The Beatles and Film

From Youth Culture to Counterculture

Stephen Glynn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000224863
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Historia y crítica de la música

This concise yet comprehensive study explores the emblematic journey by four young men from Liverpool from the epicentre of teen-led youth culture to the experimentation of the counterculture and beyond.

Beginning with the celebration of Britain's own 'youthquake' in the joyous and genre-shifting A Hard Day's Night (1964), the author delves into how the Beatles' film work allows us to chart their subsequent musical maturation and retreat from the tribulations of stardom in Help!, their tentative attempts at improvised filming in the televised Magical Mystery Tour (1967), their acceptance of cartoon representations as leaders of the hippie counterculture in Yellow Submarine (1968), and the final implosion of their musical dynamic in the recording studios of Let It Be (1970). The book analyses how, as they grew with their fanbase, the Beatles' films alternate stylistically between mimetic representation and allegorical interpretation, and switch narratively between fan-filled and welcoming worlds, to films relaying introspection and isolation.

Offering an in-depth case study of the successes and failures of British youth culture in a volatile decade, The Beatles and Film is an engaging text for both scholars and general readers alike.

1 The Beatles and youth culture

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

This chapter explores a film that promises to place the viewer at the centre of a new youth culture phenomenon – Beatlemania. It emphasises how A Hard Day’s Night, despite its genre-shifting expressions of youthful exaltation, achieved a rare cross-generational acceptance – the first of many ‘dualities’ at play. It shows the extent to which the Beatles are mediated – their first film, culminating in a television concert, employs a proliferation of photographs and camera screens but also utilises the methodologies and iconography of contemporary (pop) art practices. It examines how the Beatles are mythologised – long before the backlash prompted by John Lennon’s comparison of the group with Jesus, ¹ Lester intimates a quasi-religious status via art-house-inflected symbolism, implicitly situating the group as purveyors of a fresh and secular promise of fulfilment through their music’s transgressive potential for sheer pleasure. This promise is shouted out with genuine conviction by Beatlemania’s (predominantly) female fanbase who thus define alternative and independent values that mark them off from the adult world. Nonetheless, this new enraptured youth culture is skilfully marketed (including via this film), with the foregrounded Beatles b(r)and pushing all to become not just fans (or even worshippers) but also/especially consumers. Cinema and youth culture, from the off, are seen to combine to form a heavily monetised phenomenon.

Production and reception

On 29 October 1963, four days before the Beatles opened their fourth cinema-centred UK concert tour, Brian Epstein reached an agreement with United Artists for the group’s feature film debut. Though the Beatles had barely registered in the US (only Del Shannon’s cover of ‘From Me to You’ had charted, at number 77), Noel Rodgers, the British representative for United Artists Records, had witnessed the growing phenomenon soon labelled Beatlemania and was convinced that America would not long resist. When he ascertained that EMI had not covered film soundtracks in their contract with the Beatles, Rodgers approached George ‘Bud’ Ornstein, production head of United Artists’ European film division, with the proposal that they offer Epstein a three-picture deal for the group, in essence solely to obtain three potentially profitable soundtrack albums. Thus, in its conception, the future acme of pop music cinema was – pace Technicolor Cliff Richard – identical to all its generic predecessors. With no artistic pretentions, here was a low-budget, low-tech exploitation movie existing only to milk the latest low-rated youth musical craze to the maximum.

Ornstein approached Walter Shenson, an independent American producer who, with fare such as the satirical Peter Sellers vehicle The Mouse That Roared (Arnold, 1959), had shown the ability to render British products accessible to the US market. Ornstein’s brief to Shenson was simple: to deliver a film containing an album’s worth of new songs. The Beatles, astute regarding their career development, had already turned down Epstein’s proposal of a cameo debut in Tekli Productions’ schoolgirl ‘sexploitation’ feature The Yellow Teddy Bears aka Gutter Girls (Hartford-Davis, 1963), less for the film’s surrounding risqué content than for not wanting to sing others’ songs or lose copyright on their own work (Glynn 2016: 139–42). They also did not want, in Lennon’s words, to be ‘stuck in one of those typical nobody-understands-our-music plots where the local dignitaries are trying to ban something as terrible as the Saturday Night Hop’ (Carr 1996: 30). Given that this put-down perfectly summarises the Helen Shapiro-starring It’s Trad, Dad!, it appears counter-intuitive that this very film’s director, Dick (now Richard) Lester, was approached.

