vision2020
Re: This week at the Kenworthy
Pam Palmer wrote:
> Review for this week's movie at the Kenworthy is listed below :-)
>
> Hard Days Night
> (Running time: 87 minutes)
> Friday, Feb. 23 & Saturday, Feb. 24
> 6:30 and 8:30 PM
>
> (Show times for the following movies will be announced early next week.)
>
> Godfather 2 (March 2 - 3)
>
> Delicatessin (March 10)
>
> Boesman and Lena (March 16 - 17)
>
> The Searchers (March 28)
>
> Chocolat (March 30 - 31)
> *************************
>
> A Hard Day's Night
>
> BY ROGER EBERT
>
> When it opened in September, 1964, ''A Hard Day's Night'' was
> a problematic entry in a disreputable form, the rock 'n' roll
> musical. The Beatles were already a publicity phenomenon (70
> million viewers watched them on ''The Ed Sullivan Show''), but
> they were not yet cultural icons. Many critics attended the movie
> and prepared to condescend, but the movie could not be
> dismissed: It was so joyous and original that even the early
> reviews acknowledged it as something special. After more than
> three decades, it has not aged and is not dated; it stands outside
> its time, its genre and even rock. It is one of the great
> life-affirming landmarks of the movies.
>
> In 1964, what we think of as ''The '60s'' had not yet really
> emerged from the embers of the 1950s. Perhaps this was the
> movie that sounded the first note of the new decade--the opening
> chord on George Harrison's new 12-string guitar. The film was
> so influential in its androgynous imagery that untold thousands of
> young men walked into the theater with short haircuts, and their
> hair started growing during the movie and didn't get cut again
> until the 1970s.
>
> It was clear from the outset that ''A Hard Day's Night'' was in a
> different category from the rock musicals that had starred Elvis
> and his imitators. It was smart, it was irreverent, it didn't take
> itself seriously, and it was shot and edited by Richard Lester in
> an electrifying black-and-white, semi-documentary style that
> seemed to follow the boys during a day in their lives. And it
> was charged with the personalities of the Beatles, whose
> one-liners dismissed the very process of stardom they were
> undergoing. ''Are you a mod or a rocker?'' Ringo is asked at a
> press conference. ''I'm a mocker,'' he says.
>
> Musically, the Beatles represented a liberating breakthrough just
> when the original rock impetus from the 1950s was growing
> thin. The film is wall to wall with great songs, including ''I
> Should Have Known Better,'' ''Can't Buy Me Love,'' ''I Wanna
> Be Your Man,'' ''All My Loving,'' ''Happy Just to Dance With
> You,'' ''She Loves You,'' and others, including the title song,
> inspired by a remark dropped by Starr and written overnight by
> Lennon and McCartney.
>
> The Beatles were obviously not housebroken. The American
> rock stars who preceded them had been trained by their
> managers; Presley dutifully answered interview questions like a
> good boy. The Beatles had a clone look--matching hair and
> clothes--but they belied it with the individuality of their
> dialogue, and there was no doubt which one was John, Paul,
> George and Ringo. The original version of Alun Owen's
> Oscar-nominated screenplay supplied them with short one-liners
> (in case they couldn't act), but they were naturals, and new
> material was written to exploit that. They were the real thing.
>
> The most powerful quality evoked by ''A Hard Day's Night'' is
> liberation. The long hair was just the superficial sign of that. An
> underlying theme is the difficulty establishment types have in
> getting the Beatles to follow orders. (For ''establishment,'' read
> uptight conventional middle-class 1950s values.) Although their
> manager (Norman Rossington) tries to control them and their TV
> director (Victor Spinetti) goes berserk because of their
> improvisations during a live TV broadcast, they act according to
> the way they feel.
>
> When Ringo grows thoughtful, he wanders away from the studio,
> and a recording session has to wait until he returns. When the
> boys are freed from their ''job,'' they run like children in an
> open field, and it is possible that scene (during ''Can't Buy Me
> Love'') snowballed into all the love-ins, be-ins and happenings
> in the park of the later '60s. The notion of doing your own thing
> lurks within every scene.
>
> When a film is strikingly original, its influence shapes so many
> others that you sometimes can't see the newness in the first one.
> Godard's jump cuts in ''Breathless'' (1960) turned up in every
> TV ad. Truffaut's freeze frame at the end of ''The 400 Blows''
> (1959) became a cliche. Richard Lester's innovations in ''A
> Hard Day's Night'' have become familiar; because the style, the
> subject and the stars are so suited to one another, the movie
> hasn't become dated. It's filled with the exhilaration of four
> musicians who were having fun and creating at the top of their
> form and knew it.
>
> Movies were tamer in 1964. Big Hollywood productions used
> crews of 100 people and Mitchell cameras the size of
> motorcycles. Directors used the traditional grammar of master
> shot, alternating closeups, insert shots, re-establishing shots,
> dissolves and fades. Actors were placed in careful
> compositions. But the cat was already out of the bag; directors
> like John Cassavetes had started making movies that played like
> dramas but looked like documentaries. They used light 16mm
> cameras, hand-held shots, messy compositions that looked like
> they might have been snatched during moments of real life.
>
> That was the tradition Lester drew on. In 1959, he directed
> ''The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film,'' starring Peter
> Sellers and Spike Mulligan, among others: It was hand-held,
> anarchic, goofy and contains the same spirit that infects ''A
> Hard Day's Night.'' Lester had shot documentaries and TV
> commercials, could work quick and dirty, and knew he had to,
> because his budget was $500,000 for ''A Hard Day's Night.''
>
> In his opening sequence, which shows the Beatles mobbed at a
> station as they try to board a train, Lester achieves an incredible
> energy level: We feel the hysteria of the fans and the excitement
> of the Beatles, intercut with the title song (the first time movie
> titles had done that), implying that the songs and the adulation
> were sides of the same coin. Other scenes borrow the same
> documentary look; a lot feels improvised, although only a few
> scenes actually were.
>
> Lester did not invent the techniques used in ''A Hard Day's
> Night,'' but he brought them together into a grammar so
> persuasive that he influenced many other films. Today when we
> watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews
> conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut
> snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all
> the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the
> children of ''A Hard Day's Night.''
>
> The film is so tightly cut, there's hardly a down moment, but
> even with so many riches, it's easy to pick the best scene: The
> concert footage as the Beatles sing ''She Loves You.'' This is
> one of the most sustained orgasmic sequences in the movies. As
> the Beatles perform, Lester shows them clearly having a lot of
> fun--grinning as they sing--and then intercuts them with quick
> shots of the audience, mostly girls, who scream without pause
> for the entire length of the song, cry, jump up and down, call out
> the names of their favorites, and create a frenzy so passionate
> that it still, after all these years, has the power to excite. (My
> favorite audience member is the tearful young blond, beside
> herself with ecstasy, tears running down her cheeks, crying out
> ''George!'')
>
> The innocence of the Beatles and ''A Hard Day's Night'' was of
> course not to last. Ahead was the crushing pressure of being the
> most popular musical group of all time, and the dalliance with
> the mystic east, and the breakup, and the druggy fallout from the
> '60s, and the death of John Lennon. The Beatles would go
> through a long summer, a disillusioned fall, a tragic winter. But,
> oh, what a lovely springtime. And it's all in a movie.
>
> Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> PAMELA PALMER ppalmer@moscow.com
>
> Events Committee
> Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
> P.O. Box 8126
> Moscow, ID 83843
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
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