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55th Anniversary Cinematic Special
A Hard Day's Night
Directed by Richard Lester
Starring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, John Junkin, and Victor Spinetti
Premiered July 6, 1964 (UK); August 11, 1964 (US)
1965 Academy Awards nominee for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen (Alun Owen) and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment (George Martin)
Wiki said:
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British musical comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists. The film portrays 36 hours in the lives of the group.
A Hard Day's Night is my favorite film, period. When I was first getting into the Beatles way back in nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, I had it and
Help! in constant rotation on my bedroom VCR before school, between school and work, and after school / doing homework. As with audiences in 1964, it played a huge role in shaping my early perception of The Beatles. I hadn't had occasion to put it on since 2014, when I gave it a 50th anniversary rewatch...yes, the stirrings of the immersive retro thing were in play back then. Revisiting it as full-on 55th anniversary immersive retro business proved to be a delight.
Following the title sequence, the opening train scene introduces Paul's grandfather, John McCartney (credited simply as Grandfather, played by Wilfrid Brambell), and the scripted versions of the Beatles, as well as manager and roadie Norm and Shake (Norman Rossington and John Junkin). Grandfather being referred to as a "clean old man" is a gag that runs throughout the film. Fun fact: British audiences would have gotten this reference, as Brambell was best known to them as the lead in
Steptoe and Son, the British show that
Sanford and Son would be based on; his character, the basis of Fred Sanford, was commonly referred to as a dirty old man. It's also in this scene that Grandfather is first referred to as a "mixer". When Grandfather leaves for the dining car with Norm and Shake, the lads get a new compartment mate, a stuffy old man (Richard Vernon, who'll be briefing Sean Connery in
Goldfinger later the same year) with whom they verbally spar, putting the generation gap center stage.
John said:
Knock it off, Paul, you can't win with his sort. After all, it's his train, inn't, mister?
The subsequent dining car scene starts the gag of Norm feeling self-conscious of Shake being taller than him, thanks to Grandfather, who's now referred to as "a king mixer". Here the Beatles meet a group of schoolgirls, the most prominently featured of whom is Pattie Boyd, who'll soon be George's wife, and later Eric Clapton's.
Grandfather soon slips away from Norm and Shake, and the search for him sets up Ringo's inferiority complex. I like when George winks at the woman who tries to lure Ringo into her compartment....and I love John's hijinks when he and Paul go into the schoolgirls' car. "I'll bet you can't guess what I was in for! [Cackles maniacally.]"
Following that incident, Grandfather is kept in the baggage car with Paul watching over him. It's here that our next musical sequence takes place, a spontaneous performance of
"I Should Have Known Better" as the schoolgirls watch.
After the song, the train gets to its destination, and the boys enjoy the usual reception...
Norm: Hey, Don't move any of ya! They've gone potty out there--the place is surging with girls!
John: Please, sir, sir, can I have one to surge me, sir, please, sir?
The bit with the Beatles bottlenecking the girls by entering one limo, going out the other end, and into another limo Is one that I've seen imitated elsewhere.
At the lads' hotel room we get some more beats of Ringo's inferiority complex, which are offset by him receiving a load of fan mail that easily outweighs the other three's combined.
John: Must have cost you a fortune in stamps, Ringo!
George: He comes from a large family.
Ordered by Norm to answer the mail, the lads quickly slip out to go to a nightclub, where a sequence ensues that seems like it was designed to emulate the Peppermint Lounge footage from the night of the famous first appearance on
Sullivan. The music consists of
With the Beatles /
Meet the Beatles! numbers
"I Wanna Be Your Man," "Don't Bother Me," and
"All My Loving", alternating with scenes of Grandfather taking advantage of Ringo's invitation to Le Cercle Club...before Norm and the boys learn where he is and go there to drag him out.
John said:
We know how to behave, we've had lessons!
The next morning opens with
John in the hotel bathtub playing with a toy submarine while George shows Shake how to shave with a safety razor.
John said:
Ah, zee filthy Englander! Gutey morgey!
Proceeding to the TV studio where they're to perform that night, the lads employ another gimmick to evade the ever-present mob of girls, a drum-shaped tent in which they bolt from the car to the door. The first item on the itinerary is a press reception, one of the film's more distinctive scenes:
Reporter: Tell me, how did you find America?
John: Turn left at Greenland.
