Woody Guthrie Movies

Adapted by Robert Getchell from Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Hal Ashby's biopic portrays a few pivotal years in the life of the celebrated folk singer and social activist. In the Depression 1930s, Midwesterner Guthrie (David Carradine) plays music locally but cannot make enough as a sign painter to support his wife (Melinda Dillon) and children. With only his paintbrushes, Woody joins the migration westward from the Dust Bowl to supposedly greener California pastures via boxcar and hitchhiking. When penniless Woody is turned back from the California border, he sneaks into the state alone and meets Luther (Randy Quaid), who takes Woody to a farm where hundreds of workers scrounge for a few ill-paid harvesting jobs. When singer Ozark Bole (Ronny Cox) arrives both to entertain and to urge the workers to unionize, Woody joins Ozark in song, fleeing with him after thugs break up the assembly. He lands a job singing with Ozark on the radio, and the two become partners in union agitation. Unable to commit in his personal life as he finds his political voice, Woody brings his family west, but his wife can't tolerate Woody's wandering ways. Reluctant to sell out his ideals for a lucrative career, Woody hits the road again, bringing his songs of freedom and protest to a nationwide audience on his own terms. Opting for atmospheric story-telling over strident polemic, the filmmakers present Guthrie as a complex individual with contradictory virtues and faults. Despite critical praise and nominations for several Oscars, including Best Picture, Bound for Glory proved less than glorious at the box office. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Directed by Irving Lerner and Willard Van Dyke, and narrated by renowned folk troubadour Pete Seeger, this film presented by the Museum of Modern Art in New York chronicles the history of the banjo, an instrument with roots in African-American slavery. Shot in Appalachia in the 1940s, highlights include footage of a performance by Sonny Terry and rare footage of the legendary political folksinger Woody Guthrie. Other performers in this program are Baldwin Hawes, Brownie McGhee, Texas Gladden, and Margot Mayo's American Square Dance Group. ~ Steve Blackburn, All Movie Guide

Directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller, Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train offers a retrospective on the life and times of Howard Zinn. Activist, best-selling author, and historian, Zinn is considered the catalyst for some of the most notable progressive movements of the past 60 years. Noam Chomsky, who claims that Zinn "changed the consciousness of a generation," is featured in several interviews, along with Marian Wright Edelman, Alice Walker, Tom Hayden, Daniel Ellsberg, and Zinn himself. The documentary also features rare archival footage. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Few artists in the history of rock and roll have been more groundbreaking and influential than Bob Dylan, whose songwriting brought a new degree of literacy and intellect to popular music. But Dylan's music didn't emerge from a vacuum -- his work was informed by a wide range of musical and literary sources, ranging from activist folk and country blues to beat-era writers and French symbolist poets. Filmmaker Steve Gammond offers a look at the artists and creative movements that helped form Bob Dylan's creative vision in the documentary Down The Tracks: The Music That Influenced Bob Dylan, in which musical historians and fellow artists talk about the work that shaped Dylan's creative consciousness. Down The Tracks includes vintage footage of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Mississippi John Hurt, as well as new performances from Martin Carthy, The Handsome Family, Po' Girl and Jolie Holland. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide