by Caitlyn Hallman

“Eh, the sixties must be around here somewhere.”

Kicking off with a unique chord and a rush of energy, The Beatles first film, A Hard Day’s Night, premiered in 1964 to critical acclaim and box office success. It remains a landmark film today.  What is it about this movie that leaves it in our collective conscious whilst other 1960’s pop films have fallen away?  Why does it still hold influence in our vision of the sixties decade?  A Hard Day’s Night is the end result of a creative process that at once both revered its precedents and set about making something new.  It is this consolidation of the past and the future which leaves the film at a point utter immediacy even nearly forty years after its debut.

The film combines the aesthetics of contemporaneous pop films with the French nouvelle vague, and is inspired by and promoted by the surge of the teen market and youth culture of the early fifties and sixties.  The film is structured around a day-in-the-life of The Beatles, and it uses this structure to critically explore the phenomenon of Beatlemania from the point of view of The Beatles themselves.  Our heroes find themselves trapped between uptight adults and hysterical teenagers searching for reason behind the commercialism and madness.

This essay will discuss five of the key issues responsible the commercial success of A Hard Day’s Night, which are also examined within the film itself: promotional synergy, the affluence of the teen market, the ‘invention’ of The Beatles, the representation of music on screen and the emergence of a new, youth culture.  The film might have originally been commissioned in order to court teenagers at the cinema, but it also, in turn, managed to become a living tribute to those teenaged fans.  Likewise, the film’s script tried to capture and recreate The Beatles’ personalities for the screen, but it also managed to package their personalities for promotional and commercial means.

A Hard Day’s Night came into being because of a far-sighted business deal.  The American film studio United Artists wanted to get into the lucrative movie soundtrack business and saw potential for The Beatles success in America.  Making a film with the group was simply a way for the company to get a hold of the rights to some of their music (Du Noyer 73).  It was meant to be a low budget exploitation film.  The Beatles were seen to be a novelty act that would have a short period of popularity amongst teens.  UA wanted to get in and make their money before the fad faded.  In fact, United Artists did not even plan to release the film in America. It was felt that a limited distribution in Northern Europe and the Commonwealth would cover the costs of filming, and it would be off of the soundtrack music they would make their profit (Mundy 171).

United Artists provided a budget of only 180,000 pounds to make the film.  The average productions costs at this time were around 1.5 million pounds (Du Noyer 74).  Although lending their music and their budding stardom to the film, The Beatles were paid a flat fee of just 25,000 pounds to split amongst them for their services.  However, according to Denis O’Dell, the associate producer, the small budget would be one of contributing factors for the film’s lasting appeal.  ‘If we’d waited they might have got more money, but we’d have a very different sort of film,’ (Du Noyer 74).

Because of the limited budget, Richard Lester, was forced to film in black-and-white with hand-held cameras.  This added to the documentary feel that he was trying to develop with scriptwriter, Alun Owen, as well as separating it from musicals of the past. The Beatles for their part were positive about the choice.  They thought a black-and-white film would seem more ‘artsy’ (Du Noyer 76). John Mundy describes the use of black-and-white as creating a feel of the ethnographic (172). It adds a level of realism and solidifies the reconstruction of ‘Swinging London.’

The Beatles, however, were not merely exploited workers on the film.  The movie did provide another boost to their careers and a new way to promote their music.  Both the band and Brian Epstein saw the film as the logical next step in the path which led from clubs to theatres to television performances.  It was all a process of exposing the band to a larger and larger audience.

While including six new songs, the film also features several of the band’s past releases. The scene in the dance hall includes several of their past hits and the climax of the movie, their live television appearance, concludes with the group playing ‘She Loves You.’  Using ‘She Loves You’ is a reminder of The Beatles famous appearance on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ earlier that year.  Using old songs with the new has three purposes: it reinforces the bands popularity, provides the fans in the audience the pleasure of hearing their old favorites again and offers a chance to introduce a different audience to their music.

The Beatles during ‘She Loves You.’

The world was in a period of change in 1964.  World War II had brought about a series of changes in attitudes and lifestyles, and by the early 1960’s society was just beginning to feel the full repercussions of them.  One of the most drastic cultural shifts was the development of the teenager.  While in the past adolescents were expected to take on the responsibilities of adulthood including finding employment, post war affluence made it possible for youths to stay in the family home and in school longer. Teen years were now seen to be a period for leisure.  They were also a period of alienation, as the distance between adulthood and childhood grew.

