In observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' pioneering rock movie, A Hard Day's Night (1964), I've reached into my archives for an academic paper I wrote about it for UCLA film school circa 1979--I couldn't just review the film, I had to analyze its cinematic style.
The professor and teaching assistant hated it and gave it a bad grade and wrote condescending negative comments all over it. I guess it wasn't full of enough Marxist-Freudian film-school terminology for them, or something. However, it represented my thoughts on the movie (as well as my development as a rock journalist) at that time.
A Hard Day’s Night (1964) owes its effect to a film style characteristic of the 1960’s. In it rock music and British New Wave cinema combine to create a high-energy, relentlessly compelling, and hilarious docu-drama (actually, docu-comedy). The Beatles—and their music—match the high-energy style that grips the viewer’s attention. As often, the British New Wave cinematic style gave the feeling of a documentary, and here the effect is enhanced by what goes on in front of the camera. When the film deviates from a documentary style, it’s to provide a higher level of energetic rock ‘n’ roll excitement. In turn involving viewers in this high level of creative energy is entirely appropriate to a film starring the Beatles, who were part of the changing times and the musical counter-culture of the sixties.
A Hard Day’s Night remains important because it functions as a contemporary viewpoint that tells a story about some of the most influential musicians of this century—early rock stars when the genre was still being created. The movie remains contemporary, not an artificially backwards look. (Artificially backwards looks are provided in the sixties-set period pieces Stardust and I Wanna Hold Your Hand, for example.)
At the time A Hard Day’s Night was made, rock was still considered a type of non-music—no history, no theory, no culture. [Note: If you disagree, you may read the first American reviews of the Beatles’ music.] The Beatles—partly because of this movie—changed that—along with being a part of so many other changes in the sixties. This film was not made with any magic insight into the future—no film is. Instead it records and presents a spirit that nurtured rock into an entire counter-culture movement, into one of the basic ingredients of what made the sixties what they were.
Even the fact that A Hard Day’s Night is shot in black and white can be interpreted as a statement of the times. Based on British New Wave aesthetics, the use of black and white film suggests the film’s budget wasn’t splurged on color processing. It makes the process of filming obvious in itself—a characteristic of the British and French New Waves. The aesthetic of the film gives it a conservative look, but the film breaks out with a not-conservative narrative, just the way the rebellion of the sixties was just about to break out of the larger society.
The second Beatle movie, Help (1965) was a change from the first—it was in color, more far-fetched, more satirical, more an exercise in anti-establishment aesthetics. For all its high energy, Night is a more conservative film than Help, where Paul McCartney is shrunk to the size of a gum wrapper and side plots involving mad scientists and escaped tigers get involved. Together the two films represent how in only about a year the sixties counter-culture made its breakaway from the establishment.
The energy level of Night is high from the very first image. As John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr run from girls, the fast-paced editing and theme song provide exciting juxtapositions. The fast pace, provided by quick cutting, continues throughout the film. The camera’s on another image every few seconds—no static shots. This helps make the humor possible and keeps attention moving from one thing to another every few seconds. As an example, there’s the later scene when the manager looks for John in the empty bathtub and John wanders into the room. It’s because of that tricky quick cutting that we never see John get out of that tub.
What looks like first takes and by-play abound. We almost miss many of the following bits: in the opening scene, when George barely falls when running, or later, when John “snorts” his Pepsi. [Note: I recall a Pepsi, not a Coke, here] or when George knocks over an amplifier. There could be many more comical examples, even ones that are nothing about the Beatles—like the car thief in the chase scene.
These comic bits add up to a major portion of the movie, and serve several purposes. One is to give the stylistic effect that this is a filmed record of just another hard day in the life of a phenomenally popular rock group, not a work of fiction, not a contrivance with multiple takes—even though it is a scripted film, of course. Such unrestrained humor, liberally sprinkled throughout, keeps the energy level high. The flavor given by so many such sequences is akin to the disorder of real life. It’s a reflection of the lack of restraint, the lack of conformity (individualism), and egalitarianism that characterized its decade.
The hand-held unsteady camera is another stylistic effect, as if this film consists of recorded events—not contrived ones—even though of course the film features its share of obviously contrived effects, too. The unsteady camera also adds to the excitement of such scenes as the opening dash, and the effect of wheels rumbling in the train scenes. The effect is that the camera was shooting what and when. Even the scenes where the camera is toyed with, tricking the viewer, the effect remains. These scenes of creative camerawork retain a casual feel even while interlocking with the energy of the musical numbers.
