More Mania

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 8, 2001 | by Patrick Butters

A Hard Day's Night is back in theaters as the Beatles top the charts once again.

A Hard Day's Night opens with the Beatles dashing madly through the streets of London, trying to catch a train, egged on by manic hordes of screaming fans. You can take your canned fandom of the Monkees and Partridge Family or the cult following surrounding Kiss or 'N Sync, but the Beatles really were superstars before the term even was coined.

Those too young to remember are getting a taste of early Beatlemania with the theatrical rerelease of their 1964 debut film. (The restored print of A Hard Day's Night, with digital sound, will be available in a DVD version in March.) The rerelease comes during a resurgence of Beatlemania, a phenomenon that encompasses ABC-TV's recent documentary The Beatles Revolution, Capitol's chart-topping greatest-hits CD titled 1 and the massive The Beatles Anthology, an oral history from the band members themselves.

Filmed in sumptuous black and white, A Hard Day's Night from its initial release garnered praise with labels such as "documentary," "film noir" and "cinema verite." Rumors have it, however, that United Artists (UA) didn't want to spend money for color stock; it was looking to cash in on the soundtrack. Judging from the shooting schedule, that seems true: The film took four months to make, from shooting to release, and contained 13 original songs.

Yet the film was a smash hit when it opened on July 6, 1964, quickly paying UA back its $600,000 investment. The movie company would change its tune with the next Richard Lester-directed Beatles film, 1965's Help, expanding its budget and presenting the Beatles in living color. Their only other film, 1970's Let It Be, would be a disturbing chronicle of a band coming apart.

Other projects before the breakup included a 30-minute BBC special, Magical Mystery Tour, an animated Saturday-morning cartoon and the animated 1967 film Yellow Submarine. The latter two used Beatles characters and songs but were voiced by others.

The success of A Hard Day's Night owes much to Lester, who captured a Marx Brothers-like lunacy among the Fab Four. (Both John Lennon and Groucho Marx disliked the comparison.) The film's energy comes not only from the boys' Liverpool cheekiness, but also from the director's multicamera, quick-cutting, handheld direction.

The 83-minute film "follows" the lads over 36 hours, all the while one step ahead of manic fans. (George Harrison met one of the fans, Patti Boyd, on the set and later married her.) The Fab Four visit a pub, a jazz club and a casino before the denouement, an appearance on live TV. They also give one of their notable press conferences -- the only ad-lib part of the film. Lennon once tagged the film "the comic-strip version" of their personalities: John the witty rebel, Paul the optimistic pretty boy, George the quiet one, and Ringo Starr the comic afterthought.

Adding a welcome wrinkle to A Hard Day's Night, McCartney's fictional grandfather, played with scowling profundity by Wilfrid Brambell, tags along. Gramps will do anything to milk a buck from his nephew's celebrity, even walking the streets selling autographed pictures of the Beatles. (Brambell was the star of Britain's Steptoe and Son, the inspiration for America's Sanford and Son.) Welsh playwright Alun Owen, who wrote the screenplay, and musical director George Martin were nominated for Oscars.