The Last Waltz (1978)
A film account and presentation of the final concert of The Band. (PG, 117 min.)
Showtimes
Friday, August 18, 2023
7:30 PM
Saturday, August 19, 2023
8:30 PM
Sunday, August 20, 2023
5:30 PM
It started as a concert. It became a celebration. Join an unparalleled lineup of rock superstars as they celebrate The Band’s historic 1976 Thanksgiving Day farewell performance. Directed by Martin Scorsese, “The Last Waltz” is not only “the most beautiful rock film ever made” (The New Yorker)…it’s “one of the most important cultural events of the last two decades” (Rolling Stone)! Featuring Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters and more. [Park Circus]
More than just one of the greatest concert films ever made, The Last Waltz is an at once ecstatic and elegiac summation of a vital era in American rock music. Invited to capture the farewell performance of the legendary group the Band at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving, 1976, Martin Scorsese conceived a new kind of music documentary. Enlisting seven camera operators (led by director of photography Michael Chapman, and also including renowned cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács) and production designer Boris Leven to design the strikingly theatrical sets, Scorsese created a grandly immersive experience that brings viewers onstage and inside the music itself. That music—as performed by the Band and a host of other generation-defining artists, including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, the Staple Singers, Muddy Waters, and Neil Young—lives on as an almost religious expression of the transcendent possibilities of rock and roll. [Criterion]
Director: Martin Scorsese
Genre(s): Documentary, Biography, Music
"It's never been topped."
— David Sterritt, Christian Science
"This is one of the great movie experiences."
— Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press
"Powerful, vibrant, imaginative and adventurous."
— Richard Harrington, Washington Post
"The greatest rock concert movie ever made -- and maybe the best rock movie, period."
— Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"From a technical perspective, it's undoubtedly the most impressive and authentic concert film ever made."
— TV Guide Magazine
"One of the rare rock films that produces the effect of a live concert: After each number, the audience erupts into applause."
— Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer
"To see the film in this meticulously restored and remixed version is like watching it for the first time, so clear is the sound, so vivid the sights."
— Hazel-Dawn Dumpert, L.A. Weekly
"Martin Scorseses radical advancement of the concert documentary receives a superlative transfer that reaffirms the film as one of the directors great aesthetic achievements."
— Jake Cole, Slant Magazine
"No other concert film has ever expressed so fervently the erotic root of rock. Seeing it is the opposite of taking a trip down memory lane; it's more like a plunge into the belly of the beast."
— Peter Rainer, New York Magazine (Vulture)
"It's arguably the most beautiful of rock movies, while the musical highlights - 'The Weight' with the Staples Singers, Van Morrison's firebolt 'Caravan', every Levon Helm vocal - still astound."
— Tom Huddleston, Time Out
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