“A Hard Day’s Night,” Richard Lester’s landmark film featuring the Beatles, released 50 years ago this week, is an anomaly — a music film that’s actually good. The film will be presented in a new 4K digital restoration, approved by Lester and running July 4-17 at Film Forum in New York City. The Criterion Collection has also released the same restoration this week on DVD, with a smattering of bonus features.
Essentially an extended promotional tool shot in six weeks in an attempt to capitalize on the growing, and what most thought was soon to end, wave of popularity the group was riding, the result was something more than simply an advertisement. “A Hard Day’s Night” was a genuinely funny, meta-film (before the term even existed) that was subversively anti-establishment and cemented the public image of the group for the rest of their existence.
Later on, that image might have been to their detriment. Because really, when we think of the Beatles, don’t we think of the group running down the street being chased by a flock of female teenage fans? The teeny-bobber image they were slapped with — something that is both mocked and celebrated in the film — became such a burden that they spent the second half of their short career trying to find ways to work against it through sonic and lyrical experimentation.
I am not a huge fan of the Beatles, or at least I don’t think of them as infallible. I’ve argued quite frequently, usually after a drink or three, that all four members produced better music during their solo careers (well, maybe except for Ringo). Without the argument sounding too generalized — it’s pointless to deny that the group made great music during all periods of their existence — my feeling has always been that there was a vitality the Fab Four achieved early on that was missing from their later material, especially as they splintered but were still presented as a cohesive whole.
One of the great things about “A Hard Day’s Night” is that it’s a portrait of the Beatles as a perfect circle, four brothers in arms. This is 1964 — just a few months prior they made their historic appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and the film was released a week before the group’s first large-scale American tour. It was a big year, maybe the biggest in the band’s history, and the first clang of the guitar that begins the film is like the firing of a starting pistol.
The music in the film, which includes some of the Beatles’ most well known songs — the title song, “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “She Loves You” — has been discussed to death, and it’s almost beside the point here. The music in “A Hard Day’s Night” is just a framing device; it’s only there because it has to be. You get the sense that, if the band had it their way, there would be no music at all. And there certainly doesn’t need to be any music: The Beatles are more than sufficient comedic performers, and it’s this aspect of the film that continues to ring true today. I hadn’t seen the “A Hard Day’s Night” in many years — I’ve always preferred their 1965 film “Help,” even if it’s not as funny and much goofier — but watching it again recently I was struck by the relentless pace of the comedy. Jokes are layered on top of more jokes and they’re delivered at breakneck speed, giving the whole film a surreal and unsettling comedic edge.
Much of this had to do with the man behind the camera. Richard Lester had previously worked with Peter Sellers — it was a film he made with Sellers and Spike Milligan in 1960 that won over the Beatles — and would, in between his two features for the group, make one of the most brilliant comedies ever made, “The Knack… and How to Get It.” The particular style of comedy Lester helped pioneer — wildly discursive, anti-authoritarian, surreal, and running at full-speed — was matched in “A Hard Day’s Night” with an equally loose visual style, combining a documentary realism with snappy editing. It’s what ultimately makes the film more than a long music video and undoubtedly the finest pop music movie ever made.
