A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

(On Cable TV, June 2018) If A Hard Day’s Night doesn’t feel that fresh today, it’s largely because it has made a significant mark on pop culture. At the time, the very concept of having a “day in the life” movie featuring rock stars in a thinly fictionalized version of themselves and performing their hit songs was a definite novelty. Today, after the music video boom and bust, it feels rather quaint. Even the Beatles themselves, at that relatively early stage of their career, feel rather wholesome and boyishly charming—it helps that the source of mischief in the film comes from a “clean” older gentleman. Still, what we do get even today is seeing The Beatles goof around for an hour and a half, with various silly comedy bits and performances of their early hits in mid-sixties London. That’s really not bad at all, and Wilfrid Brambell is unexpected fun as a source of chaos. A Hard Day’s Night may not be as fresh as it was upon release, but it has aged well in that that it proposed as new back then has been deeply integrated in today’s pop-culture landscape. It’s worth a look, particularly for Beatles fans.