Remastered Beatles film ‘Let It Be’ gets long-awaited re-release – Entertainment
“Let it Be,” the Beatles documentary released shortly after the band’s 1970 breakup, hit screens again on Wednesday — the first time it has been available legally in more than 50 years.
Filmed in January 1969, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s film contained glimpses of the tensions and animosities between John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr that eventually led to their separation.
“George wasn’t recording many songs because John and Paul were so prolifically brilliant,” Jonathan Clyde of the Beatles’ Apple Corps told AFP.
“John met Yoko (Ono) and was going on his own journey, Paul was doing his thing and Ringo started making films,” he said.
The film shows the “Fab Four” rehearsing and recording the album “Let It Be”.
The last part features the unannounced 40-minute show on the roof of his record company’s building in London’s Savile Row.
It has been restored from the original 16mm negative with remastered sound using the latest mixing technology and has been re-released on Disney+.
More objective
Clyde said the film covered a period when they tried to rekindle the same spirit they had when they started performing at Liverpool’s Cavern Club and in Hamburg.
But it was tainted by their split in April 1970, a month before the film was released, unfairly making it a “sort of weird postscript to the end of their career”, he added.
“They never felt a great love for ‘Let It Be’ because I think it was associated with all the problems,” he told the audience after a screening of the remastered film in London on Tuesday.
More than half a century later, it could now be seen in a more objective light, as an invaluable record of the Beatles’ creative process.
“We all know they were geniuses, they created this amazing music year after year, but they actually worked really hard on it too,” he said.
“You can see two steps forward, one step back, days where nothing really happened, and then suddenly a burst of energy that drives you forward.”
Iconic
About 60 hours of never-before-seen footage for the film was used by “The Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson in his 2021 series about the making of “Let It Be.”
Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back,” a documentary about a documentary, offered a more positive look at the Beatles’ final months together, using outtakes to show the bandmates joking together as they created classics for their 12th and final album. studio.
The climax of Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary is their rooftop concert, their last public performance together.
Journalist and music critic John Harris said it was a photo of London in 1969, with office workers and passers-by dressed in bowler hats or miniskirts stopping in the street or climbing to the tops of neighboring buildings to get a good view.
“It evokes London of that period, which is amazing to see – guys who fought in the First World War wearing hats, all those people who flowed onto the rooftops.
“It’s iconic, John in his fur coat and Ringo in his red plastic cape and Paul… in that beautiful black suit and George in his green pants and baseball boots. It’s all perfect,” he said.