However, Lester, known to Shenson after being recommended by Sellers to direct the Grand Fenwick sequel The Mouse on the Moon (1963), instantly won the group’s approval, less for his pop film work than for his association with Britain’s madcap radio entertainment, The Goon Show (BBC Home Service, 1951–60). The Beatles, especially Lennon, loved the comedy short Lester had made with Goon members Sellers and Spike Milligan, the Academy Award-nominated The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959), and liked the idea of creating their own piece of slapstick surrealism. Also significant for his credibility, Lester, aged 32, was only half the average age (65 years 6 months) of those habitually entrusted with Hollywood youth pictures such as the Elvis Presley film cycle (Bean 1964: 12). With all parties happy, a standard low-budget ceiling of £200,000/$350,000 was agreed – with the Beatles’ cut eventually negotiated up from Epstein’s initial (ineptly negotiated) 7.5 to 20 percent of all net profits (Davies 2016: 573).

Lester brought along his regular cameraman Gilbert Taylor whilst the Beatles provided the film’s musical director, their record producer George Martin. Screenwriting duties were entrusted to Welsh-born but Liverpool-reared Alun Owen who, as well as having worked with Lester in television, had impressed the Beatles, especially McCartney, with his gritty depiction of Merseyside in the ‘Armchair Theatre’ drama No Trams to Lime Street (ITV, 1959). Owen spent time with the group to familiarise himself with their rapport and routine since it had been decided from the off that the film would constitute a caricatured ‘day in the life’, a fictionalised documentary of the Beatles’ real-life reactions to their youth-fed celebrity. This faux-cinéma-vérité project lent itself to black-and-white photography, a format replicating the Beatles’ footage now flooding press and television outlets, and one that, for Owen, fitted the quartet’s personalities: ‘They are immediate people and I knew from that that it couldn’t be a colour film. The boys are essentially black and white people’ (quoted in Harry 1992: 506).

Owen completed a generally approved first draft in late-January 1964. By February, though, a day in the life for the Beatles had changed – beyond all recognition. In Britain the group’s success had been swift but incremental: in the US Beatlemania was instant and enveloping. In what constitutes the definitive fortnight in pop music history, the Beatles, with ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ bulleting from 73 to number 1 on the Billboard chart, had wowed the press from the moment they touched down at New York’s airport on 7 February. Two days later ‘these youngsters from Liverpool’ had been watched on The Ed Sullivan Show by 73 million, not just the highest viewing figures ever for a television broadcast but ‘possibly the most significant cultural event in post-war America’ (Stanley 2013: 122). By the time they flew out on 21 February the Beatles had completely conquered US hearts (and purse-strings). With their mop-top image known from coast to coast and their full back-catalogue about to occupy all top-five positions on the Billboard singles chart, the Beatles had suddenly become the most bankable pop stars on the planet. And yet, in nine days’ time, they were contractually obligated to start working on a rock-bottom-financed exploitation quickie.

Despite now having this unprecedented youth culture phenomenon to handle, all parties agreed to remain with existing arrangements, especially the documentary-style use of black and white (see Glynn 2005: 21–9). There was one agreed addition, though: following the enormous success of the Beatles’ New York airport lounge press conference, Owen penned a press buffet scene allowing the boys to proffer similarly dazzling repartee. With speed of the essence, an experienced acting team was entrusted to deliver their sections with minimum fuss, allowing most attention to be focused on directing the pop star debutants – a situation helped by Owen’s staccato script, which pragmatically limited the boys to one line of dialogue at a time. In the recording studio, the Beatles also delivered swiftly: in the week prior to filming they worked up the tapes of nine songs from which Lester would choose six to film.

