A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists. The film was made in the style of a mockumentary, describing a couple of days in the lives of the group.
It was successful both financially and critically; it was rated by Time magazine as one of the all-time great 100 films. British critic Leslie Halliwell described it as a "comic fantasia with music; an enormous commercial success with the director trying every cinematic gag in the book" and awarded it a full four stars. The film is credited with having influenced 1960s spy films, The Monkees' television show and pop music videos.
Screenplay
The
screenplay was written by
Alun Owen, who was chosen because The Beatles were familiar with his play
No Trams to Lime Street, and he had shown an aptitude for
Liverpudlian dialogue. McCartney commented, "Alun hung around with us and was careful to try and put words in our mouths that he might've heard us speak, so I thought he did a very good script." Owen wrote the script from the viewpoint that The Beatles had become prisoners of their own fame, their schedule of performances and studio work having become punishing.
Plot
Halliwell encapsulates the plot as "Harassed by their manager and Paul's grandpa," The Beatles embark from Liverpool by train for a London TV show." Meanwhile, the rest of the band frantically (and unsuccessfully) attempts to find Ringo. Finally, however, he returns, after being arrested by the police along with Paul's grandfather, and the concert goes ahead as planned.
The Beatles comment cheekily on their own fame: for instance, at one point a fan recognises John Lennon (even though neither the fan nor he actually mention Lennon's name); he demurs, saying his face is not quite right, with the fan eventually agreeing.
The frequent reference to McCartney's grandfather as a "clean old man" contrasts with the Steptoe and Son stock description of Wilfrid Brambell's character, Albert Steptoe, as a "dirty old man".
Production
The film was shot for
United Artists using a
cinéma vérité style in black-and-white and produced over a period of sixteen weeks. It had a low budget for its time of
£200,000 (
$500,000) and filming was finished in under seven weeks. Unlike most productions, it was filmed in near sequential order, as stated by Lennon in 1964.
Filming began at
Paddington Station on 2 March 1964, The Beatles having only joined the actors' union,
Equity, that morning. The first week of filming was on a train travelling between London and
Minehead. On 10 March, scenes with Ringo were shot at the Turk's Head pub in
Twickenham, and over the following week various interior scenes were filmed at Twickenham Studios. From 23 to 30 March, filming moved to the
Scala Theatre, and on 31 March, concert footage was shot there, although the group mimed to backing tracks.
Before A Hard Day’s Night was released in America, a United Artists executive asked Lester to dub the voices of the group with mid-Atlantic accents. McCartney angrily replied, “Look, if we can understand a fuckin' cowboy talking Texan, they can understand us talking Liverpool.” Lester subsequently directed The Beatles' 1965 film, Help! and later several popular films, including The Three Musketeers, its sequel The Four Musketeers, and Superman III.
Cast
Irish actor
Wilfrid Brambell, who played Paul McCartney's fictional grandfather John McCartney, was already well-known to British audiences as co-star of the British
sitcom Steptoe and Son. The recurring joke that he was so
clean is because in the sitcom he was always referred to as a
dirty old man.
Norman Rossington played The Beatles' manager and
John Junkin was "Shake", their
road manager.
Brian Epstein, their real manager, had an uncredited bit part.
on set]]
The supporting cast included
Richard Vernon as the 'city gent' on the train,
Lionel Blair as a featured dancer and
Victor Spinetti as the television director. Cameos included
David Langton,
John Bluthal as a car thief and an uncredited
Derek Nimmo as magician Leslie Jackson.
David Janson played the small boy met by Ringo on his "walkabout".
Rooney Massara, who went on to compete in the 1972 Munich Olympics, was the sculler in the river in the "walkabout" scene by the river at Kew (uncredited).
Mal Evans, one of the Beatles' road managers, also appears briefly in the film—moving an upright bass through a tight hallway as Lennon talks with the woman who mistakes him for someone else.
George Harrison met his wife-to-be, Patricia Boyd, on the set when she made a brief (uncredited) appearance as one of the schoolgirls on the train. His initial overtures to her were spurned because she had a boyfriend at the time but he persisted and they were married within 18 months. The girl with Boyd in the dining car scene is Prudence Bury. Phil Collins appeared, uncredited, as a boy in the concert audience.
Reception
The film premiered at The
Pavilion Theatre in London on 6 July 1964—the eve of
Ringo Starr's 24th birthday—and the
soundtrack was released four days later. Reviews of the film were mostly positive; one oft-quoted assessment was provided by
Village Voice, which labelled
A Hard Day’s Night "the
Citizen Kane of
jukebox musicals."
Time magazine called the film "One of the smoothest, freshest, funniest films ever made for purposes of exploitation."
Film critic
Roger Ebert described the film as "one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies". In 2004,
Total Film magazine named
A Hard Day's Night the 42nd greatest British film of all time. In 2005, Time.com named it one of the 100 best films of the last 80 years. It is also #1 on both Rotten Tomatoes' lists of the Top Ten Certified Fresh Musicals and the Best Reviewed Movies of All Time.
