Another hard day's night

Was the world ever as young, as fresh and as innocent as the one depicted in A Hard Day’s Night? Released 37 years ago, the Beatles’ first film still stands up pretty well, even to non-Beatle fans, even to young Filipinos. Seeing the black-and-white film again recently (in a restored print with better sound quality), it felt like a time capsule, invoking a past slightly before my time.

Let’s face it: most things about the present are decidedly non-gleeful. Things can get you down, when you start thinking about them: bioterror, narcoterror, cyberterror, not to mention your ordinary day-to-day terror. Where did all this terror come from? Why are things suddenly so terrible?

Missing nowadays is a sense of gleeful mischief, the kind practiced by John, Paul, George and Ringo at the height of Beatlemania. Today, we have bad mischief – cynical hoaxes and political hijinks. But the simple joy of the put-on, of sending up pomp and authority – that’s gone. Instead, we have inherited a hard streak of cynicism, an angry shell of sarcasm which our youth rely on to interpret the world. We have, indeed, come a long way.

Richard Lester’s film, though, is like a breath of fresh air, fueled by a witty script, four engaging personalities (though complete non-actors), and of course, those songs. The ringing 12-string chord that opens A Hard Day’s Night (a suspended G7) is like a clarion call to take up your youth, march to your own beat, believe in the possibilities of your own life. Wow. To actually believe in that is heady stuff.

It must be remembered, the Beatles came along at a time of national mourning in America: 1964, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A time not so different, in collective shock value, from today, actually. America was deeply bummed out, and heading (via Lyndon B. Johnson) into the jungles of Vietnam.

Then came the Beatles: fresh-faced, shag-haired, young and wearing clever black outfits and boots. The four moptops arrived in New York City for the taping of Ed Sullivan, an immediately noticed how... plain Americans looked. The kids in America lacked a sense of style, according to John and Paul (who were used to artistic Hamburg). Perhaps Americans seemed wide-eyed and innocent, certainly unused to the raw energy whipped up by charismatic pop idols (Elvis had joined the US Army a few years back, and was never the same again).

Into this environment came the lads from Liverpool, like a four-headed pop hydra: Paul, the "cute" one; John, the smart and sarcastic one; George, the quiet one; Ringo, the affable one. Like the Marx Brothers a generation before them, the Beatles played the roles of ordinary yobs thrust into an environment of pompous sophistication. They haze a stuffy older train passenger who insists on closing their window. They riff on TV directors, interviewers, anyone who pretends to have them all figured out. It’s all a big lark, fame and celebrity, the Beatles seem to say, and youth is the perfect perspective from which to recognize its false trappings. Yet what do kids today want more than anything else? Instant fame, instant recognition, instant entitlement. Like Gen-X writer Dave Eggers, they want to be rewarded just for being young.

A Hard Day’s Night is irreverent and cheeky, but it’s also pre-cynical. The movie capitalizes on Beatlemania, but it also documents it. The plot couldn’t be simpler: the Beatles move from train to car to TV studio, constantly on the run from their screaming fans. They nearly miss a big TV appearance. In between, they attend a press conference (Interviewer: "Are you a Mod or a Rocker?" Ringo: "I’m a... Mocker."), goof around on an open football field, and try to locate a missing Ringo minutes before airtime. The most subversive character in the film is Paul’s septuagenarian granddad, who is described as "a real mixer." You can see this kind of simplicity just wouldn’t play anymore, even at 85 minutes.

Yet the crowd I was with in Manila got it, and seemed to enjoy every minute. It could be the immediacy of Lester’s direction, full of intriguing camera angles, arty compositions and mischief. It could be the acres of hair featured in the dissolve-shot final credit sequence showing stills of the band. And it could be the great songs, reportedly written by John and Paul during long bus rides between concert gigs: the lush harmonies on If I Fell, I Should Have Known Better, Tell Me Why, and the simple artistry displayed during And I Love Her still transcend. Was the world ever as simple and sophisticated as these songs written and played by men in their early 20s? Perhaps not. One hears from post-Beatle John that, far from answering fan mail in their hotel rooms, those nights on the road were usually devoted to orgies "like Fellini’s Satyricon." And while not a single Beatle as much as smokes a ciggy in the film, the Beatles had long been using "uppers" like benzedrine (during their club days in Hamburg) and had recently been introduced to marijuana by Bob Dylan. So much for innocence.

And what would a visitor from another world make of A Hard Day’s Night? What could they conclude about the strange phenomenon of being a Beatle? I think they might make the following observation: that to be a Beatle is to always be running – from someone, to somewhere, almost always in motion. And that, even in time-capsule snapshot, is exhilarating. And perhaps, looking at today’s youth, those same alien visitors would have to conclude that to be Generation X is to always be standing still, yawning as we take it all in, taking potshots at a world we only superficially pretend to understand.

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