Newspaper Page Text
Supplement to
The Red & Black
Oct. 10~16
m
By BILL KING
As a group, and individually,
The Beatles have probably had
more written about them and
their career than any other
contemporary musical figures.
The Beatles’ career was
thoroughly documented from
their sudden rise in England in
1963 to their not so sudden
breakup in 1970, but there is
one part of that career that a
lot of people — at least in
America — do not know very
much about. It is their 1967
BBC television film, "Magical
Mystery Tour.”
The film, telecast in most
parts of the world but never
viewed in the United States,
will be shown by the University
Union at the South FJ Auditori
um this Friday, Saturday and
Sunday.
“Magical Mystery Tour” is
somewhat of a milestone in
The Beatles’ career for three
main reasons: 1) it was their
first major project after the
death of their manager-guiding
light Brian Epstein, 2) it was
the first film they made them
selves (and the first project of
their new business venture,
Apple) and 3) it was their first
critical failure.
The Beatles spent about 11
weeks making the film in
September and November,
1967. It was a result of their
searching for new creative
horizons (this followed Sgt.
Pepper) and also a reaction
against their previous experi
ences with filmmaking. In “A
Hard Day’s Night” and
“Help!” they had merely done
what they were told to do and
had found the whole thing a big
bore.
Now, they wanted to make a
film THEIR way and, as John
Lennon said at the time, “Re
cords can’t be seen so it’s good
to have a film vehicle of some
sort to go with the new music.”
Paul McCartney was the
originator of the idea of mak
ing a TV film about a mystery
tour (generally a one day bus
trip for British city dwellers to
see the country > that suddenly
became magical and he re
mained the prime inspiration
throughout the production of
the film.
It was McCartney’s first
effort to take up the slack left
by Epstein’s death and he tried
to take the group into some
thing new and exciting
There was no script for the
film, only a piece of paper with
a circle representing an hour
drawn on it and divided up into
different segments for the
songs that would back the film.
A number of British comedi
ans were hired to play charac
ters in the film — a fat aunt
for Ringo (instead of a grand
father for Paul), a starlet as
Paul’s girlfriend, a rubber-
faced music hall comic and
Victor Spinetti (the harried TV
director in “A Hard Day’s
Night” and the mad scientist
in "Help”) as a Recruiting
Sergeant *-r and the rest of the
cast was made of Beatle Fan
Cleb workers and friends.
A big yellow bus was hired
and the cast of 43, plus the
bewildered cameramen, set off
for Devon and Cornwall in
Southwest England (on a whim
of Paul’s) to film whatever
happened
At first, it was sheer chaos.
The Beatles disregarded all
the rules and conventions of
filmmaking and decided to use
improvisation, throwing the co
medians and cameramen into
a panic. Nobody knew what
they were supposed to be
doing, but everyone supposed
it would all work out in the
end.
Things improved after the
first couple of days of shooting,
and under the direction of The
Beatles, the film crew began to
get the hang of capturing a
"happening" on film
Paul played director and
proved to way ahead of avant-
garde. He told neither the
actors nor cameramen what he
wanted, but tried to create an
air of spontaneity by having
everyone do whatever came
into their head.
Ignorant of the preparations
necessary in movie making,
The Beatles showed up at a
film studio expecting to use it
only to find it busy. So, they
used abandoned aircraft han
gars for their studio shots.
After two weeks of shooting
(including a trip to France by
Paul and the camera crew to
film a suitable scene for the
“Fool On the Hill” sequence),
the Beatles found themselves
with ten hours of film that
made no sense whatsoever.
Beatle aide-de-camp Neil As-
pinall summed up the filming,
saying, “We went out to make
a film and nobody had the
vaguest idea of what it was all
about...there were these incre
dible scenes dashing about the
West of England with a busload
of actors...we went all the way
to Brighton (a resort town),
yet when we got there, we
ended up filming two cripples
on the beach What we should
have been filming, if anything,
was all the confusion... we
should have filmed John
Lennon ripping the damn signs
off the bus to stop people
following us...the carloads of
reporters trailing around us, or
the chaotic traffic jams we
caused.
“The problem was that with
Brian dead, there was nobody
to organize anything,” he add
ed.
Paul spent the next 10 weeks
supervising the editing of the
hour-long color film and the
finished produce was finally
telecast on Dec. 26. 1967-
(Boxing Day, a British holi
day). much to the delight of
the critics who had been wait
ing four years for The Beatles
to stumble.
The pre-publicity on the film
had made everyone forget that
the film was an experiment
and the critics pounced on its
flaws with delight, the DAILY
EXPRESS critic writing. “I
cannot ever remember seeing
such blatant rubbish,” although
one critic did describe it as
"delightful nonsense.”
Jonathan Cott, of ROLLING
STONE, wrote however, that
the film was not formless or
pointless or meaningless, but
that there were simply too few
lovely or "magical” moments
in it.
The high points of the film,
he wrote, are scenes such as
Paul singing “Fool On the
Hill” as seen from a distance,
head hunched, pacing on a
hill's edge in his Edwardian
coat, or Ringo and his “aunt"
badgering each other; the pa
rody of the Bonzo Dog Band
(who almost steal the film)
performing and the four Bea
tles, dressed in white tuxedoes,
making a wonderfully stylized
entrance down richly carpeted
stairways, Busby Berkeley mu
sical style, as dancers sur-
( ontinued. page I