Beatles '64

In the wake of Peter Jackson's excellent GET BACK we seem to be getting a lot more films dealing with The Beatles; as a fan of the Fab Four that's no bad thing for me and the four new biopics currently in production sound pretty interesting too. BEATLES '64 is, by comparison, fairly straightforward, an ordinary clip compilation of footage assembled from the breakout year for the performers. Obviously with Martin Scorsese producting a lot of this is American-centric, but it all works very nicely and there's plenty of music too which helps. Nice to see Paul and Ringo making appearances too! A reasonable effort.

A better title for this latest Beatles-featured movie would really have been "Beatles in America '64" when you consider that in that same year they elsewhere recorded two albums, an EP, and three singles, one of which which contained a non-album A and B-side. Then of course they made the "A Hard Day's Night" movie, toured the UK, Australia and Europe and made various promotional television appearances besides. Most acts today would struggle to do all that in five years I dare say.

The movie makes extensive use of the vérité footage shot by the Maysles Brothers at the time, interspersed with news bulletins and interview inserts with all four Beatles, naturally of the archive variety with John and George accompanying present-day pieces by Paul and Ringo.

Being the dyed-in-the-wool fan that I am I naturally enjoyed every minute of it, but I wouldn't say I saw anything here which really surprised me or didn't seem familiar in some way. The Beatles all come over strongly as individuals but what is clear is the tight collective unit they had already become, an inner circle if you will, which only a precious few got to really invade, people I suppose like Brian Epstein, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall and George Martin of course, as well as the wives and girlfriends, although apart from a few fleeting glimpses of Cynthia Lennon, none of these people make much of an appearance, if at all.

There are also a predictable number of "talking head" interviews with contemporary artists, reminiscing and philosophising as is their wont, most strangely including the current incarnation of the artist once known as Terence Trent D'arby plus Leonard Bernstein's daughter and future Lennon producer Jack Douglas who at least has an interesting Beatles-related story of his own to tell.

The music is of course vintage moptop magic as you see and hear them perform their superb early repertoire on TV and live in concert, their playing and singing sharp and on point, before the screamers and jellybean throwers spoiled it for them.

It was nice to see now and then interviews with their predominantly young female fanbase which are contrasted at one point with some input from a bunch of cool, young on-the-street black dudes into Miles and Coltrane who respectfully resist any temptation to diss the new white kids on the block.

There were lots of nice moments but like I said not much fresh insight into the whole Beatlemania phenomenon which I guess may have been the point of the movie. The usual readacross is plied that timing was everything, given the band's arrival Stateside in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. The comment that most caught my ear however was from the young McCartney who, when asked by a prescient interviewer if he thought that there was a wider cultural impact the Beatles were having on society, simply smiles and mocks the question, disarmingly stating that all they were doing was just having a laugh.

How wrong he was.

First, I'm a huge Beatles fan. Always have been and I'm an old guy (62). I've seen most, if not all, The Beatles films and was looking forward to this one. So much so, that I opted in for a month of Disney+ so that I could watch this and also the remastered "Let it Be" film.

While 1964 was a crucial year for The Beatles and important to what they meant to America, especially after the Kennedy assassination, I have to say that I preferred Ron Howard's spin much more as it was much more Beatle-centric to me. Beatles '64 kind of meanders all over the place and there are awkward segues into the psychology of Beatlemania (from later in the 60s) and just the kind of mood of the early 60s. Those segues are ridiculous and just out of place in this film. The clips don't age well and really had ZERO to do with John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

There were fan interviews (new and from 64) and that was ok, but there were other interviews that didn't make much sense to me. Jack Douglas's interview was good, but in the scheme of things, it was more about him and less about The Beatles, so a good interview, but out of place here.

The film has recent interviews with Paul and Ringo. Ringo seemed to add to the conversation with a few things I hadn't heard before. Paul just kind of fell back on his 'same old stories'. I mean, did we NEED to hear Paul give the talk about how the early hits were "From ME to YOU. SHE loves YOU. Please Please ME...". Good God, how many times can he recycle that? I really wish he'd open up a bit more. It was nice to see Ringo drum a bit and talk about the drum riser used on the Sullivan show, etc. Paul... eh, he really didn't add much and his F bomb, to me, was really out of place, especially on the Disney+ channel. Seemed a bit forced, too. The George and John interviews added more than Paul's.