New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther noted the film was a subtle satire on Beatlemania and the Beatles themselves. The Beatles are portrayed as likeable young lads who are constantly amazed at the attention they receive and who want nothing more than a little peace and quiet; however, they have to deal with screaming crowds, journalists who ask nonsensical questions, and authority figures who constantly look down upon them. In fact their biggest problem is McCartney's elderly, but "clean" grandfather, played by Wilfrid Brambell.
A Hard Day's Night was nominated for two Academy Awards; for Best Screenplay (Alun Owen), and Best Score (Adaptation) (George Martin).
Influence
British critic
Leslie Halliwell states the film's influence as "... it led directly to all the kaleidoscopic swinging London spy thrillers and comedies of the later sixties..."
The "
Can't Buy Me Love" segment borrowed stylistically from
Richard Lester's earlier
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film and it is this segment, in particular using the innovative technique of
cutting the images to the beat of the music, which has been cited as a precursor of modern music videos.
Roger Ebert goes even further, crediting Lester for a more pervasive influence, even constructing "a new grammar": "he influenced many other films. Today when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the children of
A Hard Day's Night".
According to Lennon in a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine: "I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title, 'Hard Day's Night' from something Ringo had said. I had used it in In His Own Write, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny... just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.'"
In a 1994 interview for The Beatles Anthology, however, McCartney disagreed with Lennon's recollections, recalling that it was the Beatles, and not Lester, who had come up with the idea of using Starr's verbal misstep: "The title was Ringo's. We'd almost finished making the film, and this fun bit arrived that we'd not known about before, which was naming the film. So we were sitting around at Twickenham studios having a little brain-storming session... and we said, 'Well, there was something Ringo said the other day.' Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical... they were sort of magic even though he was just getting it wrong. And he said after a concert, 'Phew, it's been a hard day's night.'"
Yet another version of events appeared in 1996; producer Walter Shenson said that Lennon had described to him some of Starr's funnier gaffes, including "a hard day's night", whereupon Shenson immediately decided that that was going to be the title of the film.
The film was titled Tutti Per Uno (All for One) in Italy, Quatre Garçons Dans Le Vent (Four Boys in the Wind) in France, Yeah! Yeah! Tässä tulemme! (Yeah! Yeah! Here We Come!) in Finland and Os Reis do Iê-Iê-Iê (The Kings of Yeah-yeah-yeah) in Brazil.
Novelisation
In 1964,
Pan Books published a novelisation of the film by author
John Burke, described as "based on the original screenplay by Alun Owen". The book was priced at
two shillings and sixpence and contained an 8-page section of photographs from the movie.
Songs
All tracks credited to
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, except where noted.
"A Hard Day's Night"
"I Should Have Known Better"
"I Wanna Be Your Man" (sample)
"Don't Bother Me" (Harrison) (sample)
"All My Loving" (sample)
"If I Fell"
"Can't Buy Me Love"
"And I Love Her"
"I'm Happy Just to Dance with You"
"Tell Me Why"
"She Loves You"
In addition to
the soundtrack album, an EP (in mono) of songs from the film titled
Extracts From The Film A Hard Day's Night was released by Parlophone (GEP 8920) on 6 November 1964, having the following tracks:
The movie was also released by Criterion in both a single-disc CLV and a DualDisc CAV Laserdisc format. The additional features section on the CAV edition include the original theatrical trailer, an interview with Richard Lester, and his The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film.
1993: Voyager Company produced a
CD-ROM for Mac and PC platforms with video in
QuickTime 1 format, containing most of Criterion's elements, including the original script.
1997: MPI Home Video released the first DVD edition. It contains the 1982 prologue and trailer, newsreels, an interview with Richard Lester, and The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film.
2000: Miramax Films reissued the film in theatres in the United States and then as a collector's edition DVD two years later, as well as its final issue in the VHS format. The film had been transferred from the restored 35 mm negative and presented in 1.66:1 Widescreen. The prologue that Universal added in 1982 is absent on the Miramax releases.
In addition to the original film, the DVD edition contained a bonus disc with over 7 hours of additional material including interviews with cast and crew members and Beatles associates. The DVD was produced by Beatles historian and producer Martin Lewis, a longtime friend of Walter Shenson.
See also
BFI Top 100 British films
Notes
External links
Beatles Laserdisc
Literature on A Hard Day's Night
Category:1964 films
Category:British comedy films
Category:Films directed by Richard Lester
Category:Films set in London
Category:Independent films
Category:Miramax films
Category:1960s comedy films
Category:Black-and-white films
Category:United Artists films
Category:Rock music films
Category:Films associated with The Beatles
![The Beatles a hard days night (Digital Remaster 2009) [High Definition] HD](http://web.archive.org./web/20110812090409im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/-Hr671HfXSo/0.jpg "The Beatles a hard days night (Digital Remaster 2009) [High Definition] HD")
