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A Hard Day's Night by Michael Atkinson One of the primary film experiences to solidify and visualize international youth culture--not to mention, the first music video, providing the crucial formal link between Godard and MTV--Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (1964) was a daring concept: a largely improvised, "realistic" meta-comedy starring the Beatles as fictionalized versions of themselves--internationally worshiped pop idols named John, Paul, George and Ringo constantly besieged by fans and fame--ambling through their lives like characters in a Mack Sennett kop caper. The movie's even more original when you consider that the Fab Four were, at the time, not quite a global sensation--in fact, Lester's nutty, deadpan drollery played a major role in cementing their eminence. Largely a farce of mop-topped rockers sweetly thumbing their noses at middle-class authority and happily indulging their youthful success, the movie created a new paradigm. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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It wasn't a Marx Brothers reincarnation so much as it was the model for M*A*S*H, Animal House, Blues Brothers, A Clockwork Orange, Monty Python, Keith Moon, the Beastie Boys, My Own Private Idaho and countless other pop manifestations (you can start with any Foo Fighters video) that helped define culture in the last half of the 20th century. But is it a good movie? As grim-looking as any Brit kitchen-sink drama but as buoyant as a beach balloon, A Hard Day's Night follows the boys through a plot (nonsense about Paul's bellicose old grandfather on the loose and the emotional fallout that besets the rather glum Ringo) that Lester barely asks us to pay attention to. Instead, it's a litany of goofiness, song interludes, snow frolicking, one-liners, comebacks and boogie-woogie. Lester was freed up by the French New Wave to shape his movie like a pop record, all catchy chords, mindless energy and danceable rhythm. Still, anyone born after 1960 cannot be blamed for wondering what all the hullabaloo was about: though endearing performers, the Beatles were hardly electric. In fact, they're so laid back they often seem to be a quartet of novelists, dressed in black and acting sassy at press conferences. The movie has its longueurs and its fair share of Liverpudlian garblings, but it's a delicious sliver of history that still melts in your mouth. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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