However, teenagers had a voice more than ever in the early sixties.  For the first time, they had their own money to spend and a market that was willing to cater to their tastes.  In 1959 the average American teen had $555 per year to spend on goods and services.  This is in addition to goods usually bought by their parents for them (Ehrenreich 106).  To place this into perspective, a school teacher in Mississippi in the same year earned $3000 (Ehrenreich 106).  In Britain, teenagers collectively were earning about 1.48 million pounds yearly in 1958, and about 900 million pounds of this money went towards ‘discretionary’ spending (Hall 29).  It is little wonder that advertisers found the teen market to be fertile ground.

The teen market began to develop post-World War II but the new decade saw its maturation. Teens refused to be mini-adults any longer and the rest of society began to accept this fact.  There were distinct teen clothes, magazines and music.  Although manufacturers and advertisers felt that teen culture was ridden with trends, passing fads and nothing of any lasting value, they were beginning to realize that the teen market was a permanent fixture.

A Hard Day’s Night was made (at least in the eyes of United Artists) to specifically court this market.  The film is acutely aware of this, and cautiously avoids the pitfalls of becoming just another teen movie.  Putting music stars in movie vehicles was nothing new.  Since the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, film executives were attracted by the cross promotional possibilities.  It was seen to be a fair trade; pop names offered to supply the film with charisma and a built in audience, and film stardom could offer the pop idol more lasting credibility (Thompson 33).  Elvis Presley and Cliff Richards had both been making film in the 1950’s.  However, The Beatles wanted something different.

The band realized that the traditional formulas behind pop films were based on not want the teens wanted but what the older generation thought that they wanted and what was deemed to be acceptable.  As John Lennon said:

‘We weren’t interested in being stuck in one of those typical nobody-understands-our-music plots where the local dignitaries are trying to ban something as terrible as Saturday Night Hop.  The kind of thing where we’d just pop up a couple of times between the action, all smiles and clean shirt-collars to sing our latest record’ (quoted in Mundy 171).

Once the documentary direction was developed for the script, it became easy to see that this was going to be a pop movie with a difference.  The ‘real life’ aspect of the film made it possible to set up and look at teen culture with true perspective.  The Beatles were seen as representatives of teens to the greater world, and yet they were no longer teenagers themselves and were not active participants in teen culture.  This creates one of the key conflicts at the crux of the movie: The Beatles relationship to Beatlemania.

If anything A Hard Day’s Night is critical of teen marketing, if not all of teen culture.  This attitude particularly comes through in the scene where George accidentally stumbles into the office of an advertising executive.  He is mistaken as someone scheduled to audition for the role of a typical teenage boy next to Susan, the

‘resident teenager.’ When asked to give his opinion on a collection of shirts George calls them ‘grotty’ and says that he would not be seen dead in them.  The executive’s response is a most telling condemnation of the teen market:

‘Here’s this kid trying to give me his utterly valueless opinion when I know for a fact within four weeks he’ll be suffering from a violent inferiority complex and loss of status if he isn’t wearing one of these nasty things.  Of course they’re grotty, you wretched nit, that’s why they were designed, but that’s what you’ll want.’

This scene expresses the phoniness of the teen market and advertising’s complete disinterest in trying to provide teenagers with something of real value.  It exposes the roots of teen culture lying not in the teenagers’ control but still in the hands of adults who deem it their job to tell teens what they should like.  George is the independent critic.  He’s opinion, contrary to the executive’s pronouncement, is extremely valuable.  As he finds himself in a position between both parties (the adults on one hand and teenagers on the other), he is able to freely judge the culture that is being created.  He has the ability see through the advertisement’s gimmicks.  George says of resident teenager Susan: ‘Oh, you mean that posh bird who gets everything wrong?’  This once again reinforces the grown-up world’s inability to grasp the ideals of youth.

The scene also places The Beatles in a position of value. They may be popular with teenagers but they are not a product unrightfully forced upon the youth like the shirts are.  The Beatles have something to say and real ideas to promote, because they were created outside of the adult realm, and are at constant odds with that world.  They refuse throughout the movie to become the puppets of the adults.  This is most exemplified through John’s relationship with the band’s manager, Norm.

They are antagonistic to each other.  John calls Norm a ‘swine’; Norm says of John: ‘Oh, I’ve toyed with the idea of a ball and chain but he’d only rattle them at me…and in public and all.  Sometimes I think he enjoys seeing me suffer.’  The more times Norm tries to force John into doing something, the more John resists, the more he makes jokes and cracks against Norm and the more John presents himself as a ‘rebel.’ In this John speaks for the whole band.  It proves that while The Beatles may have success it is not through collusion with any ‘corrupt’ figures.  They are shown as their own people, doing their best to stop from becoming the bland, unoriginal products that all the promotional people want and expect.

