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A Hard Days Night (1964)

Started by Blue Jam, January 25, 2021, 12:58:24 AM

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Blue Jam

You know, that film about The Beatles running. Currently available on iPlayer for 22 more days. Go and watch it. It's ace.

studpuppet

I can't watch the opening credits without seeing George go down flat on his face with (I think) Ringo half-tumbling on top of him and think, "Jesus, did he skin his hands doing that? How many gigs must he have played afterwards with the palms of his hands hurting? I mean, that's his LIVING almost gone in a second of madness!"

Sebastian Cobb

Cheers for the reminder, this was covered on the latest Kermode's Secrets of Cinema on BBC4 as it was about music films and I noticed it was on after but then forgot all about it.

timebug

I actually own this film in various formats, but still watched it last week when it was shown! Still (I.M.O.) as fresh as the day it was made,and for a fifty six year old film,that is pretty impressive. If you are one of those Beatle haters,it is shite of course.But for most folk, decent toons, daft mucking about,and the sanitised versions of the Beatles themselves, make it work as a hrmless chunk of entertainment!

Dex Sawash


SteveDave

It's not as good as the films that Duke Ellington made.

Replies From View

I reckon the guy who directed this should go on to make Superman films.

SteveDave

I love John's "Can't he? He's done it son!" when Ringo storms out and Paul protests that he can't leave now.

Shit Good Nose

#8
Quote from: timebug on January 25, 2021, 09:44:18 AM
If you are one of those Beatle haters,it is shite of course.

I dunno - I'm no Beatles fan at all, but I've got a lot of time for both A Hard Day's Night and Help.  Some of the visual gags are brilliant and Ringo particularly has very good comic timing.  I would've been quite happy if they made a few more films with Lester - they're certainly better than most of those late 60s/early 70s British whacky comedy pop-star vehicles.

Replies From View

Apart from creative desire, available funding or audience interest, is anything stopping Paul and Ringo reuniting for a cheap, VHS-quality fan-made Help 2?


I think it would be good

the science eel

Quote from: Dex Sawash on January 25, 2021, 10:17:08 AM
It's no HELP! though, is it

I honestly prefer that one. HDN is fun but it makes no sense, fellas popping up every couple of minutes with daft little speeches.

The Ringo bits are sweet.

the science eel

Quote from: SteveDave on January 25, 2021, 01:27:14 PM
I love John's "Can't he? He's done it son!" when Ringo storms out and Paul protests that he can't leave now.

YES

Blue Jam

Watching it again I was surprised to see how the Grandad character (the "clean old man") is a properly menacing presence. His little rant about Ringo "thumpin' them pagan skins", although The Beatles do pull him up on it and the joke seems to be on Grandad. Not to mention "I'm a soldier of the Republic"- bloody hell. Wilfred Bramble is noticably camper than usual as well, a bit more relaxed. Perhaps he felt like he could be himself around The Beatles and Brian Epstein.

I also noted John doing a bit of a visual joke with the glass Coke bottle where he's in the background of one of the train scenes, pretending to snort it- "Hey, look at me lads, I'm snorting coke in a family film!" Total John behaviour, he was definitely the Legend Gary of the group.

I've also got a new appreciation for Harry and Paul's Beatles sketches. Jon Henshaw's portrayal of The Beatles' manager seems particularly well-observed now. Also how John is portrayed as cruel and a bit of a dickhead who takes things too far- I had always assumed that was Harry and Paul commenting on John's real-life behaviour but no, there's plenty of it in the film.

the science eel

'on Tuesday morning at half past two

I would like to make love to you - oooo!'

Attila

Help! was always my favourite, too (I was absolutely thrilled when it was finally released in a restored version -- I grew up seeing Ringo painted pink or orange for the ritual sacrifice, so worn out were the prints shown on TV -- seeing him actually red the first time, I did a little 'Oooh!') I know it's a bit dafter than HDN, and that the Beatles themselves didn't care much for it, but I like it.

I've got a little 'souvenir of the film' book sat on the shelf here from Help!; I think it originally belonged to my brother-in-law's sister, who gave it to me when I was a very young teenager.

Growing up in the US, I used to scour the Sunday supplement television guide every week, looking for both films -- when they popped up, it was usually late at night on one of the independent channels. I was baffled when first one, then the other disappeared (1980 and 1981 -- when each film turned 15, and Walter Shenson had them pulled from general distribution. I didn't know that at the time, and was despondant -- I associate both films, especially Help!, with sneaking into the living room at 1am on a school night to watch them, sound turned down to almost nothing lest my mother in the next room hear; christ, there would have been hell to pay had she caught me. So there's this sort of secret joy at being able to watch them, if that makes any sense -- I still find it marvelous that it pops up on the BBC occassionally).

One memorable Saturday (of course I know the exact day), both films showed up on local stations, and I had to do a lot of maneuvering around to be able to see them as my dad controlled the television-watching in our household. I think for at least one of them, my non-tosser brother set up a portable TV in his bedroom to get around my dad's twattiness about it. As a result of that double-bill, I ramped up my begging campaign to stop taking piano lessons, which I hated, and switch to guitar.

That said, HDN is an amazing film. I can't say how many times I've seen it, and for about a decade, taught it (it was a staple when I taught a module on the history of rock music). Loved the first time I saw a non-pan & scan version of it, and noticed just how many times you see clocks onscreen -- adding to the sense of urgency that the film only covers the course of a day.

