The "Now I've Seen Everything" Dept.- The Beatles

In which the author, having seen everything there is to see on the subject makes a capsule summary* of each, looking for trends and contributing what he calls an Ouvre-view.**

Subject: Movies, starring The Beatles

A Hard Day's Night, 1964 I went to the premiere of this in Seattle, and it was a wild affair with screams from ardent fans at the craven images of The Beatles projected 40 feet across the screen. Below are the first ecstatic minutes of "A Hard Day's Night" (sans audience accompaniment, but with plenty of screams), one of the initial attempts to expand the group's reach into all media. They couldn't have had a better start. Richard Lester had worked with Beatles faves, the Goons, and brought a fresh anarchic air to the film, which apart from the bit about Paul's larcenous grandfather, sticks pretty close to life as the Beatles knew it--in perpetual transit.*** Life for the Beatles must have seemed absolutely mad, with the hysteria from all sides focussed on them like sunlight through a magnifying glass, while they were being shipped like freight from one performance to the next. On the clip, check out Lennon's clever bit with the Pepsi bottle.

Help!, 1966 Richard Lester again, with color film and a bigger budget, Lennon in his self-described "fat Elvis" period and a daft story full of good bits and gags, but dripping with paranoia. It's not just the fans out to get the boys this time, it's an Eastern cult trying to get a sacred sacrificial ring, sent to Ringo, by any mean necessary. Spoofs of Bond, spoofs of Hammer and adventure movies with the Beatles particularly loose--they were recently introduced to marijuana by Bob Dylan and higher than kites during filming. If the whole thing seems to hang together without a care to structure or plot (the resolution of the conflict is thrown away-literally), that's why. After years of restoration work, "Help!" has a fine, cracking presentation on DVD, that's a wonderful companion piece to Miramax's "Hard Days Night" box, only this one's released by Apple. Well done. It's the first time that you can see David Watkins' stellar color cinematography (the first time he'd worked in color!) in all its beauty. The Features are nice, too, with Richard Lester contributing to a documentary.**** His comments are invaluable. Here's my favorite part of the film-the wierdly anarchic and trippy end-credits with improvised Beatles overlay, finished by a hacking cough.

Yellow Submarine, 1968 An experimental cartoon built loosely around several Beatles songs in and around the Sgt. Pepper period. Not much Beatles content (although they appear at the end)--they didn't even provide the voices--but the techniques and the imagination behind it (directed by George Dunning, written by several folks including Erich "Love Story" Segal-egad!) are awe-inspiring. Yes, it's silly ("Frankenstein?!" "I used to date his sister, Phyllis.."), but it's still a wonder to see. Here's a bit.

Magical Mystery Tour, 1967 May you never suffer through this mess of a film, self-indulgently directed by The Beatles themselves. A holiday trip manufactured by the group is the thinnest of excuses to string song-videos. In "The Beatles Anthology," McCartney claims that they study it in film-schools (in a cautionary way, I'm sure) and that Spielberg thinks its brilliant! *Sigh* At least it has a performance of "I am the Walrus," which you can see here without watching the rest of the wretched thing.

Let it Be, 1970 My admiration for the Beatles knows little bounds, but this film nearly destroyed them in my eyes forever. It's a documentary with grandiose intentions: The Beatles rehearse in a studio, then perform a concert in some incredible location, but things don't turn out so well: Paul gets bossy; George turns diffident; Ringo sulks and John's strung out and passive-agressive. You come out of this thing really liking Yoko (she's so damned patient)...and Billy Preston, whom George brings into the fold to keep everyone on their best behavior. Paul plays to the camera, and the rehearsals are dismal. Then, instead of some big foreign extravaganza, they just go up to the roof for an impromptu concert to get the damned thing overwith...and they're brilliant (the filmmakers must have missed the parts where it all came together!), then the police come and say, "What's all this, then, eh?" Here's the famous part where a song breaks down because Paul doesn't like how he and George are playing off each other. Paul turns bossy, surreptitiously gives George the finger, then becomes placating, while George is passive/aggressive/sarcastic. John steps in and tries something completely different while Paul looks like he's trying to ignore the whole thing.

The Beatles Anthology, 1995 The surviving Beatles, with pithy recordings from Lennon, tell the story of the Beatles--to a certain extent. When its best you get a sense of what it was like to be in the eye of the Beatlemania hurricane. At its worst its an opportunity for McCartney to spin-doctor--the project was his idea, after all. George and Ringo's interviews are in studio or their backyards, but Paul talks in the woods in the warm wrinkle-reducing glow of a fire or, most bizarrely, driving a tug-boat! No discussion of relationships--except for Yoko--but there is a lot of talk of how they worked so well against the world in the wild concert days and how they splintered in the studio. But, the best thing--the most brilliant thing--is the visual summing-up of The Beatles phenomenon in the perfect 20-seconds animation that began each episode: you can see it here--a pull back from the Beatles performing "Help!" as they disappear from view and their music is overwhelmed by screams--and the individuals are dwarfed by "The Beatles" as a phenomenon far bigger than they are.

"I'm Down" from the first Shea Stadium concert, 1965 This is my favorite Beatles clip. Its a hot August night in New York and the four are perfroming their first concert in an outside sports stadium. During this song, John, feeling slightly uncomfortable with no guitar and playing organ, realizes that it doesn't matter what he does on stage. No one can hear him. No one cares, they're screaming their lungs out. They're little dots in the middle of the field, and their music is coming through the stadium PA. No one can hear them! And John goes just a little...crazy, then brings George into it, then Paul, and they're carried away by the absurdity of the situation. There's a joy here, a madness, that epitomized the Beatles, that overcame any scary situation. But it was the beginning of the end for the concert tours: they became pointless with all the screams; they couldn't play well with all the noise; their music was getting more complicated and harder to duplicate live. After a particularly scary world tour, The Beatles retreated to the studio and their individual efforts.

* with any luck

**Ouvre: 1.the works of a writer, painter, or the like, taken as a whole.

*** When asked how he liked a particular country on a tour Lennon responded, "It was a limousine, a hotel room, a sandwich and another limousine ride" and on Beatlemania in general "It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?"

**** One nice bit is Elanor Bron revealing a nervous tic while filming--she would blink, a lot (Lester does a nice slow zoom on her during one of her eye-batting moments). And all of the Beatles take turns blinking excessively at her to throw her off. Combined with the already-established winking between her and Paul (and the consternation by George: "I'm getting winked at by ladies a lot these days--used to be you, Paul"), there's a lot of fluttering going on.