Reporter: What would you call that hairstyle you're wearing?
George: Arthur.
The lads proceed to their set, where our next, in-story musical number commences,
"If I Fell," which serves to buoy Ringo's spirits after he gets in a spat with a studio technician who taps on his drum set.
Technician: Aren't you being rather arbitrary?
Ringo: There you go, hiding behind a smokescreen of bourgeois cliches. I don't go messin' about with your earphones, do I?
George: He's very fussy about his drums, y'know. They loom large in his legend.
At the beginning of the performance, John gets in a little bit of lip-sync mocking, as he was wont to do in promotional films. After the song, Paul does a flourish on his bass that always sounded to me like a cameo of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," which isn't otherwise featured in the film. Following the performance we meet the fussy, overly worrisome TV director, brilliantly portrayed by Victor Spinetti, who has prominent roles here and in
Help!, and in both films steals every scene that he's in. It turns out that the director has been set off by something that Paul's grandfather said.
Director said:
I see it all now, it's a plot...a plot...
As Norm tries to escort the Beatles back to their dressing room, they opportunistically burst out a fire escape door and burst into the film's most iconic music sequence...the first of two for
"Can't Buy Me Love". This iconic proto-music video, which features the Beatles frolicking around on a field accompanied by the song, is the sequence in the film most reminiscent of
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, a short on Richard Lester's resume that was the reason the Beatles chose him to direct the movie. If I could only post one clip to represent the film, it would be this sequence, so it's a pity that there's no good version of it currently available. John is missing from some shots as he was absent when they were filmed.
Man: I suppose you realize this is private property!
George: Sorry we hurt your field, mister.
Back at the studio, we find Norm fretting over the boys' absence, and his ongoing battle of nerves with John in particular...
Norm said:
I've toyed with the idea of a ball and chain...but he'd just rattle them at me, and in public, too.
As the Beatles return to the studio building,
John gets his "solo" scene, an odd, brief conversation with a woman credited as Millie (Annie Quayle) in a corridor. This is immediately followed by one of the best scenes in the film, which has George accidentally wandering into the office of the producer of a teen-oriented pop program (a surprisingly uncredited Kenneth Haigh):
Simon Marshall said:
Now, you'll like these, you'll really "dig" them. They're "fab" and all the other pimply hyperboles.
The term "grotty" was reportedly made up for the film.
After a brief scene of amusing bits in the dressing room, the lads return to the TV set, redressed for a rehearsal of "And I Love Her,"
the film's most visually striking music sequence. Following this is another brief dressing room scene with a series of random gags, which includes a line from Grandfather that pretty much sums up the film's depiction of the Beatles' lives at this point...
Grandfather said:
Look, I thought I was supposed to be getting a change of scenery, and so far I've been in a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room!
The lads proceed to another rehearsal performance, this time of
"I'm Happy Just to Dance with You," which is preceded by a brief bit of tap-dancers performing to an instrumental version of the song. After the number, three of the boys make excuses to get out of whatever Norm wants them to do next...
John [grabbing a show girl and walking off with her]: She's gonna show me her stamp collection.
Paul [following suit]: So's mine.
Showgirl [internally]: Oh, but I haven't got any stamps...
When George just plugs his ears, it falls to Ringo to watch Paul's grandfather...which prompts him to do Dr. McCoy two years before
Star Trek...!
Ringo said:
I'm a drummer, not a wet nurse, you know...
In the commissary, Grandfather takes the opportunity to stir up Ringo by convincing him that he's both underappreciated in the band and missing out on life. After a cute corridor run-in with George, who's coming out of a room wearing a showgirl's hat...
George: Hey Ringo, you know what's just happened to me?
Ringo: No, I don't.
...Ringo proceeds to go out "parading". When George fills the others in on why Ringo's walked out (which he must have learned off-camera from Paul's grandfather)…
George: Hey, you know what happened?
Paul [thinking he's talking about the other thing]: We know!
When Paul finds out what really happened, he gives us the first of two utterances of that now-immortalized phrase...
Paul said:
The old mixer! Come on, we'll have to put him [Ringo] right!
The previously posted "This Boy" sequence commences, with Ringo donning his "disguise". If you watch, Ringo's mouthing the boy's lines.
Back at the studio, Norm and the director fret over how all of the Beatles have disappeared with only twenty minutes to go until the final run-through before the performance.