On the morning of Monday 2 March, a train left Paddington Station platform 5, with John, Paul, George and Ringo plus the film crew all on board. From the outset they were besieged by hordes of frenzied fans: this disrupted production schedules but provided suitable raw material for the expedient Lester. In one early scene, for instance, he shot a crowd of screaming girls who had surrounded the Beatles’ limo after a long day’s shooting, footage knitted into the film which explains the continuity error where the boys wear different clothes on and off the train. Thus, at times the fictional documentary became factual – and/or vice versa. For the closing concert sequences, shot at London’s Scala Playhouse again before genuinely rapturous fans, Lester employed six cameras shooting simultaneously as the Beatles performed, allowing John Jympson’s subsequent editing to provide a visual energy commensurate with the music. The plot, perfunctory as it would be in all Beatles films, follows the group as they travel down to London to appear in a television variety show. Accompanying them are manager Norm (Norman Rossington) and road-manager Shake (John Junkin), plus Paul’s grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell), a ‘real mixer’ who, after sowing disruption at a casino and press conference, needles Ringo into going AWOL, jeopardising the television appearance. After solo adventures culminating in his arrest, Ringo is freed just in time for the group to reach the studio and perform before an ecstatic audience. Show over, they are immediately rushed out to a helicopter and on to their next event.

The reception afforded A Hard Day’s Night indicates a paradigm shift in the representation of 1960s youth culture. Firstly, cross-media success was record-breaking, with Noel Rodgers’ coveted soundtrack songs excelling in all formats. The tie-in singles ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ topped both the UK and US charts, while the accompanying album, the film’s sole raison d’être and, in a pioneering move, entirely penned by Lennon-McCartney, achieved unparalleled results, topping the US album chart for 14 weeks, the UK chart for 21 weeks, and achieving global sales of close on four million, half from America (Coryton and Murrells 1990: 97). Pre-release demand was especially significant, as the momentum created by US radio previews led to advance orders of over two million album copies, ensuring the film’s production budget had already been doubled in profits. This LP ferment fed back into film demand, with America alone demanding 700 prints, Britain 110, while globally a record 1500-plus prints were ordered. This led United Artists to announce boldly that, with under four weeks to edit and make copies, A Hard Day’s Night would enjoy saturation exhibition with ‘more prints in circulation than for any other pic in history’ (Carr 1996: 47). Such was the demand for products associated with the Beatles that A Hard Day’s Night became the first motion picture in history to secure a profit while shooting was still in progress.

Uniquely for a pop music film, A Hard Day’s Night was granted a Royal World Premiere on 6 July 1964 at the London Pavilion before HRH Princess Margaret – while an estimated 20,000 fans outside necessitated closing Piccadilly Circus (see Frontispiece). In America the film was officially premiered at the Beacon Theatre in New York on 12 August and the next day opened in 500 cinemas across the country – though entreaties for early showings had already brought in over half a million dollars. In addition to unparalleled publicity, the release was shrewdly timed just prior to the Beatles’ 26-date (technically misnamed) ‘First American Tour’ from 19 August to 20 September, synergising with concert venues that, holding between 7000 and 23,000, dwarfed UK provincial picture houses. In total, the film’s box-office profits would prove phenomenal, bringing in $5,800,000 in US rentals in six weeks, and a worldwide gross close on $14 million (Denisoff and Romanowski 1991: 138). Returning 40 times on its investment, here was youth culture monetised far beyond expectation. Not, though, beyond exportation. It merits clarification that, while A Hard Day’s Night was/is categorised as a British film in that it employed British cast, crew and locations, its financing came from and therefore its profits went to United Artists, an American company and established a funding pattern for the rest of the decade.

