Cinema
A Hard Day's Night
Richard Lester · 1964
Synopsis
Three boys race down a street, chased by a crowd of screaming girls, and burst into a station where the fourth joins them. On the train to London, they discover that an old man is travelling with them: he is the grandfather of one of them, of whom it is repeated that he is very clean. Their manager and his assistant look after them. In London a television show awaits them, which has to be rehearsed.
Context
The film was shot in about seven weeks, in black and white and on a small budget, and tells thirty-six invented hours in the life of the group. The title was found only in April, in the last weeks of shooting: it is a slip of the tongue by the drummer, who had said after a long day's work that it had been a hard day's night; the song that bears this title was written in one night, brought in the next morning and recorded two days later. Who suggested the title remains disputed: the singer attributed it to the director, his partner to the group itself, and the producer took the credit. The concert sequences are mimed. The film cost about two hundred thousand pounds and earned more than twelve million dollars on its first release.
Who it is for
Eighty-seven minutes, in English with subtitles; the camera is often handheld and the editing choppy.
Prizes and reception
Two Academy Award nominations, for the screenplay and the musical adaptation, and often cited as a precursor of the music video.
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