Bruce Attends Beatles ’64 Film Premier
On Sunday, November 24, I attended the premier screening of the new Beatles film, Beatles ’64, which began streaming on Disney+ on November 29. The event took place at Disney’s recently opened New York headquarters at 7 Hudson Square and marked the first time the building’s theater was used for a public screening of a movie. Those in attendance included Sir Paul McCartney, Olivia Harrison and Sean Ono Lennon, along with the film’s producer, Martin Scorsese and director, David Tedeschi. The filmmakers previously directed and edited the excellent documentary George Harrison: Living In The Material World. Also in attendance were Disney CEO Bob Iger, Steven Van Zandt, Elvis Costello and Chris Rock.
Beatles ’64 includes footage shot in February 1964 by Albert and David Maysles that has been released in different edits over the years, most recently in the 2004 Apple Films DVD The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit. The Maysles footage has never looked better, having been digitally restored in 4K by Peter Jackson’s post-production facility in Miramar, New Zealand, Park Road Post. It also has bits of the Beatles February 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearances and Washington Coliseum concert, as well as footage of interviews and press conferences from that time. As one would expect, it is the Beatles electric concert performances on songs such as “Long Tall Sally” that will shatter the viewer’s senses, but the frequent footage of dedicated fans is key in telling the story.
The filmmakers depart from previous releases by adding new interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Smokey Robinson and others, as well as previous conversations with John, George and Sid Bernstein. The movie contains Maysles footage that was not used for The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit, including the charming sequence shot in a tenement of a family watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. There are 17 minutes of footage that has not been seen before.
At the post-screening reception, I had the pleasure of talking with two of the people whose interviews appear in the film, Jamie Bernstein and Jack Douglas. Jamie not only talks about her appreciation of the Beatles music, but also that of her father, Leonard Bernstein, a conductor and composer whose credits include the Broadway musical West Side Story and the score for the film On The Waterfront. Jack Douglas, who served as engineer on John’s Imagine album and co-produced John and Yoko’s Double Fantasy LP, told of his adventures in Liverpool after being inspired by the Beatles to take a ship there with a friend.
The film has deservedly received several excellent reviews. However, some people have questioned the wisdom of including recent interviews and references to Beatles songs from 1965 and 1966. Others complain that there are not enough performances by the group. But such criticism is the result of thinking about what the movie is not, rather than what it is. While Beatles ’64 may not the film that you would have made, it is the film that Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi made, and an excellent one at that.
My advice for those viewing Beatles’64 is not to have any preconceived ideas or expectations. Just sit back and enjoy this marvelous film for what it is, a beautiful and emotional film that effectively tells the story of the Beatles first U.S. visit by mixing the direct cinema technique of the Maysles Brothers with entertaining and informative interviews. Accept that this movie is aimed not only at life-long Beatles fans, but also at those less familiar with the group. Accept that original black and white footage can be seamlessly mixed with color film. Beatles ’64 is not meant to replace your DVD copies of The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit or your Beatles Ed Sullivan DVD and or your Washington Coliseum concert files or bootleg DVDs. It is a new experience meant to be savored as a time capsule with commentary explaining what was put into that time capsule back in 1964.
Your advice about watching the movie is dead-on correct. A Beatles fan for 55 years now, I appreciated the film for what it was, more or less an update of the amazing film the Maysles brothers first produced, with a bit more of the recent appreciation 60 years later. The best sequences by far are the family segment of those kids watching and experiencing the Beatles for the first time, a combination of curiosity and the wonder of first observance of what the fuss was all about in those days, mixed with an uncertain giddiness and fascination that they couldn’t even explain.
Another great theme of the film are the precious interviews with the young and hyper-excited young girls, who could only expose their fiercely excited reactions in trying to communicate exactly what it was that made the overall experience so exciting and fresh to them, kind of like getting off of your first rollercoaster ride and the deliriousness of having experienced something very special and new.
Essentially it works as a ‘love letter’ of nostalgia that the year 1964 observed and preserved in the wake of an undefinable wave of good feeling from virtually everyone involved, providing both the spectacle and amazement that the Beatles first inspired in those flat, dark days after the Kennedy assassination that even the most ardent fans or detractors of the Beatles couldn’t fully understand themselves.