Along with my love for movies, my enthusiasms include a no-less-intense love for the greatest rock band of all time, the one and only Fab Four, the Beatles.
For Beatles fans, the past few years have been something of a new golden age. In 2021, Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back documentary gave us a fascinating, in-depth look at the band’s creative process. In the following years, we got concert tours by both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, plus a concert album and EPs from Ringo (one of which features a song written by Paul) and new books from Paul and Ringo.
Perhaps most remarkable, last year provided what would have once seemed unthinkable: a new Beatles song, “Now and Then,” assembled from past and present recordings of all four musicians.
Given this renaissance in Beatles fandom, plus the fact that February 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the band’s American tour and history-making appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, I thought the time was perfect for fusing my Beatles and movie enthusiasms into a single retrospective.
While obviously best known for their music, the Beatles have also been the stars or subjects of a variety of memorable movies over the years. Thus, the course for me is clear: I will do a retrospective survey of Beatles movies.
Given the sheer number of Beatles-related movies, both dramatizations and documentaries, such a retrospective is a weighty task and requires a certain amount of winnowing of material to get the project down to manageable proportions. In deciding which movies to review, I have accordingly applied the following broad, flexible guidelines:
- In keeping with the Cameraman’s status as a movie blog, the focus will be on feature films that received a theatrical release of some kind. The massive output of Beatles-related TV programs will largely not be covered here. Therefore, I will not be reviewing, for example, the Beatles Anthology TV series, essential though that series is for fans.
- I will stick to movies in which one or more of the Beatles appear as (more or less) themselves. Thus, I will not be reviewing dramatizations in which actors play the Beatles (so, no Backbeat or Nowhere Boy). Nor will I be reviewing movies in which the Beatles appeared playing other characters (no How I Won The War, The Magic Christian, etc.)
- While music will inevitably be a big part of any Beatles-related movie, I am not going to review pure concert films. The Concert for Bangladesh or Wings’ Rockshow concert films, for example, will not be included here.
To repeat, these guidelines are broad and flexible, so I will be making exceptions. Some TV programs are too important or interesting not to include; the Magical Mystery Tour is a seminal part of the Beatles’ canon, even if it appeared on television, so I will cover that and a few other non-theatrical entries.
In contrast, I will not be reviewing the Paul McCartney vehicle Give My Regards to Broad Street, even though it meets all the criteria listed above, because…well, honestly, because I do not want to.
With such parameters established, I have identified roughly a dozen Beatles-related films that I will endeavor to cover in the coming months.
I should also acknowledge two key points at the start of this retrospective:
First, because many of these movies are documentaries and even those that are not are still rooted, to varying degrees, in the Beatles’ real-life careers, I will be delving a bit more than usual into the behind-the-scenes events that shaped these movies. I will aim not to get too bogged down in such material, though, and stay focused on the movies as such.
Second, in writing on this topic, I am inevitably going to be drawing on a variety of other writers and commentators on the Beatles and will give them appropriate credit as necessary.
To highlight one crucial figure right now, I must tip my hat to Elliot Roberts, one of the most thoughtful and entertaining guides to the Beatles currently working on the web. I have deliberately not re-watched his analysis of Beatles’ movies, so as not to be unduly influenced by it, but I am sure I owe a debt to his commentary regardless.
So, without further ado, let us set out and see where, in the months ahead, this long and winding road takes us…
The Cameraman 