Half a century later it's a pure diamond

Rating: 10/10 (23 November 2008)

When you are dealing with a myth you have to look for what was new at the time when that myth appeared. And the Beatles are such a myth. This film reveals the fabric the myth is made of. Pure cinematographic and even photographic silk. The four boys have to be running because at the time everything young and new was on the run since it was chased by the establishment in order to be pilloried and exposed. But it also had to show how these four young men had to be able to capture the attention of other people and bring them into the running, first of all young people, particularly girls, and second the best representatives of the establishment, coppers. The film also had to be in black and white to be out of time, eternal because looking old, even odd or oddly even. Then and but their music did not have to convince their audience. It was new, fresh, lively, light, slightly rocky and rather smoothly rolly, with some drums but not too much, and a lot of harmony and melody, but the main attraction was the use of simple catch phrases to express love, freedom, desire, alienation and yet liberation in a mellow and sweet wrapping, like the cute title of the film taken from one of the songs. Finally the film had to satisfy the audience on the lifestyle of the Beatles and on their surrealistic reality. That is done with a plot based on their real life as musicians, etc, and at the same time with constant reference to impossible, at times absurd, breaches in this realism into some impossible meaningless or humoristic pranks. In one word the film is so real that it reaches beyond reality and even the virtuality of a life imagined as being out of logic.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines