A better title for this latest Beatles-featured movie would really have been "Beatles in America '64" when you consider that in that same year they elsewhere recorded two albums, an EP, and three singles, one of which which contained a non-album A and B-side. Then of course they made the "A Hard Day's Night" movie, toured the UK, Australia and Europe and made various promotional television appearances besides. Most acts today would struggle to do all that in five years I dare say.
The movie makes extensive use of the vérité footage shot by the Maysles Brothers at the time, interspersed with news bulletins and interview inserts with all four Beatles, naturally of the archive variety with John and George accompanying present-day pieces by Paul and Ringo.
Being the dyed-in-the-wool fan that I am I naturally enjoyed every minute of it, but I wouldn't say I saw anything here which really surprised me or didn't seem familiar in some way. The Beatles all come over strongly as individuals but what is clear is the tight collective unit they had already become, an inner circle if you will, which only a precious few got to really invade, people I suppose like Brian Epstein, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall and George Martin of course, as well as the wives and girlfriends, although apart from a few fleeting glimpses of Cynthia Lennon, none of these people make much of an appearance, if at all.
There are also a predictable number of "talking head" interviews with contemporary artists, reminiscing and philosophising as is their wont, most strangely including the current incarnation of the artist once known as Terence Trent D'arby plus Leonard Bernstein's daughter and future Lennon producer Jack Douglas who at least has an interesting Beatles-related story of his own to tell.
The music is of course vintage moptop magic as you see and hear them perform their superb early repertoire on TV and live in concert, their playing and singing sharp and on point, before the screamers and jellybean throwers spoiled it for them.
It was nice to see now and then interviews with their predominantly young female fanbase which are contrasted at one point with some input from a bunch of cool, young on-the-street black dudes into Miles and Coltrane who respectfully resist any temptation to diss the new white kids on the block.
There were lots of nice moments but like I said not much fresh insight into the whole Beatlemania phenomenon which I guess may have been the point of the movie. The usual readacross is plied that timing was everything, given the band's arrival Stateside in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. The comment that most caught my ear however was from the young McCartney who, when asked by a prescient interviewer if he thought that there was a wider cultural impact the Beatles were having on society, simply smiles and mocks the question, disarmingly stating that all they were doing was just having a laugh.
How wrong he was.
