Analysis: Beatles forever?

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- Nearly 40 years after "A Hard Day's Night" popularized a visual style that is still being used in music videos, a new two-DVD collector's edition recalls a lost time -- when the Beatles were still astonishingly fresh and unrelenting commercialism had not yet captured the soul of the pop world.

The 1964 movie also stands out, for better or worse, as one of the main instruction manuals for a cultural revolution that is, in many ways, still being played out in 2002. More than simply a piece of entertainment, it was also something of a Trojan horse in the culture war of the time -- the conflict between many young people and most of the elders.

"A Hard Day's Night" was the brainchild of producer Walter Shenson, whose biggest hit up to that time had been the 1959 Peter Sellers political satire "The Mouse that Roared." Director Richard Lester has said United Artists -- the studio that made "A Hard Day's Night" -- was in a hurry to get the picture made because executives thought the Beatles might be a flash in the pan.

In a series of interviews with filmmaker Steven Soderbergh -- for Soderbergh's 1999 book "Getting Away With It" -- Lester said a major reason the project came off so quickly was the decision that he made with Shenson and writer Alun Owen to make the movie about a day in the life of the Beatles.

"Alun and Walter and I all went and stayed at the George V when they played Paris," said Lester, recalling the hysteria of screaming fans mobbing limousines, desperately trying to get close to their idols.

"The film was writing itself in front of us," he said. "It would have taken an idiot not to say, 'Let's do this.'"

Lester -- whose preparation for directing the Beatles included two British Broadcasting Corp. series with "Goon Show" veterans Sellers and Spike Milligan -- said the approach also served to keep John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr from getting in over their heads as actors in their first theatrical feature.

"The biggest good reason is that we knew the standard of acting experience," he said, "and the more we could give them situations that were familiar to them -- like doing a press conference -- the better the odds they would be able to carry it off moderately well."

John Junkin and Victor Spinetti -- two veteran actors who shared the soundstage with John, Paul, George and Ringo -- told United Press International the boys did just fine.

"They worked exactly as the rest of us did and did exactly what an actor is supposed to do," said Junkin, who played the Beatles road manager, Shake. "You never felt you should teach them a better way."

Spinetti, who played the exasperated TV director in "A Hard Day's Night," said the Beatles took a very relaxed approach to movie acting -- much like Spinetti's own technique.

"John said to me, 'When the director shouts action all the other actors change, but you stay the same. Does that mean you're as terrible as we are?'"

A major reason for the movie's enduring popularity is that Lester's direction and Owen's Oscar-nominated screenplay succeeded in catching the band's character -- a blend of innocent charm and sharp wit, youthful exuberance and worldly wisdom beyond their years. Though still in their early 20s, the Beatles already had learned much about life and were about to pass it on to fans -- through their music, their fashion, and a lifestyle that celebrated nonconformity and rejected stuffy tradition.

Two moments from the film stand out as examples of the subversive nature of much of the pop culture of the '60s.

A shot in which Lennon is seen miming an attempt to snort soft drink from a bottle was a between-the-lines drug reference, foreshadowing a flood of overt drug references -- and drug use -- in the wider culture.

And a scene in a railroad passenger car manages to suggest an anti-war sentiment well before many in the Western world had even heard of Vietnam.

Fed up with the cheeky attitude of his fellow travelers, an older passenger complains he "fought the war for your sort." Ringo's answer is both innocent and richly blunt: "I'll bet you're sorry you won."

"A Hard Day's Night" documents a period in Western history when a significant number of young people asserted an unprecedented degree of independence and shoved huge chunks of tradition off to the side. But more than anything else, it is one of the best rock 'n' roll movies ever made, starring one of the most successful and popular entertainment acts of all time.

Spinetti -- who went on to work with the Beatles as Dr. Foot in "Help!" (1965) and as the army sergeant in "Magical Mystery Tour" (1967) -- said people still can't resist asking him about his experience with John, Paul, George and Ringo.

"Forty years ago, people asked me, 'What are the Beatles like?'" said Spinetti. "And they're still asking me. It begins to sound incredibly pompous but yes, there was a kind of pride that you worked with these boys."