An Excellent Capture Of 1964 Britain

Rating: 7/10 (7 December 2015)

Within two short years, the Beatles had completely changed Britain's musical and cultural landscape. They had consigned solo ballad singers (usually American and called Bobby) to the scrap heap and men started wearing their hair longer, dressing more smartly and becoming fashion conscious. And now with their film "Hard Day's Night" at the Odeon, they were throwing out a challenge to a film industry that had previously made teen musical films with ineptitude and with disdain for the audience. Everyone expected the Fab Four's first film to be a cheap cash in on their perceived short term popularity, but in the hands of director Dick Lester, "Hard Day's Night" came swinging into town with a zing and a freshness and a brash with-it-ness. The story is slight, it's a day in the life of John, Paul, George and Ringo and Paul's grandfather played by Wilfrid Brambell who tags along with them. They weren't actors - so cleverly Dick Lester has captured as best he can the actual personality of each person and each Beatle gets his own little scene (except Paul whose scene with Isla Blair was cut from the final print) and Ringo displays a natural comic talent. Support came from Victor Spinetti, Norman Rossington, John Junkin and Deryck Guyler, and the songs included 'I Should Have Known Better', 'Can't Buy Me Love', 'If I Fell' etc. Believe it or not the BBFC were not too happy about a veiled drug reference when John sniffs a Coke bottle and asked for a dialogue cut when someone says 'get knotted', but this was reinstated in the 1980s for video release. The support at the Odeon in Glasgow was "Bird Man", a 15-minute interest feature about parachutists which meant that the film could be played five times a day at 12:45, 2:50, 5:00, 7:05, and 9:15, and queues were right along to and down West Nile Street.
Adapted from 'What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema) Jim Doyle is the author of 'What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema)', 'What We Watched In The 1970s (In The Cinema)" and 'What We Watched In The 1980s (In The Cinema And On Video)'