Influential, like the Beatles themselves

Rating: 9/10 (4 June 2014)

I was part of the Beatles generation, a freshman in high school when they came to America. You couldn't help but get mixed up with them whether you liked them or not. They were everywhere. Everything about them was special to teenage girls: their accents, the British colloquialisms, their clothes - it was indeed a British invasion.
The Beatles would go on to have many peaks of popularity because they and their music evolved. A Hard Day's Night was done at their first "peak" (but let's face it, they didn't have much non-peak time). Frankly, it's a work of genius, as far as I'm concerned. The Beatles here are the '60s version of the Marx Brothers and completely natural, funny, crazy, strange, and uniquely talented. The movie is a day in the life of the Fab Four, with lots and lots of their music intertwined. The writer, Alun Owen, followed the Beatles on their French tour and put the script together based on his observations. He tagged John as a smart aleck, Paul as cute but practical, George as quiet, and Ringo as kind of slow. He also worked to get their speech and daily routines into the script. When they went to film it, the Beatles did a lot of improvisation, some of which was incorporated after the film.
It's a black and white movie, using jump shots, which were quite new, and it really set the stage for other musical movies to come.
Seeing A Hard Day's Night today, it was an innocent time in general and for the Beatles, who were still pretty provincial. They were exuberant in their fame; that would change later. Unlike some other groups, where people played in a band and went their separate ways, the Beatles were always together, it seemed, at least in the beginning.
One piece of trivia: On the night they appeared on Ed Sullivan, John Lennon appeared in the dressing room of Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill, who also performed though they couldn't hear a word the other was saying because of the screaming fans. The Coke machine was in the Brill-McCall dressing room. John came in, got a Coke, and sat down and talked to Charlie Brill. As he talked, he drew something on a napkin and signed it. Then he left. "What a pompous jerk," Brill said -- and tossed the napkin in the wastebasket.
Charlie Brill now knows that was a big mistake. They were no flash in the pan. They were the Beatles and they just got better and better. This movie captures them and London at a moment in time with the screaming fans, the music, and the excitement about the Beatles that I'll always remember.