An Easy Day's Write

The Beatles' first film, "A Hard Day's Night," was shot in six weeks and released three months later to take advantage of what everyone thought was going to be a brief moment of fame for the four lads from Liverpool. To the surprise of nearly everybody, it was a smash hit that was enjoyed by both young fans and their parents. And it set a new standard for rock movies, inventing what would become the style of music videos that were shot 20 years later.

There can't possibly be anyone out there that isn't familiar with "A Hard Day's Night" but I'll give a go at summarizing the plot.

A rock group consisting of John, Paul, George and Ringo are chased by their adoring and screaming fans onto a train, which they ride to the location where they will appear in a TV show. The group (which is never really identified as "the Beatles" during the film, except for the logo on Ringo's bass drum) encounters fans everywhere and it also has to deal with a spry grandfather, a cranky TV director and squabbling assistants.

There are ample opportunities for songs in several places, culminating in the TV studio scene at the end of the film. Several songs are performed in the studio sequence.

The script for "A Hard Day's Night," written by Alun Owen, is a real wonder and it was nominated for an Academy Award. It captures the personality of the young Beatles in a way that still feels natural across the distance of nearly 40 years. Nothing I have since learned about the individual members of the group is at odds with the people portrayed in the film.

The film's American director, Richard Lester, was an unusual choice who turned out to be the perfect person for the job. He was used to working quickly on small budgets and his previous work with cutting-edge comedy (The Goons) was the perfect training for his gig with the Beatles.

Lester intercut realism with surrealism so that you never knew exactly what the group was going to be doing, especially during the long train sequence. Lester also relied extensively on hand-held cameras to shoot "A Hard Day's Night," which has become a staple of film (and video) making today but was a big surprise back then.

And, of course, there are the songs. This film mines some of the best of the early Beatles' tunes, including "Can't Buy Me Love," "If I Fell," "And I Love Her" and "A Hard Day's Night."

The result is that "A Hard Day's Night" is a classic, a four-star film (I gave it five "Epinions'" stars) that is considered to be in the same league as the Marx Brothers and -- dare I say it? -- Alfred Hitchcock.

Watching this DVD, the film is even funnier than I remember, perhaps because I know when the jokes are coming and my ear is better tuned to the scouse accents. The running gag about Paul's grandfather being "clean" repeatedly brought snickers, even from my wife... who does not share my fascination with the Beatles.

The video and sound quality are not good by today's standards, but at least the black & white images are without scratches and dirt. The sound of dialog is both compressed and frequency-response limited, but it is as intelligible as a Liverpudlian accent gets. The sound of the music is good, if perhaps a bit below the quality of the group's CDs. (I turned on the captions to better understand some of the overlapping dialog.)

As good as the script and direction are, some of the lip-syncing in the film is abysmal. A couple of things are understandable, such as the fact that John cannot possibly be singing and playing harmonica at the same time in "I Should Have Known Better." Some is just plain rotten, such as the shots of Ringo's drumming. I know that the film was slapped together quickly but it's a shame that they didn't work harder on the lip-syncing.

What this DVD has, however, is a lot of extra material that will be fascinating to Beatles' fans. Most of the principals who worked on the film, including Walter Shenson (producer), Richard Lester (director), George Martin (music supervisor) and other critical personnel are still alive and contributed interesting interviews. Some of the actors also had good interviews.

Remember the running gag that I mentioned about Paul's grandfather being "clean?" This was funny enough in the film, but the added material explained that the actor who played Paul's grandfather, Wilfred Brambell, was the lead in the British sitcom "Steptoe and Son," where a running gag was that his son always admonished him for being "dirty!" That's why the "clean" jokes ended up in the film.

Another bit of extra material that I enjoyed was by one of the tailors who worked on the Beatles' clothing for the film. He still has some of the original patterns! I had always heard that the group got its famous collarless jackets from Pierre Cardin, but the tailor explains that it was his father's design.

"A Hard Day's Night" has had a lasting cultural impact that can be seen in everything from Austin Powers' movies to the hand-held look of current TV dramas. The MTV culture borrowed liberally from the techniques in the film.

The Beatles' later film, "Help!", was an enjoyable but contrived affair that placed the group in unbelievable situations. John Lennon later remarked that the group "was like cats in a film about dogs."

But "A Hard Day's Night" caught the group near the beginning of the long swoon known as Beatlemania and it presents about as real an image of this still very young band as a fictional story can.