A Hard Day's Night (1964): 50th Anniversary Blu-Ray!!

[Donald McKinney]

Love them or hate them, there's no denying that The Beatles changed the world of music in the 20th Century. They had a meteoric rise to fame during 1963, with their first two albums Please Please Me and With The Beatles becoming instant hits, plus they had numerous number 1 singles. After conquering the UK and Europe, they hit America in February 1964, it changed their career forever, and they became global megastars. Before they left for America, they'd already agreed to do a film for United Artists. The studio unwisely believed the band would be yesterdays news in a flash, and only put up a meagre £189,000 for the budget. That was before they saw how America loved the Fab Four, and after the release, they picked up their next 3 films for the cinema. Filmed between March and May 1964 and released 3 months later in July. This film became a massive success, and it wasn't just another pop music film, it was an influential phenomenon, it's style with the camerawork and editing put it head and shoulders above the other pop films out at the time, and director Richard Lester is to thank for adding his free-spirited, inventive style to the proceedings. A Hard Day's Night (1964), showed there was more to The Beatles than being musicians and singers, now they could act!! This classic film is now back for it's 50th Anniversary with a new Blu-Ray!!

The film can be seen as the first mockumentary, as shows 24 hours in the life of The Beatles, as they ride on a train from Liverpool to London to take part in a TV performance. Along for the ride is Paul's Grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) who is a troublemaker, and even the Fab Four are restless, and their roadies, the bossy Norm (Norman Rossington) and the dim-witted Shake (John Junkin) are powerless to keep them under control. At the studio the next morning for rehearsals, they rile up the show's director (Victor Spinetti). Killing time before the show, George ends up at an audition, John is mistaken for someone famous and Ringo vanishes, mainly after Paul's Grandfather tells him to spend more time alone. Out on the streets, John, Paul and George have to find him before the show starts...

It's a brilliant little film, and it's a funny little caper as well. The film showcased their acting talents, especially Ringo, who became an actor during the 1970's. But it's a satirical yet knowing look at their busy lives at the time, especially when they had to do more than one gig a day, and have to travel miles to get there. But, there's always their music, with a side of new songs, which made up side one of the album of A Hard Day's Night. Although it's set around them getting ready to do a concert, the film is made up of little vignettes of their exploits getting ready for the show, and there's a bit when they manage to get away and it's reminiscent of director Lester's The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1960), which got him the job of making this film. It would set Lester off on a magnificent directing career, he would reunite with The Beatles a year later for the madcap caper Help! (1965), and he would also direct other surreal capers like The Knack …and How to Get It (1965), How I Won The War (1967), The Bed-Sitting Room (1969) and the Musketeer films, as well as more serious films like Petulia (1968), Juggernaut (1974) and Robin and Marian (1976).

It's been released a few times over the years on video and DVD, but now, for it's 50th Anniversary, it's been given a new 4K digital restoration with a new 5.1 surround sound mix. It's getting the special edition treatment stateside through The Criterion Collection on June 24th, and the good news is that the UK won't be missing out either. Second Sight Films are releasing it here on July 21st with the same special features that the American version is getting!! They are:

• 'In Their Own Voices' - a new piece combining 1964 interviews with The Beatles with behind-the-scenes footage and photos
• 'You Can't Do That: The Making of A Hard Day's Night' - a documentary by producer Walter Shenson including an outtake performance by The Beatles
• 'Things They Said Today', a documentary about the film featuring director Richard Lester, music producer George Martin, screenwriter Alun Owen and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor
• 'Picturewise' - a new piece about Richard Lester's early work featuring a new audio interview with the director
• 'Anatomy of a Style' - a new piece on Richard Lester's methods New interview with author Mark Lewisohn







It's always good news when one of the films by The Beatles gets a DVD or Blu-Ray release. A Hard Days Night caused a wave of influence that's still being felt to this day. It's plot and structure inspired The Monkees, and it's been referenced by other music themed films from Slade in Flame (1974) to This Is Spinal Tap (1984) to, god forbid, Spice World (1997). But, it changed how music films would be conceived, and it gave The Beatles a taste of filmmaking, they followed this and Help! with their experimental odyssey Magical Mystery Tour (1967), their animated extravaganza Yellow Submarine (1968) and their honest and sparse documentary Let It Be (1970), the latter is yet to be released on DVD or Blu-Ray, but they're working on it. But this is a good package, and it's well worth revisiting.

[TlatoSMD]

Next to The Rutles: All you need is cash (1978), A hard day's night will always have a special place in my heart not only for starring the greatest band of all time, but also for being the first two Video-CD-like gadgets I got to know back in the early 90s.

We had The Rutles as a so-called "MovieCD" by Motion Pixels Inc. (which was also how the codec was called, pretty much a dead-end format, although it proudly advertized, "NO MPEG REQUIRED!" and audio and video were actually superior to the other), whereas we had A had day's night as a more ornate format released by Voyager, which held the whole film in 10 different MOV files (8-bit sound and heavy compression artifacts that showed especially during fullscreen playback).

But usually, you wouldn't notice that they were MOVs with the latter, because the thing came with its own A hard day's night-themed player and skin (which in itself wouldn't allow you to fullscreen the film where the image was about the size of the palm of a hand on the screen), and it totally floored me that you could actually select particular scenes or songs to navigate to within the film. On top of that, the player also with a bonus slideshow of set photos, and even a realtime version of the script by Walter Shenson, realtime as such that it was automatically synched to the film so that the pages were pretty much turning themselves at the right moments. The script even had three different layout types for a.) what had been written and left in the film, b.) what had been written but dropped somewhere down the line, and c.) random ad-libbing by any of the actors.

Plus, it also had a short early to mid-60s interview with Dick Lester, and his debut short, The running, jumping, stand still film which was how John and Paul had caught notice of him and why they wanted him as director for their first movie.

But two things I'm still waiting for from the Beatles is, firstly, a pristine DVD box of all their concert footage (digital, state-of-the-art telecines, if possible from the cameras originals, sound taken from separate tapes taken directly from the mixing table, not shitty camera mic audio, and both audio and video excellently restored and re-mastered).

But even moreso, I'm craving an official edition of their 1960s home-movies on Regular8 and Super8 in professional modern telecines. Many of them have already been included in the Anthology documentary series, but I was appalled with the 1996 TV and VHS version when especially prior to 1966, what felt like 80% of their home-movies were just flickery, blurry cheap off-the-wall transfers rather than professional telecines. I was actually rather pleased to find they'd obviously gone back to the vaults for the 2002 DVD edition where maybe 20% out of those awful, self-made off-the-wall transfers were replaced with professional telecines.

But even so, there's still many crappy off-the-wall transfers in the Anthology. Now, I'm aware that sometime back in the 80s, burglars took some of Paul's home movies so self-made off-the-wall transfers would be all he'd have left of those. But still! Lots of stuff unreleased. I could understand if Paul, Ringo, Olivia, and Yoko would find certain things too private on them for release, but it's not like I and millions of other fans wouldn't buy an official release in a heartbeat of all the things they wouldn't have a problem with of releasing them.

And I mean, they're Beatles, and Paul, Ringo, and their estates have probably billions on their hands. If I was them, I'd appeal to the burglars to return Paul's home movies, and in return I wouldn't press any charges and I'd even make them rich for giving the reels back. But then again, what do I know? I'm only a fanatic fan, not a Beatle myself.