The catalog of great posthumous films, such as “Eyes wide Shut", "Rebel without a cause" and "amazing grace”, also includes another of the great music documentaries: “Let It Be” by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, about the Beatles. The film, shot in January 1969, was intended to consecrate the recording of the group's new album, from which the film takes its title, and their first public performance since 1966. But, in April 1970, a month before the premiere of After the album and the film, the Beatles broke up and both works were forced to carry a burden of importance that overshadowed their reception. Although the album became instantly popular and remained ubiquitous, the film was not a success and received mainly negative reviews (even in The New Yorker). It was understood (or, rather, misinterpreted) as a memento mori, a harsh and despondent forensic analysis that reveals the reasons for the breakup, such as the musicians' personal conflicts and their artistic differences of opinion. Additionally, it never got a proper re-evaluation, in part because it wasn't released on DVD or Blu-ray. But it's now available to stream on Disney+, in a new, authorized restoration by Peter Jackson, and this reissue provides a good opportunity to recognize the film's powerful artistic merits, which far outweigh its dire premonitions.
Lindsay-Hogg filmed the Beatles on the outskirts of London, at Twickenham Film Studios, and in the heart of the West End, at the Savile Row headquarters of the band's company, Apple. Then, with editors Graham Gilding and Tony Lenny, she shaped some sixty hours of footage into an eighty-one-minute dramatic film. Despite all the problems the film reveals, it is still a joyful compendium of creative energy. It catches midstream a torrent of imagination and craft, composition and spontaneity, and culminates in a public performance scene that is as unusual in its format as it is intimate in its charms. The director and other crew members are in view at all times, taking care of business while the cameras roll. Yoko Ono It's there most of the time, and Linda McCartney stops by, bringing her daughter Heather, who plays drums with Ringo Starr and hangs around.
“Let It Be” traps the quartet (augmented, in the recording session, by visionary keyboardist Billy Preston) in a kind of informal ferment. Rehearsals are inseparable from meetings and fun riffs merge with master takes. The album was intended to be captured live in the studio, with no post-production arrangements or additional overdubs. It didn't work out that way, and the course the project took was both a cause of conflict and a reflection of it. A major sticking point in the film is Paul McCartneyThe desire to rework arrangements in the studio: arriving at a particular "falling note" ending to "I've Got a Feeling" and micromanaging George Harrison's guitar performance on "Two of Us." Such differences proved fatal, but if one tries to look with fresh eyes, hindsight aside, they don't seem much more serious than the kind of disagreements that are typical of close artistic collaborations.
Instead, what comes across is how much of the film is filled with inventive spirit and exuberant joy, which influence the music in surprising ways. At the beginning of the film, after Lindsay-Hogg and the crew finish setting things up, Paul is at the piano, a Blüthner grand piano, playing around with a variety of sounding fragments taken from show tunes and classical music and they hint at range. of his interests and influences. Ringo joins him at the keyboard and the two men give each other an exaggerated greeting. (“Good morning, Paul!” “Good morning, Rich!”) Ringo adds a third hand to Paul's two, and the two improvise an improvised boogie-woogie excursion together. (“I didn’t know Rich could play,” Paul scoffs). Later, Paul puts on a mock operatic voice to sing “Besame Mucho” and then “The Long and Winding Road,” the latter also receiving a bossa-nova treatment. . The combination of forms (uniting rock and roll with sentimental ballads and folk songs, provincial humor and light classical joy, spiritual longings and obscene fantasies, along with the band's mocking self-awareness of being a mass media celebrity) suggests why the Beatles became almost universal and made rock not only the music of teenagers but of much of the world.
What the group achieves in their free tension is miraculous. He listens to the punchy vocal riffs of George's “I Me Mine,” which he calls a “heavy waltz” but which explodes into an open rock stomp. (John Lennon does not play the song, but waltzes with Yoko, grandly and elegantly, while the others record.) Then, there's Paul's impulsive rediscovery of “One After 909,” which he and John wrote when they were teenagers, leading Paul to reminisce about how they both skipped school to come home and write songs. The underlying essence of the “Let It Be” performances is 1950s and early 1960s rock. George launches into “Kansas City” by Leiber and Stoller, which the Beatles recorded in 1964 (I bought the single when it came out here the following year; the B-side is “Boys”), and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” by Lloyd Price. Paul performs Smokey Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," which the group recorded in 1963, and "Shake, Rattle and Roll." John offers a surreal twist on rock's return to its roots with “Dig It,” a fun Mick Jagger parody that lasts fifty seconds on the album but is much longer and wilder in the film.