Along with this unshakable commercial progress, the Beatles’ debut film won near-unanimous plaudits. Richard Dyer has explained the power of ‘stars’ in terms of their ability not so much to represent particular social categories but rather to ‘speak to dominant contradictions in social life – experienced as conflicting demands, contrary expectations, irreconcilable but equally held values – in such a way as to appear to reconcile them’ (1992: 80). The critical reaction to A Hard Day’s Night indicates that it effected just such an ideological reconciliation, notably captivating older, uncertain (predominantly male) writers. Britain’s youth-oriented music press were – unsurprisingly – bedazzled. For Andy Gray in the New Musical Express (NME), ‘Dick Lester has a great flair for comedy and the editing of the film is razor sharp, a major contribution to the success. But the Beatles have come through with flying colours. Whereas many pop stars sound unreal and even horrible when given films, the Beatles really punch them over with a naturalness that is refreshing and they look good throughout’ (1964: 3). Equally charmed, though, were the country’s august film journals. Despite the caveat that ‘the pace is too frantic’, the British Film Institute (BFI)’s Monthly Film Bulletin found A Hard Day’s Night ‘streets ahead in imagination compared to other films about pop songs and singers’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night review’ 1964: 121), while in its sister publication Sight and Sound – following a piece on François Truffaut’s La Peau Douce/Silken Skin (1964) – Geoffrey Nowell-Smith more broadly declared that, despite its ‘casual camerawork’ and ‘non-acting’, ‘eppur si muove: and yet it works’, and works ‘on a level at which most British films, particularly the bigger and more pretentious, don’t manage to get going at all’ (1964: 196–7).

Between Andy Gray’s NME eulogy and the BFI’s Galilean Latin, middlebrow magazines also heralded a youth culture game-changer. The Spectator’s Isobel Quigly, recalling the just-released Wonderful Life, concluded that the Beatles’ ‘whole style, not just of singing, but of behaving … of taking things quizzically and giving as good as they get, makes Cliff Richard last week seem like a cream-fed domestic cat compared with a litter of perfectly groomed jaguars’ (1964). In the national press, by contrast, the group’s style of behaving drew not feline but lofty film comparisons. Cecil Wilson found the Beatles ‘just as crazily inconsequential, just as endearingly insolent, just as infectiously pleased with themselves and – not consistently but here and there – just as funny as the Marx Brothers’ (1964). Penelope Gilliatt, praising the group’s ‘pure comedy’, saw ‘four highly characterised people caught in a series of intensely public dilemmas but always remaining untouched by them, like Keaton, because they cart their private world around everywhere’ (1964).

As much as the Buster Keaton comparison, the term ‘highly characterised’ is important here. British actor/director Jonathan Miller, referencing the youth-fearing Village of the Damned (Rilla, 1960), had already likened the identikit mop-tops to the ‘Midwich Cuckoos’ (Ingham 2006: 194), but here, for the so-far resistant older generation, the four-headed monster was transformed into distinct – and decent – individuals. Michael Thornton, who saw the film as possessing ‘all the ingredients of good cinema – wonderful photography, imaginative direction, and excellent character performances’, was typical in asserting the film’s ‘great surprise’ as ‘the extent to which the four boys emerge as personalities in their own right’ (1964). Felix Barker (aged 46) proffered the perspective of ‘many a parent’ for whom ‘a year’s intensive propaganda from the nursery’ had given ‘a built in apathy’. Writing ‘as a man who until this week didn’t know Ringo from Paul or George from John (and cared rather less), let me join in the high pitched, frenzied screaming of teenage enthusiasm’ (1964).

The US was similarly smitten. Time magazine, tho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Series editors’ introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: overviews and origins
• 1 The Beatles and youth culture: A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
• 2 The Beatles minus youth culture: Help! (1965)
• 3 The Beatles and the counterculture: Magical Mystery Tour (1967) and Yellow Submarine (1968)
• 4 The Beatles’ conclusion: Let It Be (1970) and legacy
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index