DVD : A Hard Day's Night
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Beatles
EAN: 9780788818318
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
ISBN: 0788818317
Label: Miramax Entertainment
Manufacturer: Miramax Entertainment
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Miramax Entertainment
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 24, 2002
Running Time: 87 minutes
Sales Rank: 1797
Studio: Miramax Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: August 11, 1964
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Editorial Review:
Description:
In 1964, the Beatles had just recently exploded onto the American scene with their debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The group's first feature, the Academy Award-nominated "A Hard Day's Night," offered fans their first peek into a day in the life of the Beatles and served to establish the Fab Four on the silver screen, as well as to inspire the music video format. Songs: I'll Cry Instead, A Hard Day's Night, I Should've Known Better, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, And I Love Her, I'm Happy Just to Dance with You, Ringo's Theme (This Boy), Tell Me Why, Don't Bother Me, I Wanna Be Your Man, All My Lovin', She Loves You.
Amazon.com essential video:
The Fab Four from Liverpool--John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr--in their first movie. Nobody expected A Hard Day's Night to be much more than a quick exploitation of a passing musical fad, but when the film opened it immediately seduced the world--even the stuffiest critics fell over themselves in praise (highbrow Dwight Macdonald called it "not only a gay, spontaneous, inventive comedy but it is also as good cinema as I have seen for a long time"). Wisely, screenwriter Alun Owen based his script on the Beatles' actual celebrity at the time, catching them in the delirious early rush of Beatlemania: eluding rampaging fans, killing time on trains and in hotels, appearing on a TV broadcast. American director Richard Lester, influenced by the freestyle French New Wave and British Goon Show humor, whips up a delightfully upbeat circus of perpetual motion. From the opening scene of the mop tops rushing through a train station mobbed by fans, the movie rarely stops for air. Some of the songs are straightforwardly presented, but others ("Can't Buy Me Love," set to the foursome gamboling around an empty field) soar with ingenuity. Above all, the Beatles express their irresistible personalities: droll, deadpan, infectiously cheeky. Better examples of pure cinematic joy are few and far between. --Robert Horton
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I bought this Beatles DVD set for my father for Christmas. He has called me twice telling me how much he enjoys this set. I would highly recommend it to any Beatles fan!
Rating:  -
I saw the 1982 re-issue of this film at CARNEGIE HALL's cinema in NYC--the sound on that presentation was HORRENDOUS--screechy and tinny--like a bad DRIVE-IN theatre speaker! This DVD is just a shambles too--similar poor dynamic range,flat,compressed,lifeless sound. THE BEATLES sounding like THIS? I'll take other reviewers words regarding chopped-off cropping of the picture as well (I don't own the previous AHDN video editions to do my own A/B comparison). I'm shocked this was allowed to happen on such a high profile project.
Rating: -
Good quality film and acceptable sound on the first disc.
As for the second disc, the interviews with various tangiential players is for the most part fascinating, above all that with George Martin, although he comes off a bit snobbish. Among other pieces of knowledge he imparts, he explains the significance of "Can't Buy Me Love" and its twelve-bar blue structure. It's a bit surprising how little he thinks of some of the other hits, such as "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You."
Two particularly fascinating bits of trivia for me: the truant "Southerner" boy in the Ringo scene turns out later to have been a regular supporting cast member in the "Keeping Up Appearances" UK TV sitcom, one I've frequently watched. And it's finally made clear why Paul's grandfather is "very clean" (it has to to with Wilfrid Brambell's prior role as the father in Britain's predecessor to our "Sanford & Son": "Steptoe and Son").
We also gain insight into the photography and lighting of the film, and most interestingly, into the groundbreaking directing style of Richard Lester. What is it about HDN that made it so special? Not worrying too much about the directing, the rehearsing... just going with the flow. The very natural and yet unusual camera angles. Many cinematographic techniques first showcased in this film are still used today. I found Lester's reasoning behind inserting early in the film surreal frames like the boys inexplicably running ... Read More
Rating: -
A Hard Day's Night is not a "movie" in the conventional sense. It doesn't really have a plot. It allows viewers to tag along at the height of the Beatles' early popularity and get a real sense of the power and charm of their music. No one had ever had such an impact on music and youth culture before them, and probably no one since. This film gives a glimpse of how they regarded their phenomenal fame: whimsically and with humorous irreverence. They just set out to make music and have fun and accidentally changed everything that followed, from hair and fashion to music and social consciousness. If you want to understand pop music in the late 20th century, this may not be the starting point, but it is a "don't miss" stop on the journey. Do remember, though, that this is not the whole story of the Beatles: this is their early phase, and they continued to create, evolve, and experiment at a breathtaking pace for several years after this film was shot.
Rating: -
When you are dealing with a myth you have to look for what was new at the time when that myth appeared. And the Beatles are such a myth. This film reveals the fabric the myth is made of. Pure cinematographic and even photographic silk. The four boys have to be running because at the time everything young and new was on the run since it was chased by the establishment in order to be pilloried and exposed. But it also had to show how these four young men had to be able to capture the attention of other people and bring them into the running, first of all young people, particularly girls, and second the best representatives of the establishment, coppers. The film also had to be in black and white to be out of time, eternal because looking old, even odd or oddly even. Then and but their music did not have to convince their audience. It was new, fresh, lively, light, slightly rocky and rather smoothly rolly, with some drums but not too much, and a lot of harmony and melody, but the main attraction was the use of simple catch phrases to express love, freedom, desire, alienation and yet liberation in a mellow and sweet wrapping, like the cute title of the film taken from one of the songs. Finally the film had to satisfy the audience on the lifestyle of the Beatles and on their surrealistic reality. That is done with a plot based on their real life as musicians, etc, and at the same time with constant reference to impossible, at times absurd, breaches in this realism into some impossible ... Read More
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starring: Lionel Blair, Wilfrid Brambell, Deryck Guyler, Kenneth Haigh, George Harrison
directed by: Lester, Richard
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Beatles
EAN: 9780788818318
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
ISBN: 0788818317
Label: Miramax Entertainment
Manufacturer: Miramax Entertainment
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Miramax Entertainment
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 24, 2002
Running Time: 87 minutes
Sales Rank: 1797
Studio: Miramax Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: August 11, 1964
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