Starring: George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney
As the hottest band in Britain, The Beatles (Harrison, Lennon, McCartney, Ringo Starr) spend their days running between TV and concert performances whilst dodging adoring and screaming fans. On their way to one of these performances, Paul's grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) seems intent to cause mischief and Ringo gets fed up with the jokes at his expense. All the while, John and George much about to a selection of hits from the Fab Four.
It's hard, even now, to think how extraordinary the lives of the Beatles as individuals must have been in 1964. Four lads from Liverpool still in their early-twenties who had shot to international superstardom in just a year of their first record and became the biggest names on the planet; an impact that's still felt half a century later. Obviously, this not a film intended to capture a realistic day in the life (pun shamelessly intended) of The Beatles but rather it captures a fun fantasy of that life.
Directing the film is Richard Lester, an American director expatriated to England and an associate of The Goons and with Lester at the helm, the film has an energetic and punchy sense of humour that delves towards the surreal (of course, The Beatles, particularly George Harrison, would also develop a connection and kinship to the inheritors of the surrealist comedy crown held by The Goons, Monty Python). The film owes a debt to the French New Wave that was popular at the period, with its energetic editing and loose, even hand-held, camera work whilst also pioneering the "mockumentary" format of comedic fictional "documentaries" in its own right.
It's probably not to be expected for The Beatles to be great actors, inexperience as they were, and it's true that they don't pull off astounding acting performances but all of them show some sort of promise and provide character and humour with the boys even having the occasional moment of showing a burgeoning skill for acting (especially John and Ringo) whilst Wilfrid Brambell, star of Steptoe And Son, has a few food scenes as Paul's manipulative Irish grandfather.
But the reason why anyone would hand over money for a Beatles movie is the music. Working off of what is probably the best work of their early career, The Beatles occasionally break the action with sort of proto-music-videos that help sell the spontaneity and fun in their songs and the opening credits and closing concert sell just how popular the band were better than pretty much any legitimate documentary ever can. The remaster boosts the visual and especially the audio quality of this classic bringing all that was great to the forefront.
This was the first of five films that directly involved The Beatles on screen (alongside Help! (1965), Magical Mystery Tour (1967), Yellow Submarine (1968) and the little-seen genuine documentary, Let It Be (1970)) but it's Hard Day's Night that has remained the most popular and for a reason. No other film has ever quite gotten to the root of how fun, exciting and genuinely brilliant The Beatles were than this film and it's essential viewing for any Beatle freak.
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