Beatles '64 combines an awesome soundtrack with behind-the-scenes footage, all manner of live performances, talking head interviews, and unquestionably fascinating views of the legendary "British Invasion."
Reactions to Beatles '64 have been largely positive, albeit with some division. At the time of writing, the Disney+ documentary holds a 94% Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and plenty of reviews have been effusive in their praise. The Guardian hails the film as a "sublime snapshot," while Rolling Stone calls it a "a tribute to the fans as well as the band." On the other end of the spectrum, The Telegraph accuses Beatles '64 of achieving the impossible by making The Beatles "boring," whereas The Glass Onion takes the slightly more nuanced view of "compelling but slightly confused." Certainly, it is easy to see why opinion is conflicted.
Beatles '64 Is A Hyper-Specific Look Into A Short Period Of The Beatles' Timeline
Beatles '64 Glosses Over Most Of The Beatles' Career
The strangest aspect of Beatles '64 is how zoomed-in upon one specific point of the band's career the documentary really is, to the point where it really should have been called "Beatles February 7-22 '64." Any Beatles newcomer would be forgiven for thinking "She Loves You" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" were the Fab Four's only two hits of note. The documentary, of course, made no secret of its missive to focus on The Beatles' debut U.S. visit, and covering the group's existence in its entirety would be far too big a job for any single sub-two-hour film.
The Beatles '64 story would have felt far more complete if it covered how four young men from Liverpool became darlings of American youth in the first place.
Nevertheless, Beatles '64 offers very little context for the four outside those few weeks in February. The documentary says almost nothing of The Beatles' origins or their huge success before stepping foot in New York, and barely even whispers about the sonic glory that would come after: Help!, Sgt. Pepper's, The White Album, Abbey Road - the bulk of their timeless canon. The Beatles '64 story would have felt far more complete if it covered how four young men from Liverpool became darlings of American youth in the first place, as well as the trip's subsequent impact upon their musical evolution.
The Beatles released their debut album, Please Please Me, in 1963.
Beatles '64 may not have had the time to tell the band's story in full, but as a single moment in the journey, the documentary unevenly weighs the U.S. trip against everything else The Beatles ever did. It's like Sam Gamgee making a documentary about Frodo's night at the Prancing Pony and skipping past everything else in The Lord of the Rings.
Beatles' 64 Is Light On New Details About The Beatles' U.S. Trip
Beatles '64 Is A Trip Down Memory Lane
A documentary aimed squarely at The Beatles' whirlwind first tour across the East Coast is, in itself, no bad thing, but Beatles '64 also lacks fresh insight. Much of the behind-the-scenes footage capturing the band is drawn from Albert & David Maysles' What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A., which was re-edited in 1991 as The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit, and is complemented by archive interviews with the likes of Michael Aspel. All of that is to be expected, but the new interviews Beatles '64 weaves throughout its runtime are frustratingly lightweight.
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The talking heads almost exclusively serve to underline the power of The Beatles upon U.S. audiences. The newly-recorded moments with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are few and far between, then all too brief when they do come. The end result is a documentary that falls awkwardly between targeting hardcore Beatles followers and casual fans. The former camp would have seen most of this footage and heard these stories before. At the same time, Beatles '64 is much too singular in scope to enrapture those with only a ing interest in Liverpool's greatest export.
What Beatles '64 Does Well
Beatles '64 Is A Document More Than A Documentary
Beatles '64 is not necessarily a documentary designed to illuminate and inform, nor to shed new light on a well-known piece of music history. The film's real triumph is its modern production, and the new, digital sheen brought to the visuals and sounds of The Beatles' first steps in America. The 4K restoration is unquestionably stunning, meaning the shots of Ringo monkeying around and Paul having a "laff" feel more personal than ever before. Such clarity is as close as anyone in 2024 can get to stepping in the Maysles' shoes and watching The Beatles in their natural environment.
Fans might have flicked through this particular album many times before, but each photo now sings more cleanly and brightly.
Likewise, Giles Martin's remixes are pristine. While the crystal-clear performance audio does, at times, lose the raw, reverberating power a live environment brings, it also underlines the quality of the songs themselves, not to mention how phenomenal The Beatles were as a four-piece band in 1964. The Beatles' Ed Sullivan performance has never sounded better.
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In that sense, Beatles '64 is more of a living photo album, updating existing audiovisual records of the February 1964 U.S. trip with the advantage of over half a century of technological advancement. The performances themselves, the backstage hijinks, the reactions on the ground - fans might have flicked through this particular album many times before, but each photo now sings more cleanly and brightly, and comes with a few extra annotations in the margin from Paul and Ringo.
Beatles '64 Is As Much About America As It Is The Beatles
America '64 Feat. The Beatles
There is a narrative at the heart of Beatles '64, but it isn't about The Beatles themselves. Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi's compilation of footage begins - before a single floppy haircut has appeared - with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It's a surprising introduction to a documentary about a pop band from Liverpool, but perhaps a telling one in of what Beatles '64 is trying to achieve.
The subtext behind many of the interviews, as well as the footage of fan interactions from the trip itself, concerns what the United States felt when The Beatles came to town. Beatles '64 does a stellar job setting up the pain of the Kennedy assassination upon the American people, as well as an emerging shift from post-war malaise to the color and freedom of a 1960s pop culture explosion.
This is a documentary about the United States in the 1960s told through the lens of The Beatles.
A thread of racial inequality also runs through Beatles '64. The mainstream oppression of music by Black artists and The Beatles' subversion of the musical status quo are placed hand-in-hand, with artists such as Smokey Robinson crediting the Fab Four for breaking convention by openly citing Black artists as influences.
These stories are the true heart and soul of Beatles '64, which perhaps explains why the documentary only covers a very limited period in the act's history. This is a documentary about the United States in the 1960s told through the lens of The Beatles. The band exacerbated existing cultural tensions between young and old, altered the dynamic between artists from different racial backgrounds, and, in the words of Paul McCartney himself, helped to heal the country following Kennedy's murder.
Less than 4 months separated Kennedy's assassination and The Beatles' trip.
And then they went home. The Beatles weren't necessarily a different band once they arrived back in Britain - more famous and a little tired, certainly, but not fundamentally changed. America, meanwhile, would never be the same, and therein lies the real story of Beatles '64.
Sources: Rotten Tomatoes, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The Telegraph, The Glass Onion
Beatles '64
- Release Date
- November 29, 2024
Beatles '64 is a documentary directed by David Tedeschi, showcasing the rise of The Beatles during their landmark 1964 visit to New York City. Utilizing rare footage, it captures Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr's transformative impact on music and culture as they achieved global fame.
- Runtime
- 108 Minutes
- Director
- David Tedeschi
