This coming weekend will see the release of the new Martin Scorsese-produced feature-length documentary Beatles ‘64 on Disney+, and below are my thoughts on this film.
Every time a new Beatles documentary is announced these days, I can’t help but think of the Portlandia sketch with Fred Armisen pitching his Beatles documentary to Carrie Brownstein. The joke there, over a decade ago, was that so many Beatles documentaries already existed that it would be pointless and beyond redundant to make another, and yet here we are in 2024 talking about the release of Beatles ‘64 from producer Martin Scorsese (Personality Crisis: One Night Only) and director David Tedeschi (The 50 Year Argument). These are established and acclaimed filmmakers, but what else could they possibly have to say on such a well-trod subject? The pitch here is that they’ve restored original footage shot by renowned 20th Century documentarians Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter) to 4K high-resolution, some of which was familiar to me (from 1991’s The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit) and some of which is being advertised as “never before seen.”
Tedeschi has also shot some new interviews with surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, in addition to editor Mariah Rehmet (Being Mary Tyler Moore) having cut in some archival chats with the late John Lennon and George Harrison. Plus there’s talking-head sound bytes from fans who experienced the initial wave of the British invasion first hand, alongside luminaries like author Joe Queenan (Closing Time), singer Ronnie Spector (from The Ronettes), singer/songwriter Sananda Maitreya (AKA Terence Trent D’Arby), literary scholar Jane Tompkins, musicians Smokey Robisnon (from The Miracles) and Ronald Isley (from The Isley Brothers), photographer Harry Benson, and even director David Lynch (Blue Velvet). Music producer Jack Douglas, who worked with Lennon on his Imagine album in 1971, pops up to share a non-sequitor story about his 1960s pilgrimage to Liverpool that was cut short by being deported back to America.
But mostly this documentary sticks to the Maysles’ footage of John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s trip to the United States in, as the title implies, 1964. For that reason it plays as a stark contrast to Peter Jackson’s similarly repurposed The Beatles: Get Back documentary from 2021 (also streaming on Disney+), which depicted the Fab Four a good five years later into their career as a group, not to mention on the verge of a permanent breakup. Beatles ‘64 is a portrait of a far more carefree period in the lore of the band, but also a time when the members themselves were still overwhelmed by what it meant to be a Beatle traveling to North America just months after the JFK assassination. That historical touchstone looms large over the documentary, with Tedeschi and Rehmet using it as both a contextual intro and somber reminder of the dangers of celebrity and public life that would eventually take Lennon’s life as well, though that 1980 tragedy goes unmentioned here.
Instead we spend a lot of time watching The Beatles hang out in their hotel room, evading fans who crowd around them on the street and at airports, and sometimes performing live on stage– in New York City, Washington D.C., and Miami, Florida– one of the technical improvements this film boasts is new mixes of this music by Giles Martin, son of famed Beatles’ producer George. It’s fun to pal around with the lads as they trade quips without being as self-serious as they became later in their career, but Beatles ‘64 is consequently missing the insightfulness of Get Back’s fly-on-the-wall nature. Here the band is acutely aware of their observers, playing more to the camera and milking their newfound fame… almost basking in the glow of their fans’ appreciation, though it’s clear they’re also not quite sure what to make of all the hullabaloo themselves.
Naturally this is going to be another must-watch for Beatles completionists, but at the same time it does sort of feel like we’ve been there and done this countless times before, regardless of how many new shots of Ringo there are. Still, 60 years out it’s hard not to get caught up in the hysteria of Beatlemania all over again as screaming girls outside the band’s hotel struggle to explain in thick New York accents what exactly it is they love about the mop-topped lads from Liverpool. Maybe we’ll just keep being fascinated by this phenomenon as the decades go on, or maybe someday somebody will have the final, definitive word on The Beatles. This mostly scattershot effort doesn’t feel like the beginning or the end in that sense, but overall I’d say it’s a worthwhile reminder of the joy and exuberance their music brought to a generation, and beyond.
Beatles ‘64 will be released this Friday, November 29th, exclusively via Disney+.
My grade: 3 out of 5 Beatles wigs.