Beatles In Offbeat Film

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30499, 22 July 1964, Page 13

Beatles In Offbeat Film

The film critic of “The Times” reviews “A Hard Day’s Night” One nice thing about this first film to star the Beatles: it is not by any manner of means, the usual sort of thing British film makers come up with to exploit the latest show business sensation.

. Indeed, if anything it goes rather too far the other way: it is so rough and grainy, so choppy and new wave in its editing, so obtrusively hand-held in its camerawork -that by the end, more than a little dazzled and deafened, one may find oneself thinking back nostalgically to the good old straight-forward days Of “Orchestra Wives.”

However, let us not look a gift horse in the mouth. The director, Mr Richard Lester (late of “The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film” and ‘"fhe Mouse on the Moon”), has had a real go, and a lot of his bright ideas come off very well: the way, for instance, that several of the numbers are treated as contrapuntal sound track accompaniments to screen action of quite another sort; the outbursts of Goonish visual humour; the freshly observed London locations and the vivid glimpses of backstage (or in this case behind the screen) show business life.

The main trouble is rather that there are tod

many bright ideas, flung at us one after the other with no spacing and hardly any quiet patches, for us to get our breath back before the next outburst; the whole film is oddly unremitting in its attack, and consequently muffs a number of its potentially most telling effects. Also,, the handling of actors does not seem to be Mr Lester’s strong suit; a number of usually excellent players like Mr Victor Spinetti and Miss Anna Quayle seem ill at ease as the film flashes past them, though Mr Kenneth Haigh manages "a. good cameo as the producer of a teen age television show frantically spotting for trends.

But the illustrious four come over agreeably enough as genuine personalities, if hardly yet as actors. Which, after all, is precisely; what is required of them: Mr Alun Owen’s screen play takes us, often amusingly, through a hectic day in the life of a pop group who happen to be called John, Paul. George and Ringo; and in the course of it they get through a variety of numbers, some familiar, some new, all Lennon-McCart-ney. For millions of fans anything more elaborate would be a breach of faith. —(Reprinted by Arrangement.)