A Hard Day's Night (1964)

I recently watched A HARD DAY'S NIGHT at a local bar on their pull-down projection screen and around me I saw a roomful of people with big, fat smiles on their faces. I also saw a few melancholy faces, too, and I understood those as well, sort of. I'd seen the film many times before -- I rank it in my top 20 -- and it remains, always, fast, funny, and smart (shot in a kind of luminous black and white by Gil Taylor -- "...Strangelove", "Star Wars"). Director Richard Lester and writer Alun Owen caught a moment in time like lightning in a bottle and turned it into a jumpy, jangly thing that is as hot as it is cool and everlasting as The Beatles' music. I hesitate to write about their music or the stand-out moments in the picture (the lads were naturals, weirdly so} -- there are too many of those moments and part of the joy of the film is discovering them from that first, familiar guitar stroke onwards -- but I want to touch on that melancholy I saw in those faces. It's more than nostalgia. This is a depiction of a time that people born years after the killing of John Lennon watch and want to be a part of. You watch and want to be part of something just because it feels right. Roger Ebert was dead-on when he called this one of the great life-affirming motion pictures -- its liveliness alone is one of a kind.

Fmovies: "A Hard Days Night" has got to be one of the funniest movies of all time, firmly holding its place with such classics as "Annie Hall" and "Duck Soup". It is also one of my top five favorite films of all time. The film proved that the Beatles could not only write and perform incredible songs, but that they could act as well. They are assisted in no small part by the extraordinary screenplay by Alun Owen. His dialogue is so unreasonable witty that even Groucho Marx himself would be impressed.

In "A Hard Days Night", we not only see the Beatles as great characters, but we also get some other outstanding characters, such as Paul's mischevious grandfather (Wilfred Brambell) and the dim-witted Norm and Shake (Norman Rossington and John Junkin).

This is a great film with great music and a great screenplay. I recommend this not only to avid Beatles fans, but to movie fans in general.

What a fun movie. I first saw this during it's initial theatrical release as a kid in 1964. (They gave us black and white Beatles Fan Club buttons.) Looking back through a 10 year old's eye's I couldn't wait to see The Beatles in a movie. I had seen them on TV and in magazines but an entire movie about them was going to be a watershed event in the career of the group. Indoctrinated by all the corny teen movies that mostly were made prior to Hard Day's Night you knew that if they were going to be portrayed as conventional teen idols it was going to be a bust but if it was a glimpse into what it was like being a Beatle and the London mod scene of '64 and The Beatles in their irreverent but likable persona with cool clothes and Beatle boots and lots of Beatle's music and The Beatles playing their guitars it was going to be a hit. Well it didn't disappoint. I didn't even expect there to be a story. I just wanted to see the Beatles on the big screen and hear their music. (The theater even had women playing nurses in nursing outfits and stretchers for people who fainted. Cool and campy. I have to give that theater credit for all they did. The first 50 people in got Beatles wigs.) As I grew older this film did not when I would see it on TV. Sure it was dated but it was still fun. Supporting, or in this case actual actors, Norman Rossington as Norm and Victor Spinetti as the TV Director along with Wiford Brambell as Paul's "clean" grandfather and John Junkin as Jake gave the movie a legitimate cast to cohesively hold it together and it worked well but heck, The Beatles were good on their own first time out. George Harrison's future wife, fashion model Pattie Boyd is one of the girls in the train car with the band (Her only line is "prisonors") and even future rock and pop star Phil Collins is in a scene as a teen fan. Director Richard Lester should have been at least nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director. Alun Owen did get a nomination for Best Screenplay in the only film he ever did. George Martin also received an Academy Award nomination for Scoring of Music Adaptation. Any of The Beatles songs in this film should have been nominated for Best Original Song but they weren't. Gilbert Taylor was the cinematographer for this film. He had just come off doing the cinematography for the film Dr. Strangelove. John Jympson who had just come off editing the film Zulu was the editor. This film does a wonderful job of capturing the era of mid 1960's London and Beatlemania on film in black and white. Their next film Help, also directed by Lester tried to be too James Bondish and although good was largely silly and didn't come close to HDN. This film has been with me so long and I've seen it so many times I can't help but give it a 10.

A Hard Day's Night fmovies. A "typical" day in the life of the Beatles. They have to deal with Paul's grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell), a neurotic TV director (Victor Spinetti), their long-suffering managers and tons of screaming fans.

No real plot, just a lot of very lively sequences overflowing with one-liners and non sequiturs. The tone of the scenes go all over the place--one is full of verbal puns, the next visual gags, then absurdity reigns, THEN surrealism! It's a credit to director Richard Lester that he manages to keep all these various shifts in tone flowing smoothly. It's great to see that the Beatles are obviously enjoying themselves every minute. Some of the jokes are obscure (the "clean" jokes were based on remarks made about the Beatles back in 1962) and the accents are sometimes difficult. But it's great to see the Beatles so young and full of life and when they sing the film becomes magical. Also they have a good cast backing them up--Brambell and Spinetti are just great (and very funny). If you don't like the Beatles or their music, you might want to skip this film. But if you do, it's a must-see.

Classic cinema verite has the Fab Four going hither and thither, accompanied by Paul's "very clean" grandfather John (Wilfrid Brambell). Naturally, it wouldn't be a Beatles movie without their music. And the music always fits the scene (unlike so many musicals). My favorite scene was on the train where John, Paul, George and Ringo meet a middle-aged man, and...well, let's just say that it did a really funny job showing the generation gap. In short, you can always count on the Beatles to do something great, as every one of their songs showed. They may have had a "hard" time making this movie, but they would have to agree that it was worth it; people could easily spend "days" and "nights" watching it.

If anyone wants to witness the phenomenon that was "Beatlemania" in the 1960s, all they have to do is view "A Hard Day's Night". Although it's a fictional account of two days in the life of the rock group on tour, it captures the essence of what their life on the road was actually like. It also served to enhance their "personalities" as individuals, as well as show their spirit of fun-loving lads as a group. And as a bonus... the music throughout is superb! Sprinkled with Beatles' hits, Richard Lester's film almost serves as a blueprint for the music video form that took over the airwaves in the 1980s. Filmed with humor, great tunes and fast-paced editing, "A Hard Day's Night" usually never fails in delivering smiles and pleasure. If you're a music fan, and a rock and roll buff, the film is a must!