Festival seating on a hill in Bethel, New York, half a million people, and a crew of filmmakers who did not entirely know what they were shooting. Woodstock came out in 1970 and set the terms that every concert film has worked under since. By the end of the decade Martin Scorsese had pointed his camera at The Band's farewell dinner and made something much closer to a eulogy. In between those two points the music documentary stopped being a novelty and became a form people took seriously.
The 1970s did one thing that later decades never matched. Almost nothing on this list was made to sell a record. The bands were past the point of needing the exposure, the labels had money to burn, and the result is a group of films that mostly wanted to record something before it disappeared.
Where these sit on streaming services moves constantly, so we check before you do and update the list as titles shift.
The short version
If you only watch one, make it Gimme Shelter, because it is the only film here where you can watch a movie crew realize in real time that they are documenting something going wrong. If you want the biggest, watch Woodstock. If you want the warmest, watch The Last Waltz.
All three are worth your evening, and the wider list of best music documentaries covers everything after 1979.
Every film here, at a glance
The shelf in one table, with credits, so you can see the whole decade before you start.
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Woodstock | 1970 | Michael Wadleigh |
| Gimme Shelter | 1970 | David and Albert Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin |
| Let It Be | 1970 | Michael Lindsay-Hogg |
| Elvis: That's the Way It Is | 1970 | Denis Sanders |
| The Concert for Bangladesh | 1972 | Saul Swimmer |
| Heartworn Highways | 1976 | James Szalapski |
| The Grateful Dead Movie | 1977 | Leon Gast, Jerry Garcia |
| The Last Waltz | 1978 | Martin Scorsese |
| Amazing Grace, shot 1972 and released 2018 | 2018 | Stan Lathan |
The three that define the decade
Woodstock, 1970. Three days, half a million people, and footage that had no business being usable. Michael Wadleigh's crew shot it on multiple cameras with second-unit directors who went on to run the industry, and the editing grid the film uses, screens splitting into two and four and nine at once, is still the solution everyone reaches for when they have too much footage. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1971, which was the first time the Academy treated a concert film as a real documentary rather than a curiosity. At over three hours it is a commitment. The triptych sequences are where impatient viewers bail, and they are also where the film gets interesting.
Gimme Shelter, 1970. The Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin following the Rolling Stones through their 1969 American tour and ending at Altamont. What makes it the best film of the decade is not the violence. It is that the crew kept rolling while something collapsed around them and then edited the footage honestly, including shots of themselves watching the playback. The film keeps rewinding and slowing the moment down, as if it cannot quite believe it either. It is the rare documentary that becomes more unsettling the more you understand how it was made.
The Last Waltz, 1978. The Band playing their final show at the Winterland ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving in 1976, filmed by Scorsese with a lighting and camera budget that concert films did not usually get. Everyone turns up to jam, and the guest appearances could have been a cynical device. They are not, because Scorsese shoots each arrival as if it matters. It is the warmest film on this page and the one most likely to make you want to call somebody.
The Last Waltz original 1978 trailer.
The rest of the essential shelf
Let It Be, 1970. Michael Lindsay-Hogg filming the Beatles attempting to record an album in a cold studio with a deadline, no plan, and a rooftop show organized at the last minute. For decades this was the least seen Beatles film, largely because the band buried it after Get Back turned the same footage into something friendlier. Peter Jackson's 2021 reconstruction restores the sourness. Watch them together and you get the same week from two angles, one of which was edited by people who could not stand each other.
The Concert for Bangladesh, 1972. George Harrison and Ravi Shankar organizing two benefit shows at Madison Square Garden on 1 August 1971 for refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War. Saul Swimmer's film is straightforward, almost plain, and that is the point. What is worth knowing is that the whole venture was a rehearsal for benefit concerts that came later. The soundtrack album won Album of the Year at the 1972 Grammys, which tells you how much weight the event carried.
Elvis: That's the Way It Is, 1970. Denis Sanders directs Elvis in Las Vegas, at the height and also at the beginning of the end. The rehearsal material is the reason to watch it. Concert footage of Elvis in the seventies is easy to find and mostly interchangeable, but watching him work through arrangements with the band, half joking and half deadly serious, is the closest thing to seeing how he actually thought about a song.
Heartworn Highways, 1976. Shot in Nashville and Austin while outlaw country was still an argument rather than a marketing category. Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Steve Earle and David Allan Coe all turn up before any of them had much to sell, and there is a sequence with a young Earle that people still quote. It sat unreleased for years and it shows, in the good way. Nobody in it is performing for a camera. It belongs on the country music documentary list as much as this one.
The Grateful Dead Movie, 1977. Jerry Garcia co-directing, with footage from five nights at the Winterland ballroom in San Francisco in October 1974 that ended a tour and started an extended hiatus. The Dead had already been filmed plenty, but this is the one made by somebody inside the band, and the difference is obvious in what it chooses to linger on. Long stretches are just the crowd and the floor show between songs. Fans consider Morning Dew the peak. Non-fans should know going in that this is a Dead film, with everything that implies.
Two worth knowing about
Amazing Grace was shot by Stan Lathan over two nights at a Los Angeles church in 1972 and then spent decades tied up in legal disputes. Aretha Franklin singing essentially uninterrupted. It did not get a proper release until 2018, so it is a seventies film that most people discover on a soul and R&B list. It is not a seventies release and does not pretend to be one here.
No Nukes came out of the September 1979 Madison Square Garden shows organized by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt. The concerts belong to the decade, the release does not. Bruce Springsteen's sequences are the part people still pass around, and they remain some of the best live footage anyone got of him at that moment.
Where to watch
Streaming moves constantly, so treat this as a starting point.
Max carries the core of the decade. Gimme Shelter, Monterey Pop and Don't Look Back sit on the same service, which means the films that essentially invented the genre are all one search apart. Full Max list
Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Google Play rent or buy most of the rest. Stop Making Sense gets all the attention as the hard to find one, but Woodstock and The Last Waltz are similarly a few dollars rather than a free stream.
Free options rotate too much to promise. Tubi and Pluto TV move catalog titles in and out monthly, and YouTube carries some legally uploaded seventies material that comes and goes.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best music documentary of the 1970s? Gimme Shelter, 1970. Woodstock is the bigger film and The Last Waltz is the warmer one, but Gimme Shelter is the one that changed what the form could do, because it filmed a crew losing control of its own story and never pretended otherwise.
Is Woodstock worth the three hours? Yes, if you go in knowing where it drags. The split screen sequences that frustrate casual viewers are the same technique every concert film has used since. If you want one evening rather than one afternoon, start with Gimme Shelter.
Where can I watch 1970s music documentaries? Max holds the core of the decade, which means the films that invented the genre are one search apart. Woodstock, The Last Waltz and the rest are usually a rental on Amazon Prime, Apple TV or Google Play rather than an included stream.
Why was Let It Be so hard to see? The Beatles disliked it and effectively buried it after Get Back reused the same footage in a warmer edit. Peter Jackson's 2021 reconstruction put the original cut back out, and watching the two back to back is the argument the film exists to win.
Is Amazing Grace a 1970s film? It was filmed in 1972 and sat unreleased until 2018, so it belongs to the seventies as a piece of work and to 2018 as a release. It is on the soul and R&B list as well as here for that reason.
What is the best concert film ever made? That is a question this site answers on the main list, but if you want the seventies answer it is The Last Waltz, 1978. Stop Making Sense, 1983, is the one that would take the title.