Reply to Topic
After being out of circulation for several decades, the Beatles documentary Let It Be is set to make its streaming debut next month
Let It Be - The Beatles
After being out of circulation for several decades, the Beatles documentary Let It Be is set to make its streaming debut next month
Pretty darn unnecessary, now that we have so much more of the footage in and the context from Get Back. At least I can get rid of my old bootleg copy, I reckon.
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
X
Favorite Movies
Pretty darn unnecessary, now that we have so much more of the footage in and the context from Get Back. At least I can get rid of my old bootleg copy, I reckon.
Get Back is definitely the superior document, but I don't know about it making Let it Be unnecessary. I think of it as a bit of a Rashomon situation regarding the final years of the band.
Hoggs film is likely overly pessimistic and dark. But he was also a man who was actually there, and there may have been good reason for him to make a movie like this. Given the time, it may have been disillusioning for the filmmaker to be witness to how maybe the image everyone knew of the Beatles at the time, the brotherly comradery, the genius of their friendship, was no longer what it seemed. The movie was probably as much a reflection of his own disillusionment as it is about a band coming apart at the seams
And Jackson's point of view is almost the complete opposite. It's that of a Beatlemaniac, many years removed, well aware of the acrimony that broke up the band, and the legend of these notoriously sour sessions, finding these more inspiring moments of them still being pals, still being a creative force together, and pulling them out from the shadows of the black cloud of those sessions. It's lightness and joy is a revelation, not because it's more true, but that it shows how much context shapes how we view anything.
So ultimately both of these movies are likely true. In different ways and for different reasons. And the two of them taken together, probably give us the best idea of what the truth of the Beatles end was actually like. Their contradictions necessary to understand the biggest picture
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Having access to nearly 6 hours of raw footage is nice, but imho nothing should ever replace the actual film that was released at the time, and which is what people would have actually been reacting to back then.
I have very little interest in going through 6 hours of raw footage that has been given an excessive digital makeover, far and beyond what was strictly necessary to restore it back to what it would have looked like at the time it was brand new. Since they'll probably do the same with Let It Be, it will be a mixed bag in terms of being faithful to the original film, but at least it will be available again, legally, which it hasn't been for several decades.
I mean, the last legit release of this documentary was in the early laserdisc era.
I have very little interest in going through 6 hours of raw footage that has been given an excessive digital makeover, far and beyond what was strictly necessary to restore it back to what it would have looked like at the time it was brand new. Since they'll probably do the same with Let It Be, it will be a mixed bag in terms of being faithful to the original film, but at least it will be available again, legally, which it hasn't been for several decades.
I mean, the last legit release of this documentary was in the early laserdisc era.
Good interview with Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of Let It Be, who promises that he got Peter Jackson to dial it back a little bit with the overly digitized look when it came to this 1970 documentary.
Also, he explains why Let It Be isn't just a shorter version of Get Back.
Also, he explains why Let It Be isn't just a shorter version of Get Back.
In 2021, the director Peter Jackson’s sprawling and vibrant Beatles docuseries, “The Beatles: Get Back,” streamed on Disney+ to nearly universal acclaim. The three-part epic, which ran nearly eight hours, captured the drama and frenzy as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded, over the pressure-filled month of January 1969, what would become the last album that the Beatles released, “Let It Be.”
As fans were well aware, Jackson’s series was culled from nearly 60 hours of behind-the-scenes footage originally shot by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for “Let It Be,” his little-seen, though often dismissed, 1970 documentary about those recording sessions.
After its initial theatrical run, Lindsay-Hogg’s film largely disappeared for more than a half-century with the exception of low-quality VHS versions and bootlegs. Fans tend to remember it as an intriguing historical document capturing the late-stage creative flights of a seismic musical force, but also as a divorce proceeding of sorts, with stark moments of internal discord as the band hurtled toward a nasty split.
By that view, “Get Back,” with its abundant moments of jokey banter and on-set clowning, was seen by some as an overdue corrective to “Let It Be.”
Little surprise but Lindsay-Hogg, 83, has a very different view. The acclaimed director had a hand in inventing the music video, with his promotional films for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s, and went on to win plaudits for the 1980s British mini-series “Brideshead Revisited.” He has fought for a half-century for “Let It Be” to get a second look and, in his mind, a fair shake.
On May 8, he will get his wish, when “Let It Be,” meticulously restored by Jackson’s production team, begins streaming on Disney+ in collaboration with Apple Corps, the company that oversees the Beatles creative and business interests. Lindsay-Hogg spoke to The New York Times about the culmination of a long crusade. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You have been working for decades to revive “Let It Be.” What finally changed?
