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| "Hey, pardon me for asking but who's that little old man?" |
The Beatles were some of the first music I listened to; I
think I knew all the words to their first few albums before I could actually
talk. A Hard Day’s Night was a frequent choice for movie night in my
house and I loved it long before I understood most of the jokes, like John
pretending to snort Coca-Cola and Paul quoting Hamlet while wearing a sheet. Now that I think about it, it’s a great movie
for kids; virtually no plot, lots of slapstick, plenty of opportunities to
laugh along with everyone even though you don’t know why it’s funny.
Though I’d watched the movie just two days before on DVD, seeing
A Hard Day’s Night in the tiny
theater at The Music Box was a whole new experience. The room was filled with people of all ages,
from tweens to the 60-year-old hippie who had seen the movie when it first
premiered in 1964. Maybe I was trying to
see it through the eyes of my friend Amy, who came with me and hadn’t seen it
before, or perhaps the size of the screen allowed me to pick up on things that
I had never previously noticed (I try to pick out new details and lines
every time I watch it). I’m not even
talking about the four minutes of unreleased footage they added to the film,
which was exciting to see. Some things I
noticed were Shake drawing a face on the wig form in the dressing room, and
that Norm’s tie is really cool—skinny, with a kind of black lizard skin print.
What really hit me hard for the first time was their age. I’ve been watching this movie since I was a
toddler. The Beatles were always this
grand thing, these famous musicians that have become a sort of modern folklore. But last night, watching the movie on Ringo’s
74th birthday and anticipating my own 24th birthday in a
couple days, it struck me that I am as old as the eldest Beatle when they made
the movie. I think about where I am in
my life, and where they were in theirs.
They were simultaneously professional adults and silly schoolboys. They were serious about the music but didn’t
take themselves or their fame too seriously, at least not yet. They were just kids with their whole lives
ahead of them, just before the onset of the 60s Counterculture and their
travels to India and hallucinogens and Apple Records and creating really cool,
weird, experimental music and leading social movements. In fact, the movie started production just
before The Beatles’ legendary performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, that brought
Beatlemania stateside. It was intensely
bittersweet watching John and Ringo singing “If I Fell” side by side, knowing
that today Ringo is currently on tour and making music while John was
wastefully taken from us more than 30 years ago. Watching Paul and George harmonize with the
knowledge that I would be seeing Paul live and in person in less than 48 hours
while my favorite Beatle, George, left us when I was too young to understand
what the world had lost. They had no
idea what the future held and were just enjoying the moment.
But that’s just another reason to love A Hard Day’s Night. It’s a
sort of time capsule of the Beatles in those early years of the band, just as
everything was changing for them. Though
the movie is scripted (loosely but expertly), I think it’s an authentic
portrayal of this band known for their wittiness and sense of humor, almost as
much as their musical talent. Personally,
I don’t think John was acting at all.
In summary: I
saw my favorite movie, one I’ve seen countless times at home, on the silver
screen for the first time. In many ways
I wish I had been alive in 1964 for the onset of Beatlemania, definitely one of
the screaming girls in the audience. But
I will gladly accept seeing it now, in a little theater with the people that keep
coming back to the movie and the band that mean so much to them fifty years
later.
What did Amy think of the film?
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