The songs serve both as emotional energetic heights that cannot be reached by drama alone, and to break up the comedy. Rock picks up the energy level whenever the drama and comedy let down, so the energy level remains constant, or even rising, from sequence to sequence. One example, the baggage compartment scene that begins with the Beatles playing cards. What would otherwise be a letdown between dramatic-comic scenes becomes an opportunity for an exciting, energetic musical number. Such a scene is a dramatic use of rock. The staging needn’t be an energetic song-and-dance routine with a “cast of thousands” to be exciting. The rock does that alone.
The camerawork also serves in some scenes to raise a higher energy level. For example the field scene features extreme low and high camera angles, and fast-motion filming, to demonstrate the release a romp through a field provides for the four prisoners of their own fame. Following several other scenes where the comedy (the drama) provides the high energy level, creative camerawork and a fast up-tempo rock song (Beatle song) add to the film’s action. The camerawork shifts back to normal and the music ends—when a caretaker brings the boys back to earth.
This being a movie about musicians at work, the musical numbers are necessary to the plot. As further establishment of a realistic style, the musical numbers depart traditional formulation from a sudden and noticeable shift in dramatic tempo, where music steals in, and the characters start singing and dancing regardless of the situation. Instead the songs in Night are either background music on the soundtrack, or they’re played as part of a live-performance scene—even in the baggage compartment when the Fab Four are playing their instruments.
Here in the baggage compartment, the style of camerawork and editing is to create an effect. We go from a group shot of the card game, to a series of close-up’s, to the four playing music, then the process is reversed at the end. The effect is to neither tell us that the group suddenly picked up their instruments and started playing, or that the performance is only imaginary. They are playing cards, they are singing/playing music, and they are playing more cards. It’s a much more subtle effect than the style of traditional musicals.
Editing and camerawork (cinematography) plays little jokes with time and space, in the baggage compartment scene, the field scene, and the John-in-the-bathtub scene. However, the camera remains an objective recorder of these events. Time and space are not filtered through a character’s mind. The film contains no flashbacks or dream sequences. The narrative remains within the bounds of objective time and space, as it would in a documentary. The distortions are understood to be such, which is part of the New Wave style/effect/theory that the act of filmmaking should itself be obvious.
Having the plot take place in one day and with one small group of lead characters provides unity, which holds the plot together, a plot that brims with crazy but (somewhat) believable ideas, with comic by-play and a sense of impromptu situations. Some scenes stretch credibility from a realistic (rational) point of view, but the film skillfully keeps carrying the rock ‘n’ roll energy level higher and higher. So completely does the film adhere to a unity of time and space, the wildest happenings that the film has to offer become believable to the viewer. The unity provides a sense of control that keeps the film from getting too out of hand.
The artistic idea (concept) behind the making of Night was to explore how the Beatles dealt with being prisoners of their own fame. [Note: Please, spare me from the commercial concept, just focus on the artistic one.] The use of on-camera space explores this. The scenes tend to be in confined spaces—trains, hotel rooms, limos. Major scenes where the group members release their energy—escape—are outdoors, as the various Beatles defy management orders to stay put.
Ringo’s outdoor sojourn is the part of the film where the style becomes relaxed. The camerawork provides a setting that becomes relaxed as Ringo relaxes along. He gets away from the pressure of being a Beatle with a concert to do and for a brief time is able to be just a guy. Even here though, the film maintains a level of fairly high energy, with the rock song, “This Boy” on the soundtrack and the whole sequence turning into good energetic comedy. This sequence is intercut with the concert theater, where tension’s mounting as showtime draws near and a star is missing.
British New Wave films tended to portray ordinary people usually in conflict with the rich or authority figures. In Night the Beatles come into conflict with authority figures. The Fab Four constantly tax the nerves of authority figures—beginning with their own managers—and the viewer knows this story’s going to end with the Beatles being able to get away with it. They are the Beatles, after all. In the film’s only reference to the Beatles’ working-class beginnings, Ringo hisses to a soundman, “There you go with bourgeois stuff!”
This conflict is treated comically throughout this movie. The major comic scenes are rooted in it. For example, first the foursome takes on a stuffed shirt on the train who treats them as inferior. Later George finds himself in a television office, verbally sparing with executives, throwing the office into a panic just by being himself. For the climax—the grand finale—the entire foursome outwits and outruns a whole police station. Satire and spirit that produced the coming sixties-era counter-culture are reflected in these conflicts with authority, a quest for re-defining values.
