Primarily filmed in San Francisco, this documentary features a series of interviews with those who call themselves hippies, or in some way identify with hippies. The countercultural revolution is revealed in discussions about sex, drugs, philosophy and lifestyle. Casual nudity and marijuana use is the main activity of one group. A nun who has left the order reveals her decisions to join the counterculture. Others decry the dehumanization of the modern industrial world, choosing to lead a hand-to-mouth existence. Communal living, psychedelic shows, love-ins and diverse fashion statements accompany the hippies who are many things to many people. All share a feeling of human togetherness and a live-and-let-live philosophy as they cope with the rapidly changing spectrum of social and political events in their lives. Music by Country Joe & the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Steve Miller Band, and Mother Earth. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
Review
This documentary has a strange history, which kind of fits hand-in-glove with its content. Director/co-writer Jack O'Connell, who had made one film before this (Greenwich Village Story), brought his camera to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district immediately in the wake of the area's "hippie" boom, and let the denizens he found do most of the talking. And between the talking and the nude frolicking by lots of hippie chicks, the result is a fairly honest account of what that hippie sub-culture (or -- dare one say it -- counter-culture) was about, for good and ill. The ultimate effect of too much talk and a lack of focus and direction -- apart from a dwelling on one young woman, Today Malone -- however, is stultifying, even allowing for the presence of concert footage of Country Joe & the Fish, Ace of Cups, and other bands of the era. Still, the movie was the first of its kind, in terms of subject matter, and its release was supported by the issue of a soundtrack LP featuring Mother Earth, the Steve Miller Band, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service that took on a life of its own in music circles -- the film might have had a serious, fighting chance at the box office in 1968, except that the makers ran into a dispute with IATSE, the union representing projectionists in New York City, and its original theatrical release in New York was shut down as a result. Beyond the ranks of those who managed to see it amid a chaotic and attenuated release schedule, the movie became best known for its soundtrack album, which was -- ironically -- widely distributed. In the early/middle 1990s, O'Connell re-edited the film and re-released it, again under less-than-ideal circumstances as the owners of the 1985 feature film Revolution threatened legal action over O'Connell's use of the title (even though his movie pre-dated theirs by almost 20 years) -- it went out in 1996 under the title "The Hippie Revolution." ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
