The Beatles

  • My Generation (2017)

    My Generation (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2021) In a career now spanning seven decades, Michael Caine has not always starred in good movies, but he has established his screen persona as an exemplar of British cool, whether it’s the handsome cad of his early years or the refined gentleman of his retirement era. As such, he’s nearly the perfect person to host My Generation, a documentary look at the Swingin’ Sixties experienced in Britain, as a new generation took control of the cultural weathervane after the quiet postwar generation. Having Caine as a narrator enables director David Batty to intercut footage of current-day Caine with some of his 1960s films, clearly linking past and present in a way that would have been impossible with anyone else. A whirlwind mixture of historical footage, current-day interviews with notable celebrities of the time (although only Caine appears on-screen), practised anecdotes and truly terrific music, My Generation is far more impressionistic than analytical: Crucial points are dismissed in a sentence or two, while the film goes for audiovisual overload in mixing classic tunes (such as the titular The Who song) with fast-paced montages. That’s fine—if you accept that you’re riding along with Caine for a somewhat superficial overview of a specific time and place, why ask for more? A few moments stand out, either with Caine recounting how he stumbled upon an early live performance by The Beatles while shooting in Liverpool (amazing if true!), or footage showing Twiggy besting interviewer Woody Allen by turning the tables on his pretentious questioning. You can hear such notables as Paul McCartney and Joan Collins along the way, goofing off with Caine during interviews that were probably much longer. Caine’s delivery is impeccable, which helps a lot in going along for the ride. It’s not meant to be a complete story: My Generation ends on how drugs took out the winds of the overindulging generation, but stops short of detailing much of it, nor wondering if things could have been different. This is a film about the glory days, after all. I would normally bristle at yet another Baby Boomer navel-gazing, but My Generation shouldn’t suffer for the excesses of others nor the familiarity of the subject: it’s bouncy fun at its best, and the prospect of spending nearly ninety minutes alongside a chatty Michael Caine is hard to resist no matter what.

  • Help! (1965)

    Help! (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) History suggests that The Beatles were high during a substantial portion of Help!’s production, which may explain why the film seems to stumble during its execution, circling its concept without reliably hitting its marks. It also serves to explain the bizarre sense of humour, a blend of non sequiturs and deadpan—history tells us the script is from The Goon Show alumni, but to modern viewers it will feel a lot like pre-weaponized Monty Python. The plot (and there’s one) has to do with murderous cultists pursuing Ringo Starr for the ring that’s stuck on his finger, but never mind that: This being from The Beatles, the highlights are musical interludes that feel like pre-MTV music videos, with the group goofing around as hard as they can. My favourite part of the film is probably the on-screen text adding contextual information and added jokes—the intermission alone is also very funny. Compared to A Hard Day’s Night, Help! feels very different: Not quite about the people’s idea of The Beatles and more about themselves. The budget is clearly higher and the script considerably less coherent—although that kind of anything-goes humour can have its charm as well. (The scene in which the Beatles record a song in the middle of a field, protected by a ring of tanks, is special.)  In keeping with the times, there’s quite a bit of Bond parody made even funnier by Bond saying that he didn’t like The Beatles in the previous year’s Goldfinger. The editing can be lighting-fast at times, helping the film stay remarkably interesting while still being dated in its references to the mid-1960s. It’s all goofy fun, but it’s clear why A Hard Day’s Night holds up better and is more often shown these days.

  • A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

    A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (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.