A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 musical comedy film starring the English rock band the Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – that was released during the height of Beatlemania. Directed by Richard Lester, it was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists. The musical soundtrack makes up the band's album of the same name. The film portrays a fictionalized 36-hour period in the lives of the group as they prepare for a television performance.

The film was a commercial and critical success and was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay. Forty years after its release, Time magazine rated it as one of the 100 all-time greatest films. British critic Leslie Halliwell described it as a "comic fantasia with music; an enormous commercial success with the director trying every cinematic gag in the book" and awarded it a full four stars. The film is credited as being one of the most influential of all musical films, inspiring the Monkees' television show and pop music videos, and various other low-budget musical film vehicles starring British pop groups, such as the Gerry and the Pacemakers film Ferry Cross the Mersey (1965).

In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked it the 88th-greatest British film of the 20th century.British Film Institute - Top 100 British Films (1999). Retrieved 27 October 2017

Plot

The four Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr evade a horde of fans while boarding a train for London to film a televised variety show concert. En route, they meet Paul's trouble-making Irish grandfather, John McCartney. Before arriving in London, the band entertains some schoolgirls and plays cards. They are accompanied by their strict manager Norm (loosely based on Brian Epstein) and his dim-witted assistant Shake (loosely based on Mal Evans). They are quickly driven from the station to a hotel and begin to feel confined. Norm brings each Beatle a pile of fan mail and tasks them with answering each letter, but they sneak out to party. Meanwhile, Paul's grandfather goes gambling at a casino that Ringo was invited to. While The Beatles are dancing at the party, Norm and Shake show up and angrily escort the lads out of the party because it was a private party. When they get back to the room, they found out that Paul's grandfather was at the casino and they go and get him back to the hotel.

The next day, Norm forces the group to attend a mundane cocktail reception where they tease reporters with comic and evasive answers to interview questions. At the TV studio for rehearsals for the variety show, the uptight producer is convinced that the group is plotting against him. After taking over the stage and coaxing a morose Ringo into playing "If I Fell", Norm tries to force them into a dressing room until show time, but they push through an emergency exit, head down a fire escape and cavort in a field until forced off by its caretaker. Back in the studio, they are separated when a woman thinks she recognises John but cannot recall who he is. George is mistaken for an actor, dragged into an advertising agent's office, and auditioned for a clothing advertisement, but offends the agent by telling him that he and his boys say nasty things about the agency's poster-girl when she comes on TV. The band returns to rehearse a second song and, after a quick trip to makeup, smoothly goes through a third before earning a break.

An hour before the final run-through, Ringo is cajoled into chaperoning Paul's grandfather to the studio canteen for tea. He takes issue with a book Ringo is reading and manipulates him into going out "parading" to experience life rather than reading about it in books. Ringo tries to have a quiet drink in a pub, takes pictures, walks alongside the River Thames, chats with a young boy skipping school, and rides a bicycle along a railway station platform. After being ejected from the pub for nearly injuring a parrot with a dart and accidentally causing a woman to fall into a newly dug hole at a construction site, Ringo is apprehended by a policeman. He is shortly joined by Paul's grandfather, who had triggered a ruckus attempting to sell Beatles photos with autographs he had forged. The grandfather antagonises the policemen at the station with Irish nationalist slogans before running back to the studio to tell the others about Ringo. Norm sends the other three Beatles to retrieve him, which leads to a Keystone Cops-style foot chase. Arriving back at the studio with only minutes to spare before airtime, the Beatles deliver a smashing performance to an audience of screaming, delirious fans. Immediately afterwards, a helicopter whisks the group away toward a "midnight matinée" engagement in Wolverhampton. Paul tosses the forged autographs out of the helicopter as it takes off.

Cast

Uncredited

Songs The film's credits incorrectly state that all songs are composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney – a portion of "Don't Bother Me", written by George Harrison, is heard during one scene. The instrumental versions were recorded by the George Martin Orchestra. "A Hard Day's Night" (opening credits) "I Should Have Known Better" "I Wanna Be Your Man" (sample) "Don't Bother Me" (Harrison) (sample) "All My Loving" (sample) "If I Fell" "Can't Buy Me Love" "And I Love Her" "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" "Ringo's Theme (This Boy)" (instrumental) "A Hard Day's Night" (sample, instrumental) "Can't Buy Me Love" (reprise) "Tell Me Why" "If I Fell" (reprise) "I Should Have Known Better" (reprise) "She Loves You" "A Hard Day's Night" (reprise; closing credits)

