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The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are commonly reg…
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Investigate this subjectThe Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are commonly regarded as the most influential band of all time.
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are commonly regarded as the most influential band of all time. Between 1964 and 1970, they appeared in five major motion pictures, beginning with A Hard Day's Night (1964) and ending with Let It Be (1970). From late 1965 to 1969, the group also appeared in several promotional films for their singles, which have been credited with anticipating music videos and the rise of MTV in the 1980s.
During the years of Beatlemania (ca.1963–1966), the Beatles appeared in two films, A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965), both directed by American director Richard Lester. A Hard Day's Night was shot in black and white and featured the band as fictionalised versions of themselves during the height of Beatlemania, while Help! was shot in colour and saw the group struggle to record music while trying to protect Starr from a sinister cult and a pair of mad scientists, all of whom are obsessed with obtaining one of his rings. Following the recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), the Beatles produced and starred in their third major feature, Magical Mystery Tour (1967), a mostly unscripted television film which saw the group and friends on a British mystery tour. The band cameoed in the animated Yellow Submarine (1968), which featured cartoon versions of the band members and a soundtrack that included then-unreleased studio recordings. The band's final major film was Let It Be (1970), which documented the group rehearsing and recording songs for the eponymous album.
Most of their films were very well-received, except Magical Mystery Tour which was panned by critics and the public alike. Each of their films had the same name as their associated soundtrack album and a song on that album. The individual Beatles also had their own film careers outside the band to varying degrees: Starr became a successful actor, Harrison became a successful producer with his production company HandMade Films, McCartney appeared in three films and Lennon had a co-starring role in How I Won the War (1967). The Beatles have also been the subject of numerous documentary films, have been portrayed onscreen in both film and television, and have inspired other films.
A Hard Day's Night was the Beatles' first major film. Shot in black and white, the film focused on fictionalised versions of the band during Beatlemania and the band's hectic touring lifestyle. It was directed by the up-and-coming American director Richard Lester, who was known for having directed a television version of the successful BBC radio series The Goon Show as well as the off-beat short film The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. A Hard Day's Night is a mockumentary of the four members as they make their way to a London television programme. It created a lasting impression of their individual personas. Lennon became known as "the smart one", McCartney "the cute one", Harrison "the quiet one", and Starr "the lucky one". Starr's personality as the band's affable, self-deprecating drummer proved especially popular with fans and the press in the US. The film also starred Wilfrid Brambell as Paul's grandfather John McCartney, Norman Rossington as their manager Norm, and John Junkin as Shake, their road manager.
A Hard Day's Night was released in 1964 at the height of Beatlemania and was very well received by critics, and remains one of the most influential jukebox musicals. The film broke new ground in the field of British and American musical feature films, particularly in its abandoning of the genre's standard rags-to-riches premise for a comedic presentation of the artists playing themselves. Film historian Stephen Glynn describes it as "the canonical pop music film". He highlights the innovative techniques Lester uses in the sequence for "Can't Buy Me Love", as does Saul Austerlitz, who deems it the precursor to the modern music video.
Help! was the Beatles' second major film. Directed again by Richard Lester, it was the group's first film shot in colour. It starred the Beatles, Eleanor Bron, Leo McKern, Victor Spinetti and Roy Kinnear. In Help!, the Beatles struggle to record their new album while trying to protect Starr from a sinister eastern cult (a parody of the Thuggee cult) and a pair of mad scientists, all of whom are obsessed with obtaining a sacrificial ring that Starr secretly acquired through a fan letter by the victim. Like A Hard Day's Night, the group performs several songs in the film that appear on their soundtrack album of the same name. It was shot in exotic locations, including Salisbury Plain, with Stonehenge visible in the background, the Bahamas, Salzburg and the Austrian Alps.
With Help!, Lester presented the Beatles in "one of the central surrealist texts" of the 1960s, according to Bray. The film uses pop art visuals and satirises James Bond films, particularly the latter's depiction of the British Secret Service as an efficiently run organisation, and one enjoying a level of influence equal to its US counterpart in their shared operations. Released in 1965, Help! was greeted with positive reviews but was not as well-received as A Hard Day's Night; nevertheless, the film is retrospectively regarded as being very influential, including in the subsequent development of music videos. It is described by Glynn as "the colonial pop music film" for its conveying of the "clear racial undertones" and imperialism evident in Bond films from the period, and the clash that results with the Beatles' Swinging London personas. In addition to inspiring the Monkees' self-titled television show, the film influenced the 1960s Batman TV series.
Magical Mystery Tour was the Beatles' third major film. Unlike the previous two, it was a television film and not a feature film, with a running time of less than an hour. The film follows a group of
Source: The Beatles in film (CC BY-SA)
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