to how the massive audience will be able to be fed. This behind-the-scenes moment shows Pennebaker trying to do what Woodstock did. He shouldn't. He shouldn't let the music stop at all; what is so marvelous about this film is not its ability to capture the feel of a generation through interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, but, rather, through the looks in peoples eyes when the music starts.

Now this is what a rock festival is all about. Just imagine seeing the top performers of the 60s all in one concert. This was it. Complete with camping on the scene and drugs. This is what the 60s was all about-hippies and great music. If you like 60s rock, then this flick runs fast and is really great. I think this is the kind of movie you ought watch every once in a while if you are a rock fan-because this is a classic-like Woodstock. Hendrix is awesome and don't forgot Ravi Shankar on sitar. Joplin is really good-so is Grace Slick. The mix of performers is great. The only thing better than watching this movie might be to attend such a festival-it must've been great.