It bursts onto the screen with the thumping, jangling title
song and the great visual homage to the insatiable female pursuit of Keaton’s
Seven Chances. It ends with another Keaton homage, this time as a big
British kiss to Cops. Everything
in between zips along like a Marx Brothers movie wherein everyone is Groucho. It’s one perpetual chase.
The image jiggles and wiggles via handheld cameras and
setups inside cars and trains. And
if the shot slows for even a moment, the editing keeps pushing momentum forward. If the viewer mutes the A Hard Day’s Night and
just watches it play out in silence, he or she may start to feel a bit of
Tony-Scott-style vertigo, as everyone involved in this production seems to be on
an espresso-and-amphetamine enema.
But in a good way. This is
all joy. The worst that will
happen is that one may get a headache from the onslaught of happiness.
There was precedence for pop music stars in narrative film
before 1964. Al Jolson helped
break the cinematic sound barrier. He was followed by Eddie Cantor and Bing Crosby. Then Sinatra came along and bared his
acting chops in dramatic roles. Elvis
then sent the progress back thirty-one steps as he played roles that
were not “Elvis” in name, but were clearly an non-actor stumbling through
scripted lines.
But here in Richard Lester's A Hard Day’s Night, The Beatles are playing The
Beatles – sexual angst, live-ish musical interludes, wacked-out fans, and all –
as an alternate universe version of themselves: The Four Groucho Marxes.
Four Grouchos means four times the non-sequiters, four times
the god-awful puns. The issue with
this is the terrible hit-to-miss ratio.
If there’s a "joke" every 10 seconds (I really attempted to measure
this), then that means there’s about 880 jokes in the film. That’s impressive, in its own way. But once one subtracts the stuff that
charming due to its unceasing spill, there’s only about a dozen jokes that are actually
funny. That’s about a 1.4% success
rate. Yes, some of the quips are dated (I wish I spoke ‘60s British), but otherwise the film becomes a
very unique experience in absorbing an ocean of words. Thus the humor is bold in its own
way. Plus if you listen carefully,
there are quips about orgies, drugs, producers, PR, trend setters, and
television.
My own favorite bits
were the visual ones: a silent vaudevillian losing his dove act, shaving on the bathroom mirror, Lennon playing
with toys then disappearing into his bubble bath, the end credit sequence, and
the aforementioned chases.
Unlike Elvis, the Fab Four fare very well with their line
reading. That’s no mean feat with the bounty of dialogue. Ringo comes out the best since he’s given the most
to do with his character. Oddly,
it’s the professional actors that come off incredibly hammy and awkward. Wilfrid Brambell, who plays Grandfather, is unwatchable which is unfortunate since
he’s in every other scene. I’m not
sure if I should applaud a punk-style actor’s direction, but it takes great
efforts by the Four to keep all of his scenes from sinking the momentum.
Different movie, but Brambell's general acting style in A Hard Day's Night (Source)
That’s a mild complaint, though. The visual energy, constant invention,
and The Beatles win out in every scene.
As The Beatles perform in a small
auditorium, hundreds of girls shriek out of control, weeping, screaming
incoherently, bodies contorting and spasming. At first it’s irritating, then funny, then frightening. It’s filmed so intensely that it’s not
a visual accident. I understand
that the specific context is dated, but it’s very unsettling. There’s probably a sociological
explanation for it, but what is it?
Hundreds of years of sexual repression? (Also see: Justin Bieber, Twilight.) It reminds me of Alan Parker’s and Roger
Waters’ vision of a rock band as a fascistic power, working up the mostly male youth
to the brink of insanity then setting them loose to destroy in The Wall.
Here at the end of A Hard Day’s Night, the young hunting
horde has cornered their pop star prey.
But rather than ravishing them like the Maenads of myth, the girls stand in place screaming in a frenzied mass, perhaps hypnotized and unaware of their own sexual power, or just seduced by four boys in bad haircuts.