The final (and most infamous) film by The Beatles is a fly-on-the-wall documentary that captures the band during the tense rehearsal and recording sessions for what would turn out to be the last album released by the group.
The biggest problem with this movie is that the movie itself doesn't live up to it's legend. This film is like finding a stack your best friends holiday movies and watching them without your friend telling you where they where shot or what was happening in them. In the context of cinema verite, this could be an exciting prospect, however even the films of cinema verite throw you a few bones now and then.
If you didn't know anything about the Fab Four's later years this is what you'll get out this movie: a band jamming in sound stage then cut away to the band jamming in building then cut away to the band jamming on roof - the end. The film only works if you have piror knowledge of the events of early 1969 that lead to the band demise. Thus film itself suffers from the same hurdle that most rock movies of this time come across: a lack of narrative. Why are they on the roof? What is the building they're jamming in, are they recording? Where's the control room or desk? Worst of all, is that out of nearly a month of filming there was the footage that could rectify this.
In 1996's 'The Beatles Anthology' we got the scenes of the band and crew discussing the concert on the roof, talking to the crew about why they chose a sound stage and more importantly the aims of the whole 'Get Back' project. In this version, we don't even get a hint that there's a project going on in the first place.
Even adding some subtitles at the bottom of the screen could give the audience members who aren't fanboys a clue of time and place. Instead what we have is film that's mostly performance based with a collection of random and bearly auditable sound bites. What could have been a study in the disintegration of a major rock group becomes the first example of those "on-tour" DVD's that show your favourite band goofing off to hand held cameras for 70 minutes.
The one scene that does give us a clue is the infamous Paul and George argument. This one scene jump out of nowhere as if the editor forgot to cut it out. The rest of the film, however has a very light and somewhat directionless feel to it.
On it's first cut, this film ran for an epic 3 1/2 hours and included many of the mentioned scenes including when Peter Sellers visits the band during a session. But all this was trimmed down by The Beatles (without J & Y) to a short 80 minutes on only it's second cut. And Lindsay-Hogg, not knowing (like the rest of the world) that the Beatles were almost through, saw no other option then to put together a scatter-shot fluff piece from hundreds of hours worth of footage to fulfil a six year old contract the band had with United Artists from way back in the Beatlemania days.
If this film ever gets re-released, it would be great to see a total redux. This would include all the meetings the band has with the crew, the on camera interviews with Paul and of course some of the tense moments that occurred while making the movie. Yes, there is the famous scene of Paul and George arguing over how the lead to 'I've Got A Feeling' should be played but for the rest of the bickering that most Beatles fans have heard on bootlegs of outtakes have all been glossed over.
On the positive side - the performances are great. Even if 'Let It Be' did boast some of the fabs weakest efforts the music is still worth sitting through the seemingly pointless scenes of dialogue. In saying this, 'Let It Be' is not a bad movie, in fact I'd say it's a great movie that's been miss treated and poorly hacked up. Which is why it's only worth it if you know enough already to read between the lines.
The biggest problem with this movie is that the movie itself doesn't live up to it's legend. This film is like finding a stack your best friends holiday movies and watching them without your friend telling you where they where shot or what was happening in them. In the context of cinema verite, this could be an exciting prospect, however even the films of cinema verite throw you a few bones now and then.
If you didn't know anything about the Fab Four's later years this is what you'll get out this movie: a band jamming in sound stage then cut away to the band jamming in building then cut away to the band jamming on roof - the end. The film only works if you have piror knowledge of the events of early 1969 that lead to the band demise. Thus film itself suffers from the same hurdle that most rock movies of this time come across: a lack of narrative. Why are they on the roof? What is the building they're jamming in, are they recording? Where's the control room or desk? Worst of all, is that out of nearly a month of filming there was the footage that could rectify this.
In 1996's 'The Beatles Anthology' we got the scenes of the band and crew discussing the concert on the roof, talking to the crew about why they chose a sound stage and more importantly the aims of the whole 'Get Back' project. In this version, we don't even get a hint that there's a project going on in the first place.
Even adding some subtitles at the bottom of the screen could give the audience members who aren't fanboys a clue of time and place. Instead what we have is film that's mostly performance based with a collection of random and bearly auditable sound bites. What could have been a study in the disintegration of a major rock group becomes the first example of those "on-tour" DVD's that show your favourite band goofing off to hand held cameras for 70 minutes.
The one scene that does give us a clue is the infamous Paul and George argument. This one scene jump out of nowhere as if the editor forgot to cut it out. The rest of the film, however has a very light and somewhat directionless feel to it.
On it's first cut, this film ran for an epic 3 1/2 hours and included many of the mentioned scenes including when Peter Sellers visits the band during a session. But all this was trimmed down by The Beatles (without J & Y) to a short 80 minutes on only it's second cut. And Lindsay-Hogg, not knowing (like the rest of the world) that the Beatles were almost through, saw no other option then to put together a scatter-shot fluff piece from hundreds of hours worth of footage to fulfil a six year old contract the band had with United Artists from way back in the Beatlemania days.
If this film ever gets re-released, it would be great to see a total redux. This would include all the meetings the band has with the crew, the on camera interviews with Paul and of course some of the tense moments that occurred while making the movie. Yes, there is the famous scene of Paul and George arguing over how the lead to 'I've Got A Feeling' should be played but for the rest of the bickering that most Beatles fans have heard on bootlegs of outtakes have all been glossed over.
On the positive side - the performances are great. Even if 'Let It Be' did boast some of the fabs weakest efforts the music is still worth sitting through the seemingly pointless scenes of dialogue. In saying this, 'Let It Be' is not a bad movie, in fact I'd say it's a great movie that's been miss treated and poorly hacked up. Which is why it's only worth it if you know enough already to read between the lines.