Don't breathe on me, Adrian is one of my favourite lines, and I am very fond of Victor Spinetti's so-close-to-breaking-down TV manager ('I'll bet she knitted him.')

It wasn't until me and Mr Attila watched both films that he discovered where half of my daily utterances come from ('There's a certain amount of hurry up involved here.')


I've got several books on HDN in my office at the uni...and the little paperback novels that came out related to each film. Some weird subplots in both to pad out the stories! Help! was released in a big box set about 10 years ago that included the dvd and a lovely big book -- I spied it in an HMV over in Portsmouth, I think, and pounced on it. It cost more money than I could afford at the time, but fuck it -- no regrets.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Attila on January 25, 2021, 02:55:56 PM
I know it's a bit dafter than HDN, and that the Beatles themselves didn't care much for it, but I like it.

They can diss Help as much as they like, but they can't escape the fact that Magical Mystery Tour is all theirs.  Okay, it has a couple of worthy moments, but given the choice of the three, no one is EVER going to pick Magical Mystery Tour are they.

DrGreggles

As a kid I definitely saw Help first (seemed to be on telly a lot more often than the others*), and loved it, but A Hard Days Night is so clearly a much better film when looked at now. 
Help, as much fun as it remains, is all over the fucking place!


*maybe I taped it one time**
**yes, that would explain it

Attila

Oh, I blame Paul for that one. (In reply to SGN)

MMT made its debut on our local PBS station the night before my university physical science final exam...a class I'd been skipping and half-assing all semester. I had the choice to cram that evening, or to watch Magical Mystery Tour -- I knew all the music, but almost nothing about the story (this was in late 1983). I thought the film looked so poor because our TV reception was so shit where we lived, but...yeah.To quote MST3K, every frame of the film looked like someone's last known photograph, and the soundtrack recovered from Edison wax cylinders.

The version of the record I had for a long time was the full-length LP that was released in the US; I knew about the British release and really really wanted one. But trying to explain to someone at the mall's Sam Goodys what an 'ep' was, nope, wasn't happening.

I figured, meh, I'd rather watch this film I've been excited to see -- will it really matter in 20 years time if I blow this exam? (answer: no. although my mother did not see it that way when the results came in)

I used to get laughed at as a kid for trying to get original British released of Beatles' LPs and that. I found a second hand record store near the university and used to spend all of my money there -- I must have close to 200 Beatles releases from that mad four years or so, bootlegs, foreign releases, weird novelties -- the funny thing is, they were for the most part inexpensive, because they were second hand. Meh -- I am smug about scoring my Sessions, thanks.

For all that, though, I've still not hit up eBay for original mono pressings -- since I play my records, I'm completely happy with scratchy copies as long as they don't stick or skip. And after spending a few years collecting original mono Pye releases of the Kinks' output, Beatles stuff is cheap as chips in comparison!

Wet Blanket

The stereotypical Indian antagonists (including Rumpole of the Bailey in brownface) lets Help! down a bit, and probably accounts for its appearing on TV much less often than Hard Day's Night. Nevertheless you can see its influence on pretty much every indie pop video of the mid nineties, and a lot of the visuals during the musical scenes are still eye-popping. I've also got the big box set with the script and poster and whatnot, and it's one of the most beautiful restorations of a film I've ever seen. The colours during You're Going to Lose That Girl ... Oof Madonn' Surprised it's not among the official Beatles clips on YouTube.

Attila

From my understanding, restoring Help! was a serious labour of love; the guy was doing only a handful of frames every day due to the incredible damage to the masters.

When I was about 14 going on 15, so the summer of 1980, the local indie theatre (you know the one -- no first runs, theme weeks, Rocky Horror every Friday -- the one where my mother was convinced I would be turned into a drug addict/kidnapped/whatever if I set foot in it) did a 6 hour marathon of Beatles stuff -- Help, MMT, and Let it Be, with a bunch of the Beatles promo films in between, like the Strawberry Fields film they did.

It was the first time I'd seen Let it Be, crikey what a depressing film outside of the musical sequences (I've seen the trailer for the Peter Jackson thing, and it's astonishing the 180 difference in tone). I received Let it Be on VHS for Christmas the next year -- a really big deal, as there were very few commercial films available on home video at the time, and if I'm not mistaken, it cost a packet. I ended up playing it a heck of a lot, as I recall, but it's still in good nick. It's a pan and scan version, but an official one (I think all the dvds floating around of Let It Be are actually copies drawn off a showing on Japanese TV, and not an official release.)

notjosh

Quote from: Attila on January 25, 2021, 02:55:56 PM
That said, HDN is an amazing film. I can't say how many times I've seen it, and for about a decade, taught it

It was one of the first films we watched in college Film Studies and it went down really well. Definitely a great film to show to younguns who think that "black and white films" are all dull and stagey.

SteveDave

Has anyone here read the script of "Up Against It"?

Listening to the "Beatles Books" podcast yesterday, the author of "Fab Fools" Jem Roberts said the script that's available now was the one that was re-written for a film starring Mick Jagger and Ian McKellen but I remember the main "character" being 4 people.



Attila

Quote from: SteveDave on January 26, 2021, 11:32:39 AM
Has anyone here read the script of "Up Against It"?

Listening to the "Beatles Books" podcast yesterday, the author of "Fab Fools" Jem Roberts said the script that's available now was the one that was re-written for a film starring Mick Jagger and Ian McKellen but I remember the main "character" being 4 people.

Yes! I have a copy of it in my office on campus. Dunno if it'd the same version of the script you have without digging it out, though.