...a virtual kaleidoscope of effects at an almost dizzying pace.
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When the Beatles burst onto the musical scene in the early sixties, they were primarily a hit with younger teens. As I had just graduated from high school at the time, I along with a multitude of other young adults thought ourselves too sophisticated for the likes of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But in 1964, at the height of their newfound popularity, the Beatles made "A Hard Day's Night" and everything changed.
Within the next few years, the British sensations went from teenage heartthrobs to everybody's favorite singing group with theme albums like "Rubber Soul," "Revolver," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Magical Mystery Tour," Abbey Road," and "Let It Be." They would never again have the critical success with a live-action motion picture they had with "A Hard Day's Night," but that obviously didn't affect their careers.
Directed by Richard Lester, who would go on to score further successes with "The Three Musketeers" and the "Superman" sequels, "A Hard Day's Night" is a zany, no-holds-barred musical comedy that follows the real-life Beatles on a whirlwind fling through England on their way to a recording date, with teenage girls following them wherever they go. Don't look for a plot; there isn't one. Lester throws out all the stops, using every cinematic device available to him at the time to produce a virtual kaleidoscope of effects at an almost dizzying pace.
Along on the ride with John, Paul, George, and Ringo are Paul's grandfather and the troupe's two managers, who barely hold the quartet in containment. The grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) is especially a hoot, such a "clean old man," constantly getting into trouble as an instigator and a ladies' man. Along the way, the Beatles get to sing a host of their most popular songs up until that time.
The film is filled with clever quips and sight gags, mostly at the expense of a totally square, early sixties world. An interviewer asks John, "Tell me, how did you find America?" and John answers, "Turned left at Greenland." Another interviewer asks Ringo, "Do you think these haircuts have come to stay?" and Ringo responds, "Well, this one has, you know. It's stayed on good and proper."
As I've said, the director uses every filmmaking gimmick at his disposal to do his work, from crane and helicopter shots to low and wide angles, with a rapid-fire editing that would make today's MTV blush. Lester also encouraged the boys to improvise, and it's clear that much of what the "Fab Four" say and do was made up on the spot. It's all a part of the exuberance of the event. From time to time a little satire intrudes on the silliness of the antics, like a scene in a TV ad agency that goes awry, but most of the time the story is content with madcap, screwball comedy.
Among the songs featured in the film are, of course, the title tune, "A Hard Day's Night," along with "I Should Have Known Better," "If I Fell in Love With You," "Can't Buy Me Love," "And I Love Her," "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You," and a climactic medley of earlier Beatles' hits like "Tell Me Why" and "She Loves You."
There are two major running gags in the film. The first is the continual reference to Paul's grandfather as a "clean old man." The deal here is that the actor in the part, Wilfrid Brambell, played a dirty old man in the 1962 British TV sitcom, "Steptoe and Son" (a series translated to America as "Sanford and Son"), so this is a take on his earlier role. Interestingly, Brambell was only fifty-two when he played the grandfather; such is the magic of movies. The second gag is that while the Beatles are mobbed by female teenage fans wherever they go, they are hardly recognized by adults. When Ringo is arrested for suspicious behavior and taken to a police station, none of the officers know who he is, even when they have a photograph of the Beatles right in front of them!
It's hard to estimate the effect the film had on the future of movies, television, and society in general. Certainly, the group and this particular film helped generate new musical trends, TV imitators like "The Monkeys," numerous swinging sixties' movies, and, naturally, clothing and hair styles; maybe the film even inspired the hyped-up MTV phenomenon that we all currently know and love. "A Hard Day's Night" may seem a bit dated and even stereotyped nowadays, almost forty years on, but the early sixties were probably already dated by the time the film premiered, and any clichés you may notice were not clichés at the time they were invented for the film. "A Hard Day's Night" remains a classic; there's little else to say.
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[release]10585[/release]