By Steve Marinucci
Published on December 8, 2000, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
REPORTER: ``Has success changed your life?''
GEORGE HARRISON: ``Yes.''
-- from ``A Hard Day's Night''
Flash back to 1964. You're in a movie theater, waiting for the feature attraction. A movie trailer begins on the screen:
Are you ready? Here they come! Brace yourself!!
The trailer advertises . . . Yes! ``A Hard Day's Night,'' the new movie by the Beatles!!!
Now, at the time, the Beatles were at the top of the world. Beatlemania ruled. But pop-star movies and teen movies, from the Elvis flicks to the ``Beach Party'' series, were not exactly Cinema. Why should the Beatles' movie be any different from the mindless promotional trash their predecessors turned out?
As for that trailer -- it contained few hints about what ``Hard Day's Night'' might really be.
The Fab Four had dominated the U.S. pop charts since they first arrived in the country for ``The Ed Sullivan Show'' in February. The movie -- intended to capitalize on their popularity and provide United Artists a soundtrack album -- was written quickly by Londoner Alun Owen. (Surprise: His Oscar-nominated script gave each Beatle a distinctive personality.)
From March 2 to April 24, 1964, ``A Hard Day's Night'' was filmed in black and white at Twickenham Film Studios in England. A Ringo Starr comment became the film's title. And when producer Walter Shenson (who died in October at 81) realized the film had no title song, John Lennon and Paul McCartney composed one on demand. Overnight.
When the film had its world premiere July 6 in London and its American premiere the following month, critics were ready to pounce. After all, it would give adults some potent ammunition to help stop, or at least slow down, the onslaught of the four Liverpool longhairs.
But wait. Here's New York Times critic Bosley Crowther: ``This is going to surprise you -- it may knock you out of your chair -- but the new film with those incredible chaps, the Beatles, is a whale of a comedy,'' he began. ``I wouldn't have believed it either, if I hadn't seen it with my own astonished eyes.''
He wasn't alone. The Village Voice, in its original 1964 review, gushed, `It's the `Citizen Kane' of jukebox movies.''
Director Richard Lester's use of handheld cameras and a loose cinéma vérité style was adopted by many. Without ``A Hard Day's Night,'' there probably wouldn't have been a TV series called ``The Monkees,'' since many of the film's techniques were used in that show.
Now it's back in theaters. Long circulated in videotapes of decreasing quality, ``A Hard Day's Night'' has been restored, both picture and soundtrack, to its best-ever quality. Although copies of deleted scenes have circulated (in a now out-of-print book and more recently, in the ``A Hard Day's Night'' CD-ROM), the re-released version has nothing new added.
But in a time when the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync are the rage, why care?
For one, younger fans can see what Beatlemania was really all about. From the frenetic opening where the Fab Four, the original boy band, are being chased by a mob of girls (even though John's laugh gives away that it's just an act) to the scream-filled concert at the end, the hysteria rarely lets up. It would seem that today's fans are a bit more controlled than in 1964.
Older audiences who saw the film in 1964 probably couldn't hear or understand many of the irreverent (and humorous) lines in the picture because of screaming audiences. With luck, it'll be different now.
As film critic Roger Ebert, himself a fan of the movie, has written, ``Today, when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at children of `A Hard Day's Night.' ''
NORM: ``I've got only one thing to say to you, John Lennon.''
JOHN: ``What?''
NORM: ``You're a swine.''