At every chance they get, the band makes a bid for freedom; freedom from the contrived world of the promotions circuit and television studios.  Their music is therefore not manufactured but entirely organic.  This is further supported through several of the music sequences.  For example, the band breaks into ‘If I Fell’ spontaneously in order to tune up their equipment that has just arrived at the television studio.  It is not a ‘slick’ performance.  There are roadies and technicians working all around them.  At one point George even falls over an amp.  They are performing because they love music, not because they have been made to perform.

Despite the desperate attempt to keep things as real and as natural as possible, to the extent that much of Alun Owen’s script was written from comments The Beatles had actually said, A Hard Day’s Night managed to strike upon one of the greatest band marketing schemes ever.  It was also one that was to be repeated many times in pop history by the likes of The Monkees and the Spice Girls.  This was the presentation of four distinct identities (Du Noyer 74).

Before the film the world did not really know The Beatles.  They were four British lads with four mop tops, nothing more, nothing less.  After the film they were John, Paul, George and Ringo; four very distinct and ultimately highly marketable personalities.  It would be as if each Beatle would become their own name brand.  John was the cynical rebel.  Paul was the charmer.  George was the quiet one, the thinker, and Ringo was the lovable loser.  Each distinct and yet creating a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

It was accidental that they should come to be known in this manner.  Owen studied the band, amplified their personalities for effect and used some of their anecdotes and quotations in the script (Du Noyer 74).  It was felt that this would be easier for them to portray themselves as they were all untried actors.  This was not unheard in the realm of film.  It was typical for a pop star cast in a film to play a version of themselves in it (Thompson 33).  However, A Hard Day’s Night was to take this to the next level.  While with most pop films there still remains a layer of fiction over the factual, A Hard Day’s Night it blurs into one.  An audience might watch an Elvis movie and feel no confusion as to whether Elvis is really like that in real life, but the way in which we still think of The Beatles today is still greatly affected by this film.

When one is missing there is no Beatles.  This becomes apparent when Ringo goes off ‘parading.’ There is no question of finding a replacement.  If he does not show, then there is no chance of The Beatles being able to perform.  Their four personalities are made to work together in an elaborate type of harmony; each playing off each other for the greater effect.  Owen gets the rhythm perfect in the press conference scene.  Questions zip from one Beatle to the next, each given time enough only to give a one-liner as an answer, but with that one line they are able to sum up their personality completely. Paul responds: ‘No, where just friends,’ implying that he has be romantically connected to many women, but he even uses that answer for a question about his father.  John’s answers are wacky and unexpected, as with the famous answer to how-did-you-find-America question: ‘Turn left at Greenland.’  Ringo is the comedian (Question: ‘Are you a mod or rocker?’ Answer: ‘I’m a Mocker.’) and George is shyly humorous (Questions: ‘What do you call that haircut?’ Answer: ‘Arthur.’).

Personality has always been one of the keys to selling a pop artist.  Teen magazines feature articles not about the artist’s music but about their personality: their likes and dislikes, pets, food and funny experience stories (Garratt 404).  The idea is to create a fantasy that feels like it could be real.  The purpose is to make the pop star into the dream date or the perfect boyfriend.  As Sheryl Garratt explains: ‘This is the male as sex object, posed, airbrushed, and marketed just like any female model.  He, however, is usually imperfect and ordinary enough for the fans to believe that, one day he could be theirs,’ (404).

With A Hard Day’s Night, The Beatles fit that bill to perfection.  They appear to be infinitely accessible.  Sure, they might have crowds of fans around them, but deep down, they were nothing more than ordinary boys who liked fun and to play.  Throughout the film they are shown flirting with normal women: from school girls on the train to make-up artists and girls in a dance club.  These are images of ordinary womanhood that their fans could fulfill.

There are no girlfriends in the film, and this is important in maintaining the fantasy.  In order for the illusion of accessibility to be maintained, Garratt notes that pop stars are careful not to mention any romantic interests (404).  However, what made The Beatles even better as fantasy figures was not the lack of girlfriends, but the fact that there were four of them.  They became a veritable chocolate box of boys.  The fan could pick and choose which was her favorite flavor, but by keeping them as a group of four there was a measure of safety.  The Beatles were complete within themselves.  Each personality reflected each other one, and together they were the perfect man.  In this there was always the barrier.  As much as they seemed accessible, The Beatles never actually would be, and ultimately their fans did not want them to be.  Unrequited love was part of the equation.  It was a chance to love with abandon and not to feel any long term consequences from it (Ehrenreich 106).

