Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2134 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-09-30
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, PAL
• Original language: English, German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 89 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A Hard Day's Night may have been The Beatles' first big-screen experience but, as they had become the biggest band in the world by the time of its production, the Moptops were able to ensure it was a bit different from the band-movie norm. "We'd made it clear that we weren't interested in being stuck in one of those nobody-understands-our-music plots," John Lennon would later recall. "The kind of thing where we'd just pop up a couple of times between the action, all smiles and clean shirts, to sing our latest record. Never mind all your pals, how could we have faced each other if we had allowed ourselves to be involved in that kind of movie?"

Instead the quartet recruited a young director named Richard Lester--who had previously worked with the Fab Four's beloved Goons--to make a movie that followed them as they enjoyed and endured the phenomenon that was Beatlemania. "The film wrote itself right in front of our eyes," says Lester. "We just took the dirty bits and cut them out." The result is a frenetic hour and a half inside The Beatles' personal space as they engage in all manner of surreal hi-jinks--more often than not involving Paul's "grandfather" (played by Steptoe and Son's Wilfrid Brambell) while dodging the ever-present horde of screaming fans. Although the result now seems a little dated, there remains an almost heart-breakingly good-natured aura around the foursome's naïve performances while few could argue about the quality of a soundtrack that includes "Can't Buy Me Love", "And I Love Her" and "A Hard Day's Night" itself, to name but a few. Whether the film would have been quite so successful if Lester had followed McCartney's suggestion and called it "Oh, What A Lovely Wart!" will, sadly, never be known. --Clark Collis

Amazon.co.uk Review
A Hard Day's Night may have been the Beatles' first big-screen experience but, as they had become the biggest band in the world by the time of its production, the Moptops were able to ensure it was a bit different from the band-movie norm. "We'd made it clear that we weren't interested in being stuck in one of those nobody-understands-our-music plots," John Lennon would later recall, "The kind of thing where we'd just pop up a couple of times between the action, all smiles and clean shirts, to sing our latest record."

Instead the quartet recruited a young director named Richard Lester--who had previously worked with the Fab Four's beloved Goons--to make a movie that followed them as they enjoyed and endured the phenomenon that was Beatlemania. "The film wrote itself right in front of our eyes," says Lester. "We just took the dirty bits and cut them out." The result is a frenetic hour and a half inside the Beatles' personal space as they engage in all manner of surreal hijinks--more often than not involving Paul's "grandfather" (played by Steptoe and Son's Wilfrid Brambell) while dodging the ever-present horde of screaming fans. Although the result now seems a little dated, there remains an almost heartbreakingly good-natured aura around the foursome's naïve performances, while few could argue about the quality of a soundtrack that includes "Can't Buy Me Love", "And I Love Her" and "A Hard Day's Night" itself, to name but a few. Whether the film would have been quite so successful if Lester had followed McCartney's suggestion and called it "Oh, What a Lovely Wart!" will, sadly, never be known. --Clark Collis

Video Description
DVD Special Features:
Disc 1:
The Movie
Things They Said Today...(Original Documentary) - 37 min

Disc 2:
Their Production will be Second to None - Filmaker interviews; Richard Lester (Director), Sir George Martin (Musical Director), David Picker (Studio Executive) Denis O'Dell (Associate Producer)
With the Beatles - The Cast; John Junkin, Lionel Blair, Kenneth Haigh, David Janson, Anna Quayle, Jeremy Lloyd, Terry Hooper
Working Like a Dog - The Production Crew; Gilbert Tayor BSC, Paul Wilson, Betty Glasow, Barrie Melrose
Busy Working Overtime - Post Production Crew; Pam Tomling & Roy Benson, Gorden Daniels & Jim Roddan
Listen to the Music Playing in your Head - George Martin on the Hard Day's Night songs
Such a clean Old Man! - Memories of Wilfred Brambell
I've Lost my little Girl - Isla Blair Interview
Taking Testimonial Pictures - Robert Freeman interview
Dealing with "The Men from the Press" - Tony Barrow Interview
Dressed to the Hilt - Gorden Millings Interview
They and I have Memories - Klaus Voorman Interview
Hitting the Big Time in the USA - Sid Berstein Interview

Customer Reviews

The luck of the Beatles
The Beatles were very talented but they were lucky too. Lucky to find themselves a dedicated, honest manager. Lucky to find a sympathetic producer. And extraordinarily lucky to have their first feature film directed by Richard Lester; whose sense of humour was so closely aligned with the boys' that all they had to do - aided by Alun Owen's script - was act naturally.

A Hard Day's Night catches the Beatles just as international megafame is about to hit them. They're still very young, and while no longer the naive teenagers who first went to Hamburg to play in the strip clubs and bars of the Reeperbahn, they're not yet jaded. It's still fun - you can see it on their faces. Only a year or two later, and they were to give up touring altogether, tired and anxious.

Forty years on, and it seems like another era. It's difficult to watch this film now and see it afresh, but it was then - a blast of fresh air blowing away the stuffiness of 1950s British society. See it and marvel at the way we used to be.

This two-disc set is full of the usual extras - things you watch once and don't bother with again - but they're mostly relevant and interesting. The film itself is technically in pretty good shape with good contrast and clarity and only a few scratches, but I do have a couple of gripes. Firstly, I'm pretty sure that it was originally shot and shown in Academy ratio (4:3). This version has been cropped to 16:9 and the result is that, for example, the tops of heads tend to be cut off and the film has the kind of cramped feeling that you get in a room where the ceiling is too low. If this had to be done to satisfy a peceived market need for widescreen material couldn't we have been given the original 4:3 version on the other side of the disc?

Secondly, the sound for the musical numbers has been remixed into sort-of stereo and plays at a very much louder level than the dialogue. The concert scenes have had fake reverb plastered all over them to make them sound 'live'. The resulting change in soundscape from dialogue to music and back again is excessively jarring.

Still, these are only gripes; the film itself survives.

A lovely nostalgic ride with the best soundtrack you could find
Richard Lester worked with the Beatles to produce a clever, touching, visually interesting, humourous and well-acted film that makes the most of the fantastic music and the Beatlemania and uses wonderful English character actors circa 1964 to bounce off the boys' Liverpudlian wit.

The film was obviously a showcase for the music and to introduce the boys' personalities. I like the extras: George Martin is such a great guy that you can't help but be entranced by anything he says, and I love seeing Brian Epstein footage because he was sneaky but extremely clever as a pop promoter.

A lovely, nostalgic ride back to when things seemed a touch simpler.

'Ho ho, it's a Laugh A Line with Lennon'
Although the Beatles themselves expressed disappointment at the movie, it's not because of a lack of quality. The Beatles come across as somewhat unbelievable gagsters, but let's face it... it's not like you want to watch it for the dense characterisation.

Where the movie excels is as a comedy... if music hadn't come so readily to them, they could well have passed for modern day (comparatively at least) Marx Brothers. Although the script is somewhat rough in places, it has a constant energy and vitality to it... much like the music of the Beatles themselves.

The soundtrack is pure gold quality... some of the finest Beatles songs ever penned acompany the Wacky Antics.

Well worth seeing even if you're only a casual Beatles fan... a jewel of a movie, and much better than their later 'Help' and 'Yellow Submarine' forays into the visual arts.

And of course, one musn't forget Paul's grandfather. He's a very clean old man.