Beatlemania in black and white

Rating: 10/10 (7 March 2006)

What a fun movie. I first saw this during it's initial theatrical release as a kid in 1964. (They gave us black and white Beatles Fan Club buttons.) Looking back through a 10 year old's eye's I couldn't wait to see The Beatles in a movie. I had seen them on TV and in magazines but an entire movie about them was going to be a watershed event in the career of the group. Indoctrinated by all the corny teen movies that mostly were made prior to Hard Day's Night you knew that if they were going to be portrayed as conventional teen idols it was going to be a bust but if it was a glimpse into what it was like being a Beatle and the London mod scene of '64 and The Beatles in their irreverent but likable persona with cool clothes and Beatle boots and lots of Beatle's music and The Beatles playing their guitars it was going to be a hit. Well it didn't disappoint. I didn't even expect there to be a story. I just wanted to see the Beatles on the big screen and hear their music. (The theater even had women playing nurses in nursing outfits and stretchers for people who fainted. Cool and campy. I have to give that theater credit for all they did. The first 50 people in got Beatles wigs.) As I grew older this film did not when I would see it on TV. Sure it was dated but it was still fun. Supporting, or in this case actual actors, Norman Rossington as Norm and Victor Spinetti as the TV Director along with Wiford Brambell as Paul's "clean" grandfather and John Junkin as Jake gave the movie a legitimate cast to cohesively hold it together and it worked well but heck, The Beatles were good on their own first time out. George Harrison's future wife, fashion model Pattie Boyd is one of the girls in the train car with the band (Her only line is "prisonors") and even future rock and pop star Phil Collins is in a scene as a teen fan. Director Richard Lester should have been at least nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director. Alun Owen did get a nomination for Best Screenplay in the only film he ever did. George Martin also received an Academy Award nomination for Scoring of Music Adaptation. Any of The Beatles songs in this film should have been nominated for Best Original Song but they weren't. Gilbert Taylor was the cinematographer for this film. He had just come off doing the cinematography for the film Dr. Strangelove. John Jympson who had just come off editing the film Zulu was the editor. This film does a wonderful job of capturing the era of mid 1960's London and Beatlemania on film in black and white. Their next film Help, also directed by Lester tried to be too James Bondish and although good was largely silly and didn't come close to HDN. This film has been with me so long and I've seen it so many times I can't help but give it a 10.