Close to forty-eight years
ago (May 13th, 1970), the Beatles' final movie, Let It Be, received its premiere
in American theaters. The film, shot in January 1969, had original intentions
to air as a TV special called Get Back, featuring the group rehearsing for
their first live show in over two years. The early rehearsals captured the
group, along with soon-to-be Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, clearly bored. Just McCartney
alone showed any real enthusiasm for the new material. The first part of the
film reveals the strain of the early morning sessions held in a cavernous
soundstage at London's Twickenham film studios.
Producer George Martin
recalled in The Beatles Anthology that the Let It Be project held great promise
in the beginning: "They were going through a very, very revolutionary
period at that time. And they were trying to think of something new. They did actually come up with a very good idea, which I
thought was well worth working on; The wanted to write an album completely and
rehearse it and then perform it in front of a large audience -- and for that to
be a live album of new material. And we started rehearsing down at Twickenham
film studios, and I went along with them."
George Harrison, who was the
least invested member of the band in regards to returning to the stage,
recalled the band's initial plan: "I think the original idea was to
rehearse some new songs, and then we were going to pick a location and record
the album of the songs in a concert. I suppose kinda
like they do these days on Unplugged, except, you know, it wasn't to be
unplugged. It was to do a live album."
Among the
songs featured in the film are "Let It Be," "Get Back,"
"Don't Let Me Down," "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "For
You Blue," "Octopus' Garden," "I Me Mine,"
"Across The Universe," and "The Long And Winding Road," and
covers of "Besame Mucho," "Shake, Rattle And Roll," and
"Kansas City," among many others.
In 1970 John Lennon recalled
the nearly month-long film shoot saying: "It was just a dreadful, dreadful
feeling being filmed all the time. I just
wanted them to go away. And we'd be there at eight in the morning, and you couldn't make music at eight in the
morning, or 10, or whatever it was . . .
in a strange place with people filming you and colored lights."
The tension between the group
comes to light, especially during the sequence where Harrison and McCartney
argue over Harrison's playing on the song "Two Of Us."
McCartney explained that
unconsciously, the Beatles were actually
telling the world that they were breaking up: "In fact what happened was
when we got in there we showed how the breakup of a group works because we
didn't realize that we were actually
breaking up, you know, as it was happening."
The movie eases up
considerably during the second half, when the filming moved to the group's new
Apple basement studios, with the addition of keyboardist Billy Preston. A major
climax of the film is the final sequence, when the Beatles play an impromptu set on the Apple headquarters
rooftop, featuring "Get Back," "Dig A Pony," "I've Got
A Feeling," "Don't Let Me Down," and "One After 909."
Filmed on January 30th, 1969, captured the hasty, poorly planned and perhaps
dishonorable farewell tribute as the band's final public performance.
Reviews for the film released
a month after the group's breakup, were mixed, citing the sluggish and
depressing nature of the film, as well as director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's
sloppy editorial choices. But across the board, both critics and fans agreed on
the power of the group's rooftop set helps the viewers appreciation toward the
picture.
Author Ritchie Unterberger
chronicled the prolonged Get Back/Let It Be sessions in his book, titled The
Unreleased Beatles: "They had bitten off more than they could chew. You know,
even before they assembled in January, the idea was, 'Let's get back to playing
as a live band' -- pretty good idea. But then it was, 'Let's make it an album
and a film, and we're going to make the album a film of us doing a concert of
songs we've never recorded before.' It's kind of like trying to do too much at
once. And then you're recording it -- the comparison I made in the book is kind of Nixon's 'The Watergate Tapes,' you have
no idea that this stuff is going to come back to haunt you forever."]
Beatlefan magazine's
executive editor Al Sussman saw the film within days of its premiere and was
left speechless by the group's live swan song: "It was really depressing. But, what made it worthwhile
was the rooftop. Because when I left that theater, I was this far off the
ground. Despite the fact that we knew everything that happened afterward. Yeah,
that saves the film."
Ken Mansfield, the former
U.S. manager of Apple Records, was among
the handful of insiders present at the rooftop concert that day. He recalled prior to the lunchtime gig walking in on the
four Beatles who were using one of the Apple offices as a makeshift dressing
room: "It was like walking in on a band, a nervous bunch of guys getting
ready to do an audition. I don't know if it's because they hadn't played
together, or whether they were trying to put the set together, but it was one
of those kind of tense things where they
were nervous. When we locked the doors upstairs, and the minute they started
playing -- and all the. . . everything that was going down, all the stuff.
It's like it all went away and I really
believe in my mind that they forgot everything and they were what they were.
They were the Beatles."
Let It Be earned the Beatles
their only Academy Award when they won
the 1970 Oscar for Best Original Song Score. Now, sit back and see for yourself
what you’ve been reading about – the actual film waits for you here, just a
click away: https://archive.org/details/Let_It_Be_1970_film
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