Review: Beatles '64 (2024)

Is a movie featuring archival footage of the Beatles automatically a good movie? It’s tempting to say yes, as the Beatles are among the most charismatic, authentic, and casually funny celebrities of the 20th century. So it’s too bad that Beatles ‘64, the new documentary directed by David Tedeschi and produced by Martin Scorsese, mostly focuses on the people caught up in the band’s orbit during their iconic visit to America in 1964 rather than on the band members themselves. There is footage of the Beatles, to be sure, much of it borrowed from Albert and David Maysles’ 1964 documentary, What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. But there are also too many interviews with other figures, from Smokey Robinson to David Lynch, who reflect on the legacy of the Beatles in the sort of broadstrokes that we’ve seen in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of documentaries in the past.

Not every documentary can be held to the same lofty standards as Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back from 2021, which took advantage of many hours of remarkable, never-before-seen footage from the making of the album Let It Be. But a new movie about a band as documented as the Beatles needs to have a reason to exist, and Beatles ‘64 openly struggles with justifying its existence. To attempt to do so, the movie tries to frame its approach from some unique cultural vantage points on the Beatles’ tour of America in 1964.

The first approach is to cast the tour in the shadow of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. The film starts with archival footage of JFK giving famous speeches followed by an abrupt cut to funeral processions and public mourning. The Beatles arrived the following February, so it’s clear that the wound of JFK’s death was still fresh by the time they played on The Ed Sullivan Show. But aside from the opening framing and a few late comments from a new interview with Paul McCartney, the approach adds little. It’s also clear that the Beatles would’ve been a hit in America regardless of whether JFK was assassinated

The second approach is to focus on how the Beatles embraced their black influences rather than white washed them. For instance, the film shows archival footage of Little Richard joking about how Pat Boone covered “Tutti Frutti” and transformed it into the most anodyne version imaginable. It then shows interviews with Smokey Robinson and other prominent Motown musicians discussing how the Beatles truly loved their music. The Beatles wore their love of black music openly when covering it and by acknowledging their influences. In short, The Beatles did not pull a Pat Boone when covering Robinson’s “Long Tall Sally” or the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout.”

This sort of progressive cultural approach, which ties all American culture back to black American culture, is common in documentaries about the arts in 2024, but it’s hardly illuminating, especially with a band like the Beatles that had truly diverse interests and influences that only grew more intense the deeper into the decade they got. (Think India, as well.) Pointing out that the Beatles were not Elvis Presley is not novel.

So, if the film’s frame narrative and cultural approaches are rather lacklustre, what are we left with? Some mediocre interviews with modern public figures and long-time Beatles fans, some interesting snapshots of American life in 1964, and some great (but not enough) footage of the Beatles, including their iconic performances on The Ed Sullivan Show. It’s truly a blast to watch any moment with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, either on stage or goofing around behind the scenes. But as George Harrison quipped on The Simpsons, “It’s been done.”

Rather than make a whole new film with a tenuous thesis, the better tactic might have been to simply remaster and re-release What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. But Disney, which produced this doc for release on Disney+, cannot let any opportunity to reheat past success pass it by. The House of Mouse loves a good rehash, justification be damned.

5 out of 10

Beatles ‘64 (2024, UK/USA)

Directed by David Tedeschi.

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