Speaking of the Sullivan stuff- Why they didn't use the pristine video versions that came out about 10 years ago, I'll never know. The clips they used from the Sullivan show in Beatles '64 were much lower quality than what has been otherwise released.

I did enjoy the Ronnie Spector and Smokey Robinson interviews very much. The Beatles definitely beat the drum for the black American groups, so that was cool. Smokey singing 'Yesterday' was good too, but if this was about 1964, it was odd to see that which was at least a year later. Small point. It was cool to see George request "Got My Mind Set On You" on the phone. Prophetic.

I never realized how ANNOYING Murray the K was. He just kind of latched on and it was funny to see George say "we never knew how he got there...".

There was stuff that was later than '64 in the film too, which was kind of weird considering the film's title.

For me, there wasn't much I'd not seen before. The original films came out in the 80s or 90s as "The Beatles First Visit to the US" home video and, for my money, that is MUCH BETTER than this one. You can find it on the Internet Archive. Watch that as it's a much better representation.

It was nice to see how funny they were on the films of the train and in the hotel in New York. I'd forgotten that and Beatle Humor is such a big part of them. George masquerading as a train bartender was funny. I'd forgotten about that. John seemed a bit subdued and Paul, Ringo, and George were really hamming it up.

The NEXT film should be the restored Washington DC concert (which parts are shown here). They really improved the sound in the clips used in this film (though it's odd to see George singing "Roll Over Beethoven" on one mic, then move to another mic right in the middle of the lyric line. The reason he did this was because, in the original film, his mic was dead, so he jumped over to John's mic. Well, in this film, both mics mysteriously are working, so when he moves and you don't know this, you kind of go "Why did he move?". Peter Jackson restored that a bit too much. The dead mic and Ringo's funky drum riser kind of illustrate how UNready the US entertainment industry was for The Beatles as a live act.

All in all, it was 'OK' and worth a watch, but it really adds nothing new to The Beatles mythology.

Since this documentary was produced for the Disney streaming channel you should probably assume that it's not for the super hardcore fans who are always grumpy and impossible to please. It's much more for the casual fan. And for young people (under 40 let's say) who know very little about The Beatles.

There are lots of "talking heads" interviews which are okay, but not really all that exciting to watch. Some are more interesting than others.

The old footage of The Beatles performing and not performing is the most enjoyable to watch. I saw quite a bit of footage that I had never seen before and there are some wonderful moments.

There are also some ugly moments, too. There's one moment when a New York City cop threatens to throw two teenage girls down a flight of stairs just because they aren't staying at the hotel. Yikes! Talk about police brutality! The girls were very peaceful and didn't deserve that.

There's also an ugly moment when some random male adult is telling young teenage girls that their love of The Beatles is "psycho-sexual" and that they are "sick". That guy seemed totally perverted! He was the one who was "sick". What a weirdo.

The musical performances sounded really good, especially listening with headphones.

Anyway, overall I enjoyed it quite a bit and would recommend watching it.

Beatles '64 might not be the most groundbreaking Beatles documentary, it's not Get Back, where newly unearthed Beatles footage is revealed in all its glory, instead, it serves more as a nostalgic throwback, revisiting an iconic and historic moment in the band's journey, while much of the footage has likely been seen by longtime fans, the upgraded quality offers a fresh perspective, the story that they told about the surrounding vibe and reaction was enough to keep the film going, i wish we could've got more of Paul and Ringo with Scorsese, that said, as a retrospective, it's still a fascinating look at a pivotal moment in Beatles history, as a fan, i thoroughly enjoyed it, though as a documentary, it's not the one that i would revisit nor the the one that i think was the most engaging, i would still much prefer the Eight Days A Week documentary by Ron Howard, but it's still nice to watch.