If there’s one line in the film that typifies the philosophy of the late sixties—a foreshadowing of the rebelliousness to come—it’s when the caretaker (an authority figure) runs the boys off the field and it’s George who says, “Sorry to ‘urt your field, Mister!”
Here the Beatles—bound by their fame, youth caught up in the machinery of the entertainment industry—reflect the rebelliousness and restlessness of all youth but especially sixties’ youth.
In another example, the police haul Ringo in and he says, “But I’m Ringo!”
“That’s what they all say!” snaps the policeman. He’s the fourth Beatle, but to the police even he’s a long-haired trouble-maker. It’s the Beatles’ conflicts with authority that provide their means to escape from their confinement. Besides driving the plot, this conflict gives the humor more bite and freshness, making it a higher form of comedy than the slapstick level of humor may suggest.
The technical aspects contribute to the film’s documentary feel but so do the Beatles, being popular and familiar figures. They play themselves, using their own names, identities, and personalities, even their own working-class British accents, not theatrically trained. Their dialog sounds like conversation, not scripted lines. The style obtained by the technique and the casting is that a series of events took place that involved the Beatles, with a cameraman around to record them. It helped that the events were very funny. The effect is that the world’s greatest rock stars are behind the scenes at one of their concerts, having fun and facing crises—all in a hard day’s (night’s) work.
If the film had starred four actors in a fictitious group, or any actual rock group less prominent than the Beatles, its special place in film and social history would be lost. As it stands, it provides insight into one of the prime social, artistic, and historical forces in recent years—and that force is the Beatles.
Director Richard Lester and writer Alun Owen did base the film on actual events. It is a record captured in cinematic art of the Beatles’ early years. It’s about how they dealt with their unprecedented fame, what their relationships with each other were like, and how 1964 foreshadowed (hinted at) an entire era to come.
Ae the film’s end approaches, the energy level provided by the style—the cinematic blend of comedy, docudrama, and rock music has to go somewhere. The film’s most far-fetched (and funniest) sequence provides that place to go. Ringo gets arrested for a blunder that resembles something from a Woody Allen film and the other three—with the help of Paul’s grandfather, a key supporting (fictitious) character--have to get him out in time for the concert.
If the film’s style and plot kept only to what would likely happen, we’d get a slow anti-climactic sequence, probably about the harried managers negotiating for Ringo’s release. Instead the chase sequence combines rock, comedy, anti-authoritarianism, and a sustained high energy level to great comic effect.
Even this sequence is rendered believable because of the film’s realistic style. The Beatles get away with outwitting the police in their own station, and the energetic style, comic effect, and anti-authority theme make us believe they can.
If the chase scene is the climax, the following concert provides the wrap--the conclusion. The energy level doesn’t let up until the very last. The camerawork and editing keep cutting quickly from screaming girls to Beatles to tech room to Paul’s ever-troublesome grandfather. The audience of screaming girls provides the highest energy level yet. Meanwhile Paul’s grandfather crashes the stage and the harried tech director can’t take it anymore.
The Beatles are the film’s central figures but in this sequence, they’re the eye of the storm. They’re just standing quietly and playing some of their milder (as opposed to wilder) songs while all this chaos reigns around them. The songs, however, remain energy-inducing rockers, and the camerawork remains constantly changing angles. When the concert ends, there are a few more quick bits and one-liners, a freewheeling photo montage behind the credits, and this high-energy pioneering rock movie is over.
Night predated the greater part of the sixties—but it remains a social document of what one particular rock group in one particular year meant to a decade. The film predated the Vietnam War protests, the height of the Black Revolution, flower power, but these features of the sixties counter-culture were what happened when youth set out to change the world with rock as their soundtrack and the Beatles as rock’s heart. This film represents one hard day in the life of that sixties’ rock heart.
The youthful energy, contempt for authority, and rebellion that was the basis of the era we call the sixties (as opposed to the decade we call the sixties) can be found in the style and effect that made Night. Through the years the cinematic style that was the British New Wave continues to represent the anti-authoritarian values of the sixties. The style and effect that is Night comes from creating, controlling, and maintaining a high level of energy, involving the viewer through the use of rock music, comedy, very popular figures of pop culture (so popular as to be symbols of pop culture), and a very distinctive cinematic style.