The Beatles.A Hard Day's Night / The Beatles. Вечер трудного дня
Legendary rock critic Dave Marsh once said that Elvis movies were bound to fail, all of them, because whatever drama they contained could not help but wilt next to the true legend of the man himself. Which is to say, Elvis' story was his own, and he didn't need Hollywood hacks dreaming up lesser ones.
This lesson could not have been lost on the men who made the Beatles films - in all five of them, the movie exists solely to reflect the glory of its subject. And not in any tinhorn costume-rack way, like Elvis movies did. John did not play a stock-car driver; George did not pretend to be living on an Indian reservation. They were four lads who shook the world, and that was the plot of each of their films, even the later ones. But that comes, well, later.
Perhaps no film captures the essence of the Fabs as well as A Hard Day's Night, however: certainly no other bit of celluloid can do a better job of explaining the initial appeal of the four. AHDN is a perfect entity because it looks and acts like the Beatles themselves - clothed in black and white, exuberant, youthful, politely arrogant, manic, absurd, rebellious, and desperate to break free. It manages to capture a moment in time and demonstrate its timelessness; it stands as a record of a cultural explosion, a four-way personality study, a social satire, and an historical document all at once, and does all of these things so effortlessly and without pretense that only a few decades of hindsight can prove it.
Oh, and there's a bit of music, as well, because while Beatlemania was arriving on American shores, the Beatles were arriving artistically. A major artistic leap above their earlier work, the music in A Hard Day's Night marks the undisputed crowning of the Beatles as the Kings of Rock and Roll. And if that crown was to eventually become too big for any one artist to wear, we had mainly the lads to thank, for it's with this film's soundtrack that the Fabs began to implement the changes that would turn Rock and Roll into a recognized art form. (Contrary to popular belief, it was already art.) For the first time in ages, rock fans were being challenged to keep up, with the songs as their own glorious reward. And from this point on, the Beatles were in the vanguard of the world's greatest Popular Music artists. Anyone who hadn't caught on yet was likely to be left behind
Группа "Битлз" в музыкально-биографическом фильме Ричарда Лестера "The Beatles. Вечер трудного дня".
Легендарная музыкальная комедия, закрепившая славу "ливерпульской четверки"! Они исполняют в фильме самих себя, как бы выступая в шоу, а еще в ленте есть самостоятельный развлекательный сюжет, который интересен сам по себе. Знаменитые, ставшие давно классикой песни "Битлов" никогда не надоедят настоящему меломану, а видеть своих кумиров - всегда счастье…
