A Hard Day’s Night

Called “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals” by Andrew Sarris, The Beatles’ debut feature is madcap fun incarnate. Capturing the bewildered Fab Four in the first flush of Beatlemania, Lester integrated an array of techniques, notably the vérité looseness of the French New Wave, and indulged the anarchic humor of the bandmates. Following them on their first American tour, where they’re mobbed by fans at every turn, Lester creates a proto-mockumentary, as the insouciant quartet navigate press parties and rehearsals and endeavor to carve out time for themselves. Including such Beatles standards as “If I Fell” and “She Loves You,” A Hard Day’s Night pioneered the multi-angle practice of filming live performances—decades later MTV would proclaim Lester the “Father of the Music Video.”

Screening with:

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film
Richard Lester & Peter Sellers, UK, 1959, 35mm, 11m

Filmed over two Sundays for a budget of £70, this short throwback to silent comedy was co-directed by Lester and Peter Sellers from an idea by the latter. Through a series of mistakes—the nature of which Lester will not reveal—this plotless slapstick exercise was nominated for an Academy Award. It was so admired by The Beatles that its maker (billed here as “Dick Lester”) was a natural choice to direct their big-screen bow, A Hard Day’s Night. Besides Lester and Sellers, the film features Sellers’s Goon Show castmate Spike Milligan as a human gramophone and character actor Leo McKern (A Man for All Seasons) providing the literal punchline.