American-born director Richard Lester serves up a helping of what, on this side of the pond, we came to think of as kicky, mod British filmmaking.
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:22
Fresh:22
Rotten:0
Average Rating:7.8/10
Consensus: A Hard Day's Night, despite its age, is still a delight to watch and has proven itself to be a rock-and-roll movie classic.
Theatrical Release:Dec 1, 2000 Limited
Synopsis:
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, nominated for two Academy Awards and featuring the Beatles in their feature film debut, is one of the greatest rock-and-roll comedy adventures ever. The film has a fully...
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, nominated for two Academy Awards and featuring the Beatles in their feature film debut, is one of the greatest rock-and-roll comedy adventures ever. The film has a fully restored negative and digitally restored soundtrack.
The year is 1964 and four young lads from Liverpool are about to change the world – if only the madcap world will let them out of their hotel room. Richard Lester's boldly contemporary rock n' roll comedy unleashes the fledgling Beatles into a maelstrom of screaming fans, paranoid producers, rabid press and troublesome family members, and reveals the secret of their survival and success: an insatiable lust for mischief and a life-affirming addiction to joy.
The film takes on the just-left-of-reality style of a mock-documentary, following "a day in the life" of John, Paul, George and Ringo as fame takes them by storm. On their way from Liverpool to a London television stage, they must evade a teenage mob, outwit a press conference, answer fan mail and give one of their trademark, faint-inducing performances. But even this manic schedule gets interrupted as Paul has to oversee the shenanigans of his irrepressible grandfather (WILFRID BRAMBELL), a "real mixer" whose love of dissension threatens to break the band apart. Soon John and grandfather are butting heads, George is considering a modeling career and Ringo goes missing in the streets of London.
Throughout it all, witty one-liners, classic pop songs and world-class charm build up to happy-go-lucky moments of liberation that capture the sheer exuberance, innocence and rock n’ roll spirit of four young men trying to make their own rules in a world determined to confine them.
Starring: Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison
Starring: Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfred Brambell, Norman Rossington, Victor Spinetti, John Junkin, Anna Quayle, Kenneth Haigh, Richard Vernon, Eddie Malin
Director: Richard Lester
Director: Richard Lester
Screenwriter: Alun Owen
Producer: Walter Shenson
Studio: Miramax Films
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Reviews for A Hard Day's Night
It's a fine conglomeration of madcap clowning in the old Marx Brothers' style, and it is done with such a dazzling use of camera that it tickles the intellect and electrifies the nerves.
Not only has this film not dated, it may even look fresher than it did in 1964; the zigzag cutting and camera moves, the jaunty ironies and pop-celebrity playfulness, are all standard issue now on MTV and its offspring.
To watch the final concert segment is to look back decades and realize, as you do seeing vintage footage of Duke Ellington or Frank Sinatra or John Coltrane, that it's never really gotten any better.
To watch the movie, and to enjoy such pop music classics as 'All My Loving' and 'She Loves You' is not merely to saunter down Memory or Penny Lane, but to drink at pop's headwaters.
Richard Lester's tangential, effortlessly clever ode to the Fab Four, given the re-mastered print and soundtrack treatment, still feels fresh and alive.
No movie of the 1960s catches that era's irreverent joy and exuberance as much as director Richard Lester's Beatlemania saga.
The film is mad, mad and crazy, shrewdly designed for the teenage and calculated also to attract the curious and the oldsters who enjoy this sort of thing.
No previous rocksploitation film had ever done so splendid a job of selling its performers.
A comedy classic that cross- pollinated Jean-Luc Godard with the four Marx brothers.
From the opening chords of the title song played over the group bemusedly fleeing from their fans, A Hard Day's Night creates pure, infectious joy.
The new, cleaned-up version (with a splendid Dolby Mono soundtrack) playing at Film Forum confirms its reputation as the greatest and most entertaining rock movie, ever.
In A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles, in song after song, pay homage to the faith of love, and that faith connects them to something ancient, lending this topspin musical its near oracular beauty.
A Hard Day's Night conveys not just a joy in music and The Beatles, but a joy in cinema.
Latest News for A Hard Day's Night
September 12, 2007:
Total Recall: Across the Universe And The Beatles On Film
This week, Across the Universe hits theaters. Julie Taymor's film, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess as a young couple in the midst of the heady, chaotic 1960s,... More...
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