Straightforward, unpretentious and unauthorized, this succinct Beatles docu has all you really need to know about John, Paul, George and Ringo, seen plain before mythology took over. Basically a cut-and-paste job (a good one) by director Patrick Montgomery and editor Pamela Page (well narrated by Malcolm McDowel), buttressed with purpose-made interviews from a fair sampling of on-the-scene witnesses: Gerry (and the Pacemakers) Marsden, L.P. producer George Martin, et al. Without finger pointing and with no ax to grind (nice to see Ringo get his due), the film is particularly refreshing in not polishing up every track and image to pristine state. Instead, capturing some of pleasure in pulling out a slightly dinged up original pressing to listen to rather than some over-refined digital replacement/remix. All in a couple of hours. (THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY, currently in streaming rotation goes on for 10 hours.) Best insight comes in noting just how quickly John’s voice broke down doing live shows. Did that factor into the boys taking on Abbey Road studio hermitage? Worst is the usual fawning over SGT. PEPPER. Anyone around at the time can (off the top of their head) reel off five or six titles they’d put on the turntable before it.
READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK: As mentioned in this NYTimes piece, the film is floating all over the internet. The rights situation must be confusing as hell. Most seem to be taken from decent VHS copies and are surprisingly watchable. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/movies/other-beatles-documentary.html
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The Beatles’ first Stateside visit turns NYC upside down in Robert Zemeckis’s debut pic, I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND/’78. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-wanna-hold-your-hand-1978.html
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