The Last Waltz (1978) on Netflix
PG19781h 57mDocumentaryMusic
After sixteen years on the road, the Band plays its farewell concert at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving 1976. Guests join them, and interviews tell the group's story.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb8.1/1022,448 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes98%
Trailer
Plot summary
On Thanksgiving Day, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, the Band stages what is billed as a farewell concert after sixteen years on the road. The five members are Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel. An audience of 5,000 is served turkey dinners and ballroom dancing before the group takes the stage with a horn section behind it. Guests join them as the show goes on, among them Ronnie Hawkins, their early employer, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, with Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood also appearing. Cameras stay close to the music, and interviews recorded away from the concert have the members recalling the group's start and what life on tour cost them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Last Waltz (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During post-production Neil Young's manager insisted that a large blob of cocaine on the guitarist's nose be removed with special effects; Scorsese reportedly defended it as "rock & roll", but the team created a rotoscoped matte, known in-house as "the traveling booger matte", that hovered over Young's face for his whole appearance.
- All the cameras except László Kovács' were shut down for a scheduled film reload as Muddy Waters was to perform "Mannish Boy". Kovács had removed his headset earlier and had not heard the orders to stop filming, so he was already rolling and captured the song. "It was just luck," Scorsese recalled.
- Bob Dylan had agreed to perform at the concert, but decided during the intermission that he did not want his own performance filmed, fearing it might detract from his film Renaldo and Clara - even though Warner Bros. had agreed to finance Last Waltz only if Dylan would appear in it.
- Robertson talks in the film about Hudson joining the band on the condition that the other members pay him $10 a week each for music lessons, so that the classically trained Hudson could tell his parents he was a music teacher instead of merely a rock-and-roll musician.
- Levon Helm said that Scorsese "went nuts" upon hearing that Dylan had changed his mind, while "Robbie became totally pale"; according to Helm, more than a million dollars would have been lost without Dylan's performance in the film.
- In his 1993 autobiography This Wheel's on Fire, Levon Helm claimed that Scorsese and Robertson, who produced the film, conspired to make the Band look like Robertson's sidemen, and that Robertson, depicted singing powerful backing vocals, was actually singing into a microphone turned off for most of the concert.
