Product Description

In 1964, the Beatles had just recently exploded onto the American scene with their debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The group's first feature, the Academy Award-nominated "A Hard Day's Night," offered fans their first peek into a day in the life of the Beatles and served to establish the Fab Four on the silver screen, as well as to inspire the music video format. Songs: I'll Cry Instead, A Hard Day's Night, I Should've Known Better, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, And I Love Her, I'm Happy Just to Dance with You, Ringo's Theme (This Boy), Tell Me Why, Don't Bother Me, I Wanna Be Your Man, All My Lovin', She Loves You.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1408 in DVD
• Brand: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2002-09-24
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .50 pounds
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
The Fab Four from Liverpool--John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr--in their first movie. Nobody expected A Hard Day's Night to be much more than a quick exploitation of a passing musical fad, but when the film opened it immediately seduced the world--even the stuffiest critics fell over themselves in praise (highbrow Dwight Macdonald called it "not only a gay, spontaneous, inventive comedy but it is also as good cinema as I have seen for a long time"). Wisely, screenwriter Alun Owen based his script on the Beatles' actual celebrity at the time, catching them in the delirious early rush of Beatlemania: eluding rampaging fans, killing time on trains and in hotels, appearing on a TV broadcast. American director Richard Lester, influenced by the freestyle French New Wave and British Goon Show humor, whips up a delightfully upbeat circus of perpetual motion. From the opening scene of the mop tops rushing through a train station mobbed by fans, the movie rarely stops for air. Some of the songs are straightforwardly presented, but others ("Can't Buy Me Love," set to the foursome gamboling around an empty field) soar with ingenuity. Above all, the Beatles express their irresistible personalities: droll, deadpan, infectiously cheeky. Better examples of pure cinematic joy are few and far between. --Robert Horton

DVD features
None of the remaining Beatles participated in the DVD supplements for A Hard Day's Night, but you get an abundance of the next best thing. The film's surviving cast and crew members were assembled for an extensive series of retrospective interviews, resulting in a totally fab tapestry of detailed reminiscence. Virtually all of the major and minor players are included, from director Richard Lester and musical director George Martin, to publicists, Beatles' friends, and key offscreen personnel. The result is a vivid portrait of British film production in the early '60s, placing A Hard Day's Night in rich context to further appreciate its groundbreaking audacity. Particularly amusing are vintage clips from the Brit-com Steptoe and Son in a tribute to character actor Wilfrid Brambell (a.k.a. Paul's "very clean" grandfather), and a Ringo remembrance by actor David Janson (from the film's memorable "Ringo's Theme" sequence). Best of all is an interview with Klaus Voorman, whose connection with the Beatles goes back to Hamburg in the early '60s (pre-Beatlemania), and whose affectionate, still-vivid memories add a wonderful touch of intimate nostalgia. Arguably, these and other interviews create a more fan-friendly portrait than the Beatles could've provided. With extensive DVD-ROM features including Alun Owen's original first-draft screenplay and an extensive Web site archive, the Hard Day's Night DVD is definitely not grotty! --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Appoach this DVD with EXTREME CAUTION!
Hard to believe that Miramax Entertainment could mess up this DVD so horribly. An anniversary release of one of the most important films of the 20th century no less. Shame on them.

There are a lot of raves here about the fact that the film is being presented "letterboxed" for the first time. Actually, it's just the first time the top and bottom of the picture have been chopped off for no reason! "A Hard Day's Night" was filmed in Academy standard 1.37:1. Slightly wider than your average TV tube, but not anything close to the 1.66:1 chop job on the new DVD. Full-frame would have been the proper presentation.

As for the audio...they DID clean up the dialog portions of the movie, so for perhaps the first time EVER, you can actually HEAR what everyone is saying - and it no longer sounds like they are speaking into an Edison cylinder recorder.

But oh, the music. They replaced the original mono soundtrack with the standard mono AHDN CD to replace the overmodulated music on the original film. Never mind that there were a couple of different mixes in there that they should have left alone ("Tell Me Why", "And I Love Her", "If I Fell") - BUT...they went and added microdelay and phasing to create some kind of a half-assed 5.1 mix that through a standard stereo or mono downmixed output makes the audio sound phase-y and hollow. This is worse than the original mono mix (available on the original Beta & VHS release from 1982 or the print aired on AMC several years ago) and the fact that the standard mono mix was NOT made available as alternate audio on the disc (as it was on the "Yellow Submarine" DVD) is an oversight punishable by public stoning.

