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Night 1964 Is A Rock Mockumentary Intended Film Review

¶ … Night (1964) is a rock mockumentary intended to exploit the Beatles and Beatlemania during the band's meteoric rise. The film attempts to capture the Beatles as they struggle to deal with their sudden success and the subsequent lack of privacy that ensued. Although the film is not a true documentary, as it is a fictionalized interpretation of a documentary, it embodies several characteristics of the film style including the use of non-professional actors, music that everyone can hear, and the reconstruction of "historical" events. The first two characteristics are intrinsically connected as A Hard Day's Night follows a group of musicians, the Beatles, as they make their way to London from Liverpool via train in order to perform on a television show. Much like a documentary, the film makes use of non-professional actors to drive the narrative, however because the film is not a true documentary, but rather a fictionalized representation thereof, there are also a variety of professional...

For example, Paul McCartney's "grandfather" is played by Wilfrid Brambell, an Irish actor best known for his work on the television show Steptoe and Son. Furthermore, there is a running gag within the film's narrative in which Brambell is continuously referred to as a "clean old man" whereas his character in Steptoe and Son is often referred to as a "dirty old man" ("A Hard Day's Night 1964"). Despite the use of professional actors to help drive the narrative, and provide a bit of comic relief, the film, for the most part, focuses on the Beatles, who had no previous acting experience. However, because this film is a fictional narrative, it can be said that it helped to launch the acting careers of the Fab Four as the group, collectively and individually, would go on to participate in other film and television roles.
The second characteristic is closely tied to the subjects of the film and could not exist with them. Because music is…

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"A Hard Day's Night 1964." Rotten Tomatoes. Web. Accessed 6 March 2012.

A Hard Day's Night. Dir. Richard Lester. United Kingdom: United Artists, 1964. Film.
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