A Hard Day’s Night

film by Lester [1964]

Written by Lee Pfeiffer

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Article History

A Hard Day’s Night, British comedy-musical film, released in 1964, that starred the Beatles in their first feature movie. Released during the height of Beatlemania and the British Invasion, A Hard Day’s Night is now widely considered a classic.

The musical presents a fictitious account of 36 hours in the life of the Beatles, who portray themselves as they travel to London and attempt to record a performance on television while evading fanatical teenage admirers. Film critic Rex Reed derisively referred to playwright Alun Owen’s script of A Hard Day’s Night as a “non-screenplay.” Yet it is precisely the inspired anarchy of Owen’s screenplay—so suited to the Beatles’ personalties that they appear to be improvising—that distinguishes this landmark musical. Until A Hard Day’s Night, rock-and-roll movies were tame, sanitized affairs designed to conform to an older audiences’s sense of morality. This seemingly unstructured look at the Beatles took the world by storm by proving that the lads from Liverpool not only were great musicians but also had an irreverent sense of humour that was compared to that of the Marx Brothers and of BBC Radio’s The Goon Show. The Beatles got memorable support from character actor Wilfred Brambell as Paul’s “clean old man” of a grumpy grandfather.

Although he was an American filmmaker, director Richard Lester employed a range of techniques that were being pioneered by European New Wave filmmakers, including extensive use of handheld cameras and jump-cut editing. Lester and the Beatles collaborated the following year on Help! (1965).