As for all the bonus material...not ONE interview with an actual Beatle? Not even McCartney? The closest we get is George Martin?

The person behind this mess is none other than Martin Lewis, self-proclaimed Beatle "expert" and all around media whore. Lewis' involvement explains why no-one at Apple would have anything to do with the project. With some two-hours of useless interviews as "bonus" material, here's what you DON'T get:

The original theatrical trailers

The reissue theatrical trailers

The original theatrical "making-of" featurette

The surviving outtake footage ("You Can't Do That") [which, as a sidenote was left off the MPI DVD, making having the VHS & Laserdisc necessary]

The aforementioned MPI documentary DVD

Any surviving still photos of the other missing sequences

Running commentary on an alternate audio track

The promised (but not included) Richard Lester's "Running Jumping Standing Still Movie"

Anything of any relevance.

What makes this all the worse is that the image looks terrific. However, it's been so horribly trashed that the only proper place for this DVD is the trash can or as a trade in at the used DVD store.

Anyone who owns the original MPI DVD should hold on to it and save thier tewnty bucks.

Thanks to my friend Steve for enlightening me on this...

THIS DVD WAS A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT
Being a big Beatle fan, and a big fan of this movie, I highly anticipated the arrival of this title on DVD. The sound on this DVD is bad, there is absolutely no dynamic range. The volume level seems to hover at the same level through out the film, there is no difference in volume between the scenes when there is a quiet conversation and the scenes where the band is playing. I also own the title on laserdisc and let me tell you, the laserdisc has at least 30 db of dynamic range. While watching this film on laserdisc, you can adjust the level of playback so that the scenes where there is conversation is a comfortable 75 db, and when the band plays it jumps up to an ear thumping 105 db or more. This DVD lacks ooph, the band sounds like their playing in a box. This film deserves a better sound treatment, I highly recommend boycotting the DVD and lets wait till they release it in it's proper state.

Far better than I hoped, from the reviews
When I finally decided to consider replacing my old MPI VHS tape copy of A Hard Day's Night (MP 1064) with the currently available 2 DVD set, I read the reviews on this listing to see if it was really worth re-buying something I've only occasionally watched over the last twenty or so years. It's not that I dislike the movie - far from it - It's just that this is one of those movies I can only watch once in a while with interest. Which only means; it's dated, but in the best possible way. But I love it, and having it as a VHS cassette rotting on my shelf made no sense, so I looked into the DVD.

I knew this was one of the first DVDs released and I've heard some which sound pretty bad, generally due to excessive echo from a careless transfer. And after reading the reviews here, I was expecting the music to be trash. (I took the precaution of making a digital recording of the soundtrack of the tape.) Also screen-cropping was an issue. I prefer widescreen when I can get it, but if someone actually cut part of the image off, which is what at least one reviewer seemed to be saying, that's catastrophic. Needless to say, I did approach this DVD with extreme caution.

But I was pleasantly surprised at what I found. As for the sound, my dread turned to relief when I heard that the Beatles' music on this DVD sounds as clean and pure as I could hope, with my only beef being that it is rendered in mono, rather than the "hi-fi" stereo of the VHS. But strangely, I found that in this case, mono works better. Instead of shifting from mono dialogue to stereo music, the DVD is completely mono, which makes for a more consistent viewing experience. For the performance section at the end, I believe a bit more echo was added to make it sound more "live." But as it's all studio tracks anyway, the alteration is somewhat justified and actually does add to the illusion you're listening to the Beatles perform, rather than lip-sync.

On the cropping; This DVD is in widescreen, which admittedly does make the image smaller and harder to see on the small screen. So why would anyone crop a movie to make it appear widescreen when it'd be better full? Profit? (So they could sell us another copy later on.) Possibly, but for some reason in this instance, I doubted it. What I did to check was pick an object in the movie close enough to the top of the full screen video that if it were cropped, would certainly not show up on the wide. I picked the helicopter propeller blades near the end of the movie, when you can see their top, before it takes off. I found that they were not cropped off on the DVD, although I'll grant it may be that they were closer to the top of the screen. But this may appear so due to the reduced size of the picture. In any case, if there is any cropping, it's not obtrusive.

So why all the carping? I'm going to guess because it's not the way you remember it. Take the fans' word for it, but for my money, the fact that I can actually hear what everyone's saying, plus the interviews, makes the DVD preferable.