Best Music Movies of 1970

Documentary film about The Beatles rehearsing and recording songs for the album Let It Be in January 1969. The film features an unannounced rooftop concert by the group, their last performance in public. Released just after the album, it was the final original Beatles release. This film has not been commercially available since the 1980s.

This 1970 concert documentary captures Elvis Presley midway through a fateful transition, seeking to reclaim his musical primacy after a decade of self-imposed exile from concert stages. Sidelined by his big-screen career, eclipsed by rock's mid-'60s transformations, the King had begun his return two years earlier with the relatively lean attack of his fabled network television appearance, '68 Comeback Special. Now the Memphis legend was poised to reposition his performing profile by pursuing the top rungs of headliner status in Las Vegas, a career choice that seems even more ephemeral in hindsight than it already did at the time. Elvis: That's the Way It Is follows the show's genesis from rehearsal to stage, with the performance footage that provides its inevitable climax shot over six nights. The rehearsal footage, expanded for this special edition, offers further proof that Presley's band was simply superb...

Young gangster Chas Devlin seeks refuge from the mob in a basement belonging to a reclusive, fading rock star Turner.

Composer, conductor and teacher Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky struggles against his homosexual tendencies by marrying, but unfortunately he chooses a wonky, nymphomaniac girl whom he cannot satisfy.

Set in Paris during World War I. Lili Smith/Schmidt is a German spy being requested to go under cover to help Germany during the war, to try and find out their plans. Her "uncle" wishes her to fulfill the operation, whereas one of his colleagues believed she is not capable of performing such an operation as she is British. She soon finds herself following Major William Larrabee's every move and spending all her time either with him or thinking of him. Her "uncle" realises she's in love with him but Lili is not facing that she is. Things and people are coming between her true fate, but what is it...

A short film about a mysterious ceremony, based on an essay by William S. Burroughs.

Stephen Sondheim's musical "Company" opened on Broadway in the Spring of 1970, and tradition dictates that the cast recording is done on the first Sunday after opening night. D.A. Pennebaker, the now-legendary documentarian, filmed the production of the original cast recording, the back and forth between Sondheim and the performers, and the dynamic of trying to record live performance. The film climaxes with Elaine Stritch's performance of "The Ladies Who Lunch". The show won 6 Tony Awards including "Best Musical" and ran for two years on Broadway.

Join the fun and laugh along with the "misadventures" of Archy the cockroach, a poet in his former life now having to jump on his typewriter keys to peck out his poems. Archie adores the huge-eyed, blonde, hip-swaying Mehitabel the Cat, and along with a colorful cast of characters, they embark on an animated, musical treat the whole family will love!

This documentary on rock 'n' roll groupies, including the infamous Plaster Casters, features performances (musical) by such bands as Ten Years After, Terry Reid, Spooky Tooth, and Cat Mother.