In addition to the soundtrack album, an EP (in mono) of songs from the film titled Extracts From The Film A Hard Day's Night was released by Parlophone on 6 November 1964, having the following tracks: Side A

"I Should Have Known Better" "If I Fell" Side B

"Tell Me Why" "And I Love Her"

Song notes "I'll Cry Instead" was among several songs considered for the film but ultimately not included either as an on-camera performance or for usage as an audio-only track. It was to be used during the police chase sequence, but ultimately, director Richard Lester vetoed it in favour of the more lyrically upbeat "Can't Buy Me Love". Its status as an early contender for inclusion led to the song being included on the US soundtrack album, plus the mono "Something New" LP and Capitol 45. The song was recorded in two sections and was going to be featured in two parts, with the break being when the Beatles returned to the police station to catch their breath. The unique full-length version, which has a repeat of the first verse, was mixed as a rough mono mix and sent to United Artists and Capitol Records in North America. This "lost" section wasn't just an edit of the beginning of the song but a separate take (second "section" of the two-part recording). Eventually, the final mono and stereo mixes edit out this repeat of the first verse. In the 1982 US theatrical reissue of the film by Universal Pictures, under licence from Walter Shenson, the song "I'll Cry Instead" was used as the audio track for a prologue sequence to the film which consisted of stills from the film and publicity photographs as a tribute to Lennon consisting of a Swinging Sixties-style collage of photos of the Beatles in 1964 around the time they were shooting the film. The prologue was assembled without the involvement or knowledge of the film's director, Richard Lester, who subsequently expressed his disapproval of the addition. The prologue was not included on the 2000 restoration of the film. The song "You Can't Do That" was filmed as part of the film's TV concert sequence but was not included in the final cut of the film. At a point before a decision had been made to excise the song from the film, footage of that performance had been sent by the filmmakers and Brian Epstein to be aired on The Ed Sullivan Show as a tease to promote the forthcoming release of the film. The clip aired on the Sullivan Show on Sunday, 24 May 1964, in conjunction with an interview with The Beatles specially filmed by Sullivan in London. An extract of the footage of the song performance was included in the 1994 documentary The Making of "A Hard Day's Night". The song "I Call Your Name" was cut from the film for unknown reasons.

Screenplay The screenplay was written by Alun Owen, who was chosen because the Beatles were familiar with his 1959 play No Trams to Lime Street, and he had shown an aptitude for writing in the group's native Scouse dialect. McCartney commented, "Alun hung around with us and was careful to try and put words in our mouths that he might've heard us speak, so I thought he did a very good script." Owen spent several days with the group, who told him their lives were like "a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room"; Paul's grandfather refers to this in the dialogue. Owen wrote the script from the viewpoint that the Beatles had become prisoners of their own fame, their schedule of performances and recording having become punishing.

The script comments cheekily on the Beatles' fame. For instance, at one point, a fan, played by Anna Quayle, apparently recognises John Lennon, though she cannot put a name to the face, saying only "you are...". He demurs, saying his face is not quite right for "him"; after she puts on her glasses, she agrees that Lennon doesn't "look like him at all", and Lennon says to himself that "she looks more like him than I do". Other dialogue is derived from actual interviews with the Beatles; when Ringo is asked if he is a mod or a rocker, he replies: "Uh, no, I'm a mocker", a line derived from a joke he had made on the TV show Ready Steady Go! In the original interview Ringo admits he borrowed the line from John. The frequent reference to McCartney's grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) as a "clean old man" both refers to the Beatles being popularly called "very clean" and inverts the stock description of Brambell's character on the TV series Steptoe and Son as a "dirty old man".

Audiences also responded to the Beatles' brash social impudence. Director Richard Lester said, "The general aim of the film was to present what was apparently becoming a social phenomenon in this country. Anarchy is too strong a word, but the quality of confidence that the boys exuded! Confidence that they could dress as they liked, speak as they liked, talk to the Queen as they liked, talk to the people on the train who 'fought the war for them' as they liked. ... [Everything was] still based on privilege—privilege by schooling, privilege by birth, privilege by accent, privilege by speech. The Beatles were the first people to attack this... they said if you want something, do it. You can do it. Forget all this talk about talent or ability or money or speech. Just do it."

Although the original working titles of the film were first The Beatles and then Beatlemania, the group's name is never spoken in the film, although the name appears on Ringo's drum during the variety show.

Production The Beatles had met with Nat Cohen of Anglo Amalgamated about Anglo financing a film. The meeting came though Cohen's partner, Stuart Levy, who knew Brian Epstein's parents. However Cohen turned down the group.{ "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [

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