Grandfather: I'm sorry, boys, I didn't mean it, honest!
Director: If he says that again, I'll...strike him.
Norm: God knows what you've unleashed on the unsuspecting South. It'll be wine, women, and song all the way with Ringo once he gets the taste for it.
[Cut to Ringo at a pub, trying to get a misshapen, stale sandwich into his mouth.]
Pub lady: That was fresh this morning.
The other three return to the studio (singing a bit of "A Hard Day's Night" as they enter) to the wrath of the director.
Director: Well you realize that we're on the air live, in front of an audience, in forty-five minutes and you're one short!
John: Control yourself, he'll spurt!
It took me a long time to
realize that when Paul tells the director "we
realized he must have come back here," he's imitating the director.
As the three proceed to the final run-through, we find Paul's grandfather getting into trouble outside trying to pass out (forged) autographed pictures of the Beatles to the girls waiting outside. The police take him into custody for his own safety. At about the same time, Ringo's taken in by a bobby who's had an eye on him while he's been paradin'.
Ringo: I'm Ringo Starr, I've got a show to do, I'm on in a few minutes, you've gotta let me go...I'm Ringo!
Constable: Yeah, that's what they all say these days.
I always particularly loved the dry-witted desk sergeant played by Deryck Guyler.
Constable: Yeah, I've got a little list here: wandering abroad, malicious intent, acting in a suspicious manner, conduct liable to cause a breach of the peace...you name it, he's done it.
Sergeant: Oh, a little savage, is he?
Grandfather's dragged in just after Ringo, overreacting to what he thinks is an actual arrest, and tries to convince Ringo of the policemen's true motives and brutal interrogation methods...
Ringo: They seem alright to me.
Grandfather: Ah, that's just want they want you to think. All coppers are villains!
Sergeant: Would you two like a cup of tea?
Grandfather: You see? Sly villains...
Grandfather makes a run for it, with the police only concerned that he forgot to take his photographs with him, and heads back to the studio, where he informs the others of Ringo's whereabouts. They rush to the police station and spring Ringo in a keystone cops-style chase sequence that reprises "Can't Buy Me Love," which includes an interlude in which the Beatles return to the police station to catch their breath, then run out again (with John running around the back of the set and through it again).
When the reunited Beatles return to the studio, we get a brief sequence of happy, story-concluding beats, including Paul's second utterance...
Paul said:
...and John having a brief heart-to-heart with the mixer in question...
John: You see, you know your trouble, you should have gone west to America. You would have been a senior citizen of Boston. But you took a wrong turn and what happened? You're a lonely old man from Liverpool.
Grandfather: Well I'm clean.
John: Are ya?
...all of which is followed by the climax of the film, the television performance, which has the Beatles playing a series of songs to a crowd of ecstatic teens...mostly screaming girls, but also including, I eventually learned, a young Phil Collins, who's briefly visible as an audience member. (In
You Can't Do That! The Making of "A Hard Day's Night", hosted by Collins [
full documentary here], he points out where he is at 5:49+.) The set consists of "Tell Me Why," "If I Fell," "I Should Have Known Better," and the Beatles' biggest hit ever in the UK, "She Loves You":
An additional performance of "You Can't Do That" was shot for this sequence, but not used in the final film (featured in the above-linked documentary at 59:06+).
The Beatles rush out of the studio and onto a helicopter to make a gig in Northhampton, and we cut to the closing credits, which reprise the title song while also inventing the closing credits of
The Monkees.
Wiki said:
The film was a financial and critical success. Forty years after its release, Time magazine rated it as one of the all-time great 100 films. In 1997, British critic Leslie Halliwell described it as a "comic fantasia with music; an enormous commercial success with the director trying every cinematic gag in the book" and awarded it a full four stars. The film is credited as being one of the most influential of all musical films, inspiring numerous spy films, the Monkees' television show and pop music videos. In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked it the 88th greatest British film of the 20th century.
Also, Roger Ebert sings its praises in the documentary.
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And speaking of the former love of my life, we played selections from "A Little Touch of Schmillson In the Night" at our wedding reception.
I've had this one in my collection for a while now because it was on the RS list. It's a remake of a song they first did in 1956. Another example of '50s retro coming early, which isn't generally what I'm looking for when immersed in late '60s retro.
