Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 195: Sat July 14

A Hard Day's Night (Lester, 1964): Barbican Cinema 2pm
This is screening in the That was the year that was season as part of the City of London 2012 Festival.

Here is Barbican introduction: Having released their first single in 1962, The Beatles rapidly become a world-wide sensation.  United Artists hired TV director Richard Lester to rush through this frenzied ‘must get the band to the show’-style rock-com to capitalise on Beatlemania before the band went out of fashion. Billed as a ‘typical’ 36 hours in the lives of the boy-band, Lester’s film, released just three months after filming started, was a huge hit. Acclaimed by film critics at the time, Lester is now credited as the father of the modern music video.

The soundtrack features I Should Have Known Better, And I Love Her, Tell Me Why, If I Fell and Can't Buy Me Love while Lennon and McCartney penned the title song from Ringo’s malaproped quote one evening after filming.  The Fab Four are joined by Victor Spinelli, Steptoe and Son’s Wilfred Brambell, dancer Lionel Blair and Harrison's future wife Patti Boyd.

Here are the opening titles.

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