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Film review Fab Four radiate bafflement and joy in absorbing snapshot of US debut
The Guardian
|November 26, 2024
The Beatles' breaking of America – that mythic, ecstatic moment that restored Britain's postwar pride and became an enduring cornerstone of our soft power self-respect – is the subject of an absorbing documentary from director David Tedeschi.
Featuring the programme's producer, Martin Scorsese, interviewing Ringo in the present day, with Paul McCartney speaking to camera separately, it also uses intimate hotel-room and backstage footage shot at the time by the Maysles brothers, Albert and David.
The film is a record of the band's arrival in New York in 1964, and their legendary live appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which was watched by 73 million people.
Craig Brown's book One Two Three Four points out that the Beatles' appearance on the show followed an interminable succession of forgotten support acts who, though they may have eagerly accepted the TV booking at the time, were doomed to be hated by an impatient nation for not being the Beatles, for ever tainted by their sheer irrelevance. This film shows a TV audience member yawning at one of these lesser mortals.
This story is from the November 26, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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