There is a paradox at the center of “Let It Be.” Although the footage itself is always clearly in view, reflecting a very conscious choice about the band's self-presentation, the documentary is much less a film of reflexive media politics and self-created characters than other Beatles films, as "A hard day's Night” (1964) and “Help!” (1965). The group seems to have gone through the media machine and come out on the other side more themselves than they have since their early days. Thinking back to that time, Paul says he wishes there was a film crew available in Hamburg in the early 1960s, when the naive and spontaneous Beatles made their breakthrough. On the contrary, he says, “the obstacle of that nervousness is already there.” He considered that, to recover immediacy, the band had to perform in concert or definitively give up the idea and recognize that they were, essentially, composers. However, in “Let It Be,” the camera largely takes on the role of the implied audience, and the Beatles, rather than creating an image for themselves, let the performance define them. The personalities that emerge are, above all, musical, and the band plays in the studio as if isolated, for once, from the stardom that, like the screams of feedback, shaped and warped their identities.
While Lindsay-Hogg was planning the film, he tried to persuade the Beatles to return in concert in spectacular fashion: at the Roman amphitheater in Sabratha, Libya. It didn't happen and instead they returned to performing live on the roof of the Apple building on a cold January day, amidst a daytime crowd of London businessmen running around until they gradually realized what was going on. Some intrepid souls climbed ladders to nearby rooftops; others watched from the street until a crowd formed and the police showed up to monitor the commotion, cautiously. Watching this moment, one may find it shocking to hear the Beatles perform in public without any fans screaming. The streets may be long and the sky above may be limitless, but the roof itself is quite small, with room for only a handful of listeners, and the Beatles seem to be playing not to the distant crowd below but to the few people that they could. see in your surroundings. Although the group is connected, the effect is that of a disconnected concert, rock and roll chamber music without walls. And while Paul's meticulous leadership leads the studio recording, John turns the rooftop into his teeming garden of dizzying wonders.
In 2019, it was announced that Peter Jackson was granted access to the approximately sixty hours of material that Lindsay-Hogg had filmed, plus many hours of additional audio tapes. He oversaw the digital cleanup of it and created a new work from it,”The Beatles: Return”, a three-part film totaling almost eight hours that was released, also on Disney+, in 2021. In my opinion, too much grain was removed from the original footage, which was shot in 16mm. (And Jackson's new restoration of “Let It Be” uses the same detexturing process.) But the most substantial difference is that “Get Back” goes into much more detail about the Beatles' conflicts. It shows George leaving the band and negotiations for him to return; contains a private conversation between John and Paul that was captured by a hidden microphone; features many more social interactions in the studio, including with Yoko and Linda; and captures the magical moment in which Paul, playing around in the studio, spontaneously gives birth to the song “Get Back”. In general, it is a much more sincere and complete film, although it is restless and impatient. Jackson includes fragments of a wide range of material, as if he couldn't bear to part with anything but he wasn't really interested in looking at it closely. He uses these fragments to illustrate various themes, but those themes simply reflect the received narrative of the Beatles' breakup and their final album. Instead of seeking new perspectives, Jackson simply substantiates what people already think they know.
Although the footage that is in “Get Back” and not in “Let It Be” has great Beatlesological significance, that purpose would also have been served by making it available, as raw footage, online for casual viewers and historians alike. how it was done with the outtakes from Claude Lanzmann's documentary “Shoah.” Just as the transformative power of Lanzmann's editing turned what could have been a simple historical record into a lasting work of art, the sharply conceived but haunting editorial approach of "Let It Be" into an entirely different register does. very superior. get back." As both a cinematic experience and an embodiment of a style, “Let It Be” is the most fitting tribute to the album and the artistic power that gives the Beatles lasting immediacy more than half a century after their breakup. “Get Back ” takes a fuller historical view, but “Let It Be” is strengthened by its forward movement, propelled by the musical force that makes the Beatles historic ♦.
