A Hard Day's Night (1964)

A big music act doing a movie meant a very different thing in 1964 than it does today. The first movies that come to most people's minds are those associated with The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, The Spice Girls. I think we're all expecting at least one movie out of Justin Beiber, less so out of Arcade Fire. Which might just be a comment on the divide that now exists between fun, mainstream entertainment and critically acclaimed, "important" works of art that has grown since the days of The Beatles, when they could practically be the same thing. What I'm trying to say is: A Hard Day's Night wouldn't have seemed like a cheap cash in or something just for screaming fan girls. Movies had obviously been around a long time, but there was still a mystique to them - the glitz and glamour and the big American stars. No one was shooting hour long drunken videos on their phones on a Saturday night and using it as proof they were the next Scorsese. There is something really playful about The Beatles doing a film. It doesn't feel like people capitalizing on The Beatles success, it feels like people simply enjoying it. These four Liverpool lads had blown up: they were playing in night clubs, now they're making a movie!

The film opens with the four Beatles running through the streets while a crowd of fans chases them. They're trying to make it on a train in time, touring the country at the height of Beatlemania. There's no goal or journey that drives the film forward, instead we're allowed to see a brief snippet of life from the biggest band in the world. This could have easily been a concert film, or a documentary that just recorded what The Beatles were up to, but instead the story is part fiction. I don't imagine the details of backstage shows were hugely different from this, but all of the characters are exaggerated. Again, if a modern band like One Direction filmed a movie playing exaggerated versions of themselves I imagine they'd be accused of tricking people, of their performances only adding to the 'PR machine', but nothing about what The Beatles are doing seems malicious. I imagine the fab four found fantasy more appealing than reality. John fancied himself the mischievous joker, George reckoned himself the cool, smirking ladies man. Even Ringo gets to play out a 'being yourself' narrative straight out of a Hollywood fantasy. The Beatles music, especially the music they were playing when A Hard Day's Night was released, is all a fantasy: I've never seen the point in criticizing The Beatles' love songs as unrealistic, or too picturesque, when surely everyone wants things so perfect and serene. The film only adds to the warm aura that surrounds The Beatles.

This film really 'gets' The Beatles. They had an interest in women, surely enjoyed the interest their fame gave them, undeniably objectified women too, but there was a romance there that this film gets. The Beatles might have been sexy but they weren't dirty sexy like The Rolling Stones were. If you hooked up with a Beatle they might have taken you back to their hotel room, but after that they might have taken you on a romantic trip to take slow walks in the moonlight and written catchy songs about you too. This film gets that. It gets that they were very 'us against the world', they didn't want to play by the rules or listen to their managers, but that they were too playful to cause any real trouble. They had a comforting glow that surrounded them, like the best comedians, and A Hard Day's Night is such a care free film - in one scene the boys run around a wide open field together, they don't look like they know what they're doing, they are just doing it for the hell of it.

There was a few Beatles films, although none remembered as fondly as A Hard Day's Night. By the time of the other films, starting with Help, and especially with Yellow Submarine and The Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles weren't the same: they'd packed in touring and moved into the studio, and joined the psychedelic movement which dictated much of their image. These other films were more about what The Beatles were trying to share with everyone else: the drugs, the culture, the freedom and the success. A Hard Day's Night works because The Beatles aren't sharing anything but themselves.