Bound for Glory

Bound for Glory (1976) is a biographical drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Hal Ashby, with David Carradine as Woody Guthrie — the Texas-born folk singer who became a voice for Depression-era American workers.

The mid-1930s Texas dust belt has nothing left to offer. Guthrie boards a freight train headed west, no ticket, barely any plan. California delivers labor camps and job-office queues packed with exhausted migrants who crossed the country for work that barely materialized. What Guthrie finds is not an escape from that misery but something to do with it — songs that sound like the land itself, passed around at campfires. Ronny Cox and Melinda Dillon appear in supporting roles.

Cinematographer Haskell Wexler shot the film in muted, documentary-close visuals that took him an Oscar; Leonard Rosenman's folk arrangements in the score claimed another. Ashby gives the story 147 minutes and uses every one of them. Stream Bound for Glory (1976) online on iFILM.