To be a fan of The Beatles was in some ways liberating.  She was in complete control of the relationship.  The fan’s obsession with The Beatles had as much to do with herself as with the band, because their fantasies were a means of protest against the sexual repression she was subjected to (Ehrenreich 106).  The Beatles would always appear as an alternative from her own life.

However successful this stroke of marketing genius was, it was not without its downside.  In later years, The Beatles would come to resent the label they each were stuck with, and for as much as they might have been celebrated for their individual personalities, it would take years for the public to accept them as individuals outside the framework of the band.

It was not be the only marketing innovation brought about by A Hard Day’s Night.  It is generally accepted that this film marks the beginning of the history of the music video.  Today music videos are the most visible and most expensive promotional tools for pop artists.  Although there had been promotional films made for music stars since the 1940’s, it would take Richard Lester’s vision to create what we today most commonly associate as a music video.

Obviously all pop films prominently featured music, however, all musical sequences in previous films relied on the performance (Neaverson 154).  In the movies of Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard the performances usually featured the star lip-syncing to their latest hit song with minimum onscreen backing sources.  What Lester did was remove the music from the performative element.  Lester broke away from the traditional thoughts of authenticity, which required performance.  He saw that pop music had potential for expression beyond performance.  He saw that pop music could be illustrative (Neaverson 154).

A Hard Day’s Night does feature several conventional performances, however, Lester divorces the music from the action twice.  First, in the film’s opening sequence, Lester uses the theme tune backing footage of the band running away from a mob of screaming fans.  This at once establishes The Beatles as musicians.  Even though they are not playing the music, this scene draws a relation between the music and the fan’s adulation (Ebert).  It’s the songs that make the fans go crazy.

This scene also immediately places the audience into the feel of the movie.  It’s going to be fast paced.  It’s going to energetic.  It’s going to be fun, and most importantly it’s going to something new.  According to Sir George Martin, it was the opening chord which set the tone: ‘I still don’t know what that chord was.  But it was a very good one.  And it set the whole tone for the song and the whole film.  Because we knew that what was going to follow was going to be dramatic, wonderful, funny, exciting and everything else’ (Du Noyer 70).

Yet while the opening scene was important in setting up the rest of the film, the most influential sequence in regards to the history of music video is the ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ sequence.  The song lyrics are completely divorced from the action at hand.  Rather Lester uses the song as other directors might have used instrumental, incidental music.  The correlation between the music and the action is formed through rhythmic considerations.

Pop videos tend to work primarily on physical sensations to produce physical pleasure (Bjornberg 53).  Narration tends to have a limited importance if any in videos, and where narration appears it is usually subordinate to the music.  Frith explains the movement in music videos as being ‘the metaphor for sound’ (Bjornberg 53).  This tradition comes directly out of Lester’s work on A Hard Day’s Night.

The ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ scene begins with the band’s escape from the television studio.  For the first verse the camera focus is the band running down a fire escape.  The view, however, is not direct.  The camera is always placed either underneath the fire escape or is looking down upon it.  The movement is frantic.  The camera is unsteady and jostled.  It corresponds to the rhythm of the music.  For the next verse, the action moves out into an open field.

After killing both George and John, Paul now goes after Ringo.

The field frolic is the theme that will be carried out for the rest of the song.  The band rolls around on the grass, holds mock fights, races against each other and generally, jumps up and down.  However, the action continues to be punctuated by the song.  Once again through this sequence, The Beatles’ youth and energy is emphasized.  The spirit which is reflected both by the song and the action is that of freedom and fun.  The music provides a barrier between the ‘adult’ world of the television studio where the band has to ‘work’ and the world of play inhabited by The Beatles.

For once in the movie, the band is freed of the constraints placed on them by the promotional tour that they are on, and the boys are allowed to truly be themselves.  Then just as the music ends, The Beatles are brought back to their reality.  A man comes out and accuses them of trespassing.  The band members are forced to return to the confines of the television studio muttering: ‘Sorry we hurt your field, mister.’

After making this break with A Hard Day’s Night, The Beatles would continue to explore the possibilities of expression between sound and image by continuing to pioneer the pop video.  In 1965, the band made promos for ‘I Feel Fine,’ ‘Day Tripper,’ ‘We Can Work It Out,’ ‘Ticket to Ride’ and ‘Help!’ directed by Joe McGrath (Neaverson 154).  These promos were made to replace live appearances on television, and although they do not completely break from performance (they do feature lip-syncing) the promos do break away from the realism of live performance (Neaverson 155).

