The new documentary "Beatles '64," streaming on Disney+ is a compelling but slightly confused look at the impact the band made on the U.S. during its first visit here.
Watching, you'd think that all of the reasons why we still talk, write and read about the group and continue to listen to its music, boils down to the two weeks it spent here in February 1964, when it made two live appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and played concerts in Washington, D.C., and at Carnegie Hall in New York.
There's no doubt that the visit was significant -- momentous even. But the film distorts history by trying to front-load the Beatles' entire legacy onto this one, brief trip.
We get lots of talking heads -- writer Joe Queenan, Smokey Robinson, David Lynch, Ronnie Spector, Paul and Ringo, and more -- discussing how the band influenced and reflected attitudes around race and gender and social change and are essentially told that all of this stemmed from a couple of weeks the Beatles spent here at the very beginning of 1964: "The Beatles landed here on Feb. 7 and the 60s happened. Easy Peasy."
Left out... is a lot of stuff!
For starters, we don't get much perspective on what the Beatles had achieved before they got here -- they were already national stars in England and had caused a stir in Sweden and France -- and how hard their manager Brian Epstein had to struggle to get anyone in the U.S. to pay any attention.
The history of how Capitol Records was finally pushed to release and, significantly, promote the Beatles' music, and how the Sullivan appearances came about, is interesting stuff and puts the hugeness of the band's being able to break into America into context.
Also left out is all the stuff that happened with the Beatles in 1964 after February, which was vital to solidifying their hold on the record charts and the world's attention, including surprising film critics and storming the box office with "A Hard Day's Night," releasing two albums in England and four in the U.S., coming back to America for an actual tour, and also playing concerts and, generating scenes of Beatlemania, in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. That first visit secured a beach head, but the full invasion followed.
Even more disappointingly for a project focused on the band's lasting influence, the film provides no real insight into how and why the Beatles' music was so different from the get-go.
While it does a commendable job of detailing the importance of R&B and soul and how Black American music led to rock'n'roll, "Beatles '64" doesn't investigate how the group absorbed these influences, and many others, to create their own unique sound. And this is despite Leonard Bernstein showing up in a couple of clips.
Surprisingly, for a film produced by Apple Corps, the documentary gives The Beatles little credit for its tremendous originality and innovation, which is its most significant and lasting legacy.
What we do get, though, between the talking heads, is a lot great footage from documentarians Albert and David Maysles' excellent 1964 TV documentary, "What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A.," which was expanded and released as "The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit" back in 1991.
The restored video and audio is tremendous, and it's fun seeing the Beatles' initial impact on America as it's actually happening, with wonderful interviews with fans and skeptics on the street outside the band's hotel to too-brief performance footage from the group's concert in Washington, D.C.
Frankly, a restored and expanded "First U.S. Visit," left alone, without the hand-holding, distorted "context" of the new talking heads interviews, would have been a superior viewing experience to "Beatles '64."
While the new film goes overboard in telling us what happened and what to think about it, the Maysles' original film simply just shows us, allowing us to absorb the sights and sounds of Beatlemania on our own, and giving us the experience of being there.
If there's a DVD or Blu-ray release of "Beatles '64" I hope that it will include the Maysles' film as part of the package, along with the complete Washington concert. Beatles fans, and history, deserve it.
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