A Hard Day’s Night

What can you say about the film that started it all? Where pop rock became worth listening and not just dancing to? Where John, Paul, George, and Ringo became firmly established as individual personalities as well as the premier entertainment troupe of the 20th century?

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. A Hard Day's Night is probably more responsible for the Beatles' enduring image in our culture than any single song they made.

The story of "Hard Day's Night" is thin by design. We see the Beatles in slightly fictionalized form, with a manager named Norm and a roadie named Shake, traveling by train across England and ducking into a studio to make a TV appearance. Paul has his grandfather along, a codgy old troublemaker who nevertheless is "very clean." The irony of the movie is that the old guy, played by British TV star Wilfrid Brambell, is the one that continually ruffles the feathers of society while the Boys themselves play things fairly straight and legal.

Is it the best Beatles film? I think this is the best film actually featuring the Beatles for who they were and what they were about. Great music, too. The sequence on the train with I Should Have Known Better still works as a video, with all the baggage-car bric-a-brac thrown in for ambiance. Then there's Can't Buy Me Love, which shows the Beatles in full-tilt boogie mode after momentarily escaping their studio confines. And I Love Her has some of the film's greatest camera work, very moody and intense in its focus on how well the Beatles worked in a TV studio setting. Filmed with humor, great tunes and fast-paced editing, A Hard Day's Night usually never fails in delivering smiles and pleasure. If anyone who are music fan, and a rock and roll buff, the film is a must!