A Hard Day’s Night retro review

It has been 50 years since audiences first saw a mob of screaming girls chase after four young Liverpudlian lads in the opening shots of A Hard Day’s Night. It remains one of the most iconic images of film history, but the film is so much more than its opening…

The film began shooting March 1964 and was in theatres by July. The shoot was fast and low budget and that’s part of the film’s charm. Director Richard Lester’s decision to avoid the gloss of a big, bright Hollywood production that would come a year later in Help! makes A Hard Day’s Night special.

Lester crafted a vehicle for The Beatles music and personality that reined in Paul, John, George and Ringo, but didn’t restrict them. The plot is simple: a day in the life of the Beatles as they prepare for a TV appearance. We see a fictionalized, manufactured version of The Beatles, acting alongside actors playing Paul’s mischievous grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) and the band’s exasperated handlers (Norman Rossington and John Junkin), but you feel the loopy sense of humor is their own.

Screenwriter Alun Owen spent time with the Fab Four and distilled their essence while also positioning them as a Marx Brothers-esque unit. They all toss out one-liners, but John gets the majority making him the rebellious Groucho force of the film. Ringo becomes Harpo in a sequence where he roams the streets snapping shots with his camera. The segment is a throwback to silent film slapstick.

Like the Marx Brothers’ films, A Hard Day’s Night takes satirical jabs at society and culture. In one scene, George encounters fashion designers who want his advice on the what and how to market to kids. When George calls a pile of shirts “grotty” the trend seekers quickly jumps on what could be the new, hot slang word.

With its mix of documentary-style footage and narrative filmmaking, the film feels like French or Czech New Wave. This is best showcased in a party montage that features The Beatles milling around being themselves. It is moments like that when A Hard Day’s Night becomes a time capsule of a place and a craze that has never quite existed again. But the film is more than mere historical document.

Lester and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor shot in beautiful, crisp black and white and revolutionized how a band should be shot. Instead of merely planting the camera and shooting the band, Lester utilizes close ups, low and high angles and even allows for a lens flare, which, at the time, would’ve be left on the cutting room floor. It is the imperfection Lester kept in that helped make the film a classic.

Alec Kerr