Other Titles • Bound for Glory • Dieses Land ist mein Land (1977)
Synopses for Bound for Glory (1976)
1.
Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Being There) directed this lyrical and affecting 1976 biography of legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie. David Carradine gives a powerful performance as the traveling Depression-era vagabond whose music affected generations. Guthrie is portrayed as an earnest soul whose passion and empathy for the working class spurs him to inspirational heights. Ronny Cox (Deliverance, Beverly Hills Cop) plays a union organizer who sees the value in Guthrie's words and music and persuades him to put his music to good use for the people struggling to earn a living wage. Featuring Melinda Dillon as Guthrie's wife, this easygoing travelogue conveys an authentic sense of period Americana and won Academy Awards for Haskell Wexler's cinematography as well as for the score based on Guthrie's own music. Bound for Glory is an important film to see for anyone in love with the origins of folk music and interested in its place in the 20th century. --Robert Lane
2.
Hal Ashby's film of Woody Guthrie's autobiography, BOUND FOR GLORY, recounts the protest singer's life starting when he's a young man with a wife and two children, trying to find work as a sign painter in the Dust Bowl-ravaged Texas of the 1930s. He leaves his wife, Mary (Melinda Dillon), with her family and, like thousands of others, rides the rails to California. Along the way he sees the brutal treatment of men by the railroad's hired thugs before being thrown into a hard life in the migrant workers camps of the San Fernando Valley. He begins to write songs about everything he's seen and joins Ozark Bule on the radio, not just singing about union organizing, but actually going to meetings and brawling with union-busting goons. When the radio station management, as a result of pressure from its advertisers, tells Woody--who's now attracting a following with his protest songs and ballads about the lives of oppressed people--that he can't do those songs, he gives up the radio program and decides to ride the rails to New York to seek a larger audience for his music. David Carradine, as Guthrie, does his own singing, giving an intimacy to the songs that might have been lost by dubbing. The award-winning cinematography by Haskell Wexler captures both the bleakness of the Great Depression and the beautiful grandeur of America, exactly what Guthrie expressed in his songs.
3.
The Story of the Legendary Woody Guthrie
By strumming his guitar with words of inspiration, Woody Guthrie instilled hope in the hearts of downtrodden Americans everywhere during the 1930's Depression. Now, the extraordinary life of this legendary balladeer and poet is captured in the "elegantly crafted, hugely beautiful and interesting film, which reveals loving integrity in every frame" (Los Angeles Times)! Winner of two Oscars and starring David Carradine, Bound For Glory features "magnificent cinematography" (New York Magazine) and an amazing score adaption.
It's 1936, and the Great Depression is forcing droves of people from the dust bowls of Texas to the alluring green fields of California...and unemployed sign-painter Woody Guthrie is among them. Determined to find a better life out west, Guthrie hitchhikes, hops freight trains and signs his way across America, uplifting the spirits of the poor with his homespun wisdom and fiercely fighting for a better life for all. Featuring classic Guthrie tunes including "This Land is Your Land," this "moving, inspiring" (The Hollywood Reporter) portrait of an American icon is "one of [the] year's most admirable and triumphant surprises" (Los Angeles Times)!
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