ENTERTAINMENT

Screen | Beatlemania never gets old

Todd Hill
Reporter

Gone are the days when a journalist could simply write a column, see it appear in the newspaper the next day, and then watch it magically evaporate from all public consciousness the day after that, never to be seen again except by mousy researchers happening on it by accident in the newspaper's archives, years or decades later.

Now most everything goes on the Internet first, sometimes mere minutes after it's finished and before the writer has had a proper amount of time to reconsider what he's written. Once there, it becomes immortal, lying in wait to be discovered by anyone in the world at any time, so that the author of that same column finds himself receiving emails about it from somebody in South Africa long after he's moved on.

At least that's what happened with a column I wrote in this space five months ago slamming Paul McCartney for a horrible live performance he gave on television during a special "Saturday Night Live" broadcast.

I don't generally apologize for my opinions, and McCartney's performance was indeed awful, but for months I've felt compelled to make up for my harsh words because the truth is I'm a huge, lifelong fan of Paul McCartney, and I want that to be on the record.

The Beatles were before my time. I only discovered them thanks to the efforts of a seventh-grade music teacher who played a "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" LP for us in class one day. He didn't stop there. Over a period of several weeks he exposed us to the White Album, "Abbey Road," even post-breakup, solo works such as George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" and McCartney's "Band on the Run."

My initial reaction? I've no idea, it was a very long time ago. All I do know is I then purchased every Beatles recording I could find as quickly as I could, followed by years of tracking down their solo albums. (I finally stopped once I heard what Yoko Ono was recording, whatever that was).

My lifelong quest to appreciate any and all kinds of music, which continues to this day, began with the Beatles. Their importance to my cultural IQ cannot be overestimated. I was first exposed to the possibilities of music by some of the most amazingly talented popular musicians the world has ever known.

That's why I didn't want to walk away from the subject of Paul McCartney's live performance without clearing the air. But this is supposed to be a column about film, which brings me to "A Hard Day's Night," the Beatles' first of four feature films (five if you count the "Let It Be" concert film), which was released in 1964.

The title the filmmakers' quickly settled on was a quip uttered by Ringo Starr. Indeed, much of "A Hard Day's Night" has an improvisatory, slapdash feel to it that was almost entirely manufactured.

Most all of the dialogue heard in the movie was written that way by Liverpool screenwriter Alun Owen, according to director Richard Lester and many others associated with its production. What's more, the picture was shot over a quick six weeks without any sort of scandal; the Beatles showed up on time each day and knew their lines. The only incident was a dislodged dental filling suffered by a cameraman who spent too much time surrounded by hundreds of teenage Beatles fans screaming at the tops of their lungs.

At first glance, "A Hard Day's Night" has the look of a student project, something any neophyte filmmaker could have shot on a shoestring budget, but that was part of Lester's great talent. The film's touches of surrealism, all those scenes in cramped, low-ceilinged locations followed by the open-air exuberance of the "Can't Buy Me Love" sequence, the casting of Wilfred Brambell as McCartney's grandfather – all great, great stuff. (What a delicious irony that Brambell's character is the rebel of the movie and not any of the Beatles).

And compare the movie, if you will, to virtually any of the many Elvis Presley pictures, all forgettable with the possible exception of "Viva Las Vegas," released that same year, and made just to promote his stardom. Granted, that was the intent of "A Hard Day's Night" as well, but Lester was on a different mission – capturing Beatlemania.

Shortly before "A Hard Day's Night" came out, NBC newscaster Chet Huntley informed his viewers that his network had sent a crew out to cover the Beatles' initial arrival in the U.S., only to add, "After surveying the film our men returned with, and the subject of that film, I feel there is absolutely no need to show any of that film."

From then on, nobody else made that mistake.

Sadly, the Beatles and the movies never worked so well together again. Their follow-up film "Help!," in 1965, was ridden with bad jokes and sight gags, and "Magical Mystery Tour" (1967) was a misbegotten effort, entirely McCartney's baby, undertaken to keep the fraying group together. Some people love the animated "Yellow Submarine" (1968), but its charm has always evaded me.

A point I made in my earlier column about McCartney bears repeating. Many of his fans prefer to support him by championing whatever he does next. That's fine, although clearly his greatest creative and performing years are behind him. With so much of his past work to choose from, I prefer to go there. Too many good memories to resist.

thill3@nncogannett.com

419-563-9225

Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