It was Lester’s leap of imagination which allowed The Beatles to willing trade in authenticity in order to achieve something more visual dynamic (Neaverson 155).  Who knows what the history of pop videos would have been if it was not for A Hard Day’s Night?  If the break from music and performance had not been made in the first place, perhaps, as Bob Neaverson suggests, the pop video would have been left as a footnote of 1960’s television (155).

But perhaps even more important and more lasting than the films contribution to the music video, is the effect that it had on youth culture.  As the film critic Roger Ebert points out much of what we think of as the 1960’s began with The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night.  The Beatles would become the spokesmen for a whole generation. A Hard Day’s Night is greatly responsible for this because the entire film is a celebration of being young. It was made for young people.  It stars young people, and it feels young.

The essential element of youth culture is its ‘otherness’ (Grossberg 105).  It is marked by its sense of alienation, and to the teenagers of the time, The Beatles were able to express these feelings for them better than anyone else.  The same economic prosperity that lead to the teen market to become such a dominant force, also created the need for difference which separated teenagers into a subculture.  Lawrence Grossberg writes that from the residue of 1950’s: ‘The result was a generation of children that was not only bored (the American Dream turned out to be boring) and afraid, but lonely and isolated from each other and the adult world as well’ (106).  The Beatles brought as reason for unity, something that teenagers could rally around and celebrate as a collective.

As Beatle fans recollect, they used to exchange Beatles’ magazines and cards and gather to discuss the nuances of Beatle life (Ehrenreich 96).  The huge numbers of girls that would gather to meet The Beatles while on tour is well documented.  The footage of screaming, crying and weeping girls in near riot is one of pop music’s more enduring images.  A Hard Day’s Night even turns this hysteria into a joke.  The questions that remain are why was there such a frenzied reaction, and why was it over The Beatles?

With the distance of time, it is easy to proscribe any number of causes to Beatlemania, however, there seems to be two leading causes of the hysteria.  First, much of the fans enthusiasm and energy was sexual.  Secondly, much of Beatlemania stems from a type of rebellion.  Many social commentators at the time feared that Beatlemania was related to the race riots of the decade, however, Beatlemania was not a political rebellion.  It was a cultural rebellion (Grossberg 105).

The Beatles in a sense released the pressure value of teenage culture and all the energy that had building up for over a decade was finally released.  Unlike teen films of the past, A Hard Day’s Night is overwhelming optimistic.  While it shares the same sense of ‘grown-up’s just don’t understand’ that teen classics from the 1950’s such as A Rebel Without A Cause and Blackboard Jungle held, in A Hard Day’s Night this sense of being misunderstood is a cause for celebration rather than depression.  Who wants to be understood by adults?  They are boring, stressed and confined in life.  The film explains that it is great to be misunderstood and free.  That is the joy of being young.  There is also a sense of sexual freedom.  The Beatles are not coy in their admiration of women and are not shown to be afraid of making sexual advices.  It is, in fact, their entire ease around the opposite that is new and distinct.

Interestingly, the character in the film that most embodies this idea is not one of The Beatles but Paul’s grandfather.  He is constantly, even more than The Beatles, trying to escape from the confines of tour life, and his speeches express the overall thrust of the film’s messages.  First, he complains:

‘Lookit [sic], I thought I was supposed to be getting a change of scenery and so far I’ve seen a train and a room, a car and a room, and a room and a room.  Well, that’s maybe all right for a bunch of powered gee-gaws like you lot but I’m feeling decidedly strait-jacketed.’

‘The ladies’ love a lad on parade.’

Next, he convinces Ringo to leave and go ‘parading’: ‘You’re living, are you?  When was the last time you gave a girl a pink-edged daisy?  When did you last embarrass a sheila wid [sic] your cool appraising stare?’  The grandfather, although The Beatles do not admit this in the film, forms an unlike alliance with them against the generation between.  It is as if the younger generation was reaching back for older, better values that their parents’ generation had discarded.  If the youth could not find anything to relate to in their parents’ work ethic or sense of conformity, then perhaps there was something older that they could embrace.  This is an idea that would be carried on through the sixties with the hippies’ use of Victorian styles and the idealization of era directly before the World Wars (Gloag 401).

It would not be only much later in the decade that this would come to pass, but this is just a small example of how progressive A Hard Day’s Night is.  In addition to the cultural predictions and advancements the film made, through it Lester also innovated many filming techniques, and perhaps this is what truly makes it a landmark of youth culture, especially youth culture of the 1960’s.  A Hard Day’s Night came together in a magical way and it took the pulse of the new direction.

Bibliography

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