“Let it Be”, a documentary about the Beatles released shortly after the separation, in 1970, of the band that revolutionized music and embodied the rebellion of youth, returned to screens this Wednesday (8).
Using the original 16 millimeter negative, the Disney+ platform was able to produce this new version of the film, “Improviso”, as it was originally called in Portugal, which features remastered sound and uses the latest sound mixing technology.
Filmed in January 1969, the feature film by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg brings moments of tension and friction between John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, which eventually may have led to the band’s separation.
“George wasn’t able to record many songs because John and Paul were so prolifically brilliant,” Jonathan Clyde, director of the production company Apple Corps, founded by the Beatles themselves to look after their interests, told France-Presse.
“John met Yoko [Ono] and was following his own journey, Paul was doing what he wanted and Ringo started making films,” added Clyde.
Rooftop show
The documentary shows the “Fab Four” in rehearsals and recording sessions for the album “Let It Be”. The final part features a surprise 40-minute show on the roof of his publishing house’s building in Savile Row, London.
Clyde explained that the film covered a period in which the Beatles tried to rekindle the same spirit they had when they began performing at Liverpool’s Cavern Club and in the German city of Hamburg.
But that attempt was derailed by the band’s split in April 1970, a month before the documentary’s release, which unfairly made it a “sort of weird postscript to the end of their career,” Clyde added.
“They never had a big love for ‘Let It Be’ because I think they associated it with all these problems,” Clyde explained after Tuesday’s screening of the remastered film in London.
More than half a century later, the work can be seen from a more objective perspective, as an invaluable record of the Beatles’ creative process.
“We all know they were geniuses, they created incredible music year after year, but they also worked hard for it,” said the producer.
“You can see them taking two steps forward, or one step back within this process, with days when nothing really happens and then, suddenly, there is a burst of energy that moves them forward,” he added.
The director of “The Lord of the Rings”, Peter Jackson, used around 60 hours of previously unseen footage from that documentary for the launch, in 2021, of a series about the making of “Let It Be”.
A documentary about the documentary
“Improvisation”
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Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back,” a documentary about a documentary, offered a more positive look at the Beatles’ final months together, using footage to show the bandmates goofing around as they created classics for their 12th and final album. studio album.
The highlight of Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary, now remastered on Disney+, is the rooftop spectacle, their last public performance together.
Journalist and music critic John Harris said office workers and pedestrians dressed in bowler hats or miniskirts instantly stood in the streets or climbed to the tops of neighboring buildings to get a good view of the surprisingly spontaneous spectacle.
“It evokes the London of that time, with elderly people wearing hats and all those people going up to the roofs”, he explained.
“It’s an iconic image. John in his fur coat, Ringo in his red plastic raincoat, Paul in that beautiful black suit and George in his green pants and baseball boots. It’s all perfect,” he concluded.