Peter was the catalyst. He and I met in December 2018, before he really started on “Get Back,” and he said, “Tell me the story of ‘Let It Be’ — you know, what’s happened since you made it, because I’ve seen it pretty recently and I think that movie should come out.” So a year or two went by, and he told me that he had a very good relationship with Paul and Ringo and also with Sean Lennon and Olivia Harrison, George’s widow, as well as with Jonathan Clyde, who produced “Get Back” for Apple. So he started to advocate for “Let It Be” to come out. He and Clyde got a budget for the restoration work, and slowly it moved through Apple.
Is “Let It Be” just a short version of “Get Back”?
Peter very much didn’t want “Get Back” to look like he just pulled it from “Let It Be,” so if he wanted to show a scene that was in my film, he would show it from different angles and reconstruct it differently. There are scenes in “Let It Be” that aren’t in “Get Back.” They’re very different, although obviously they have many great similarities.
A lot of people remember “Let It Be” as a bad-vibes movie, probably in part because of that famous scene in which George and Paul bicker about George’s guitar part on “Two of Us.” Was that exchange another sign of the beginning of the end?
No one had ever seen the Beatles have a fight, but that wasn’t really a fight. Up to that point, no one had filmed, except in bits and pieces, the Beatles rehearsing. So that was new territory. That exchange between Paul and George, they never commented on, because it was the same kind of conversation that any artistic collaborators would have. As a director in the theater and in movies, I know that kind of conversation happens five times a week.
When “Get Back” came out, a lot of fans saw it as happy corrective to “Let It Be.” Is that accurate?
I would say most people who saw Peter’s picture as a corrective to mine haven’t seen mine, because no one was able to see it for 50 years. So unless they were children when they saw it in theaters, the only way most people would have seen it was on VHS or bootlegs, which changed the original aspect ratio and had dark and gloomy pictures and bad sound. That is part of the reason the movie was put in the closet for a long time.
How much does the digital restoration change the look and sound of “Let It Be”?
When Peter first showed me some restored images of the film, one was of a couple of the Beatles from the back, and their hair in the original looked very clumped. Then he said, “Now let me show you what we’ve been working on.” It was the same shot, but you could see the individual strands of hair. The new version is a 21st century version of a 20th century movie. It is certainly brighter and livelier than what ended up on videotape. It looks now like it was intended to look in 1969 or 1970, although at my request, Peter did give it a more filmic look than “Get Back,” which had a slightly more modern and digital look.
The four Beatles skipped the 1970 premiere of “Let It Be.” Was that in protest?
As we now know, the Beatles were in the process of breaking up when the film was getting ready to go. People were feeling perhaps rancorous toward each other; they weren’t getting on. They announced their breakup in April 1970, and “Let It Be” was released in May. “Let It Be” was collateral damage. People didn’t see it for what it was, and went looking for what it wasn’t.
As recently as 2021, Ringo said there was “no joy” in the film. Did the members of the band actually seem unhappy with it at the time?
Well, after we watched the rough cut in July, the day before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, John and Yoko [Ono], Paul and Linda McCartney, Peter Brown from Apple and me and my girlfriend went out for dinner at Provans in London. The film, I think, was regarded very much as a promising work in progress. There was no snarky business going on. We sat and had a good time like friends do. We talked about our childhoods, had a couple of bottles of wine. When we showed them the final cut in late November, we all went out for dinner again, to a place with a discothčque. We all had a nightcap and a chat, and Paul said he thought the movie was good. Ringo was jiving out on the dance floor. He’s a good dancer.
After 54 years, do you think fans will have a different perception of the film?
If you see it with no preconceptions, the picture works very well, and it’s clear that you’re looking at four men who have known each other since they were teenagers — well, three of them anyway — who love each other as brothers might. But they weren’t any more the Fab Four, the mop tops. A couple of them are pushing 30. They had stopped touring, which is a very big change for a rock ’n’ roll group. What you see in the movie is that the affection is eternal between the four of them. But they were living very separate lives now.
During filming, did you get the sense that they were on the verge of breaking up?
No, not at all. We started shooting with four Beatles. We ended it with four Beatles. It was not like the San Andreas Fault. I thought they might go off and do their own thing, follow their heart and release separate albums, but then get together, because the Beatles were a very powerful artistic force, and also social force. I didn’t think the Beatles were going to break up till they broke up.
Even critics of “Let It Be” would have a hard time arguing that their final live set on the roof of Apple Corps wasn’t a joyous moment.
How lucky can you get that the last line in the movie is from John, up on the roof. The set has been broken up by the police — which is good, because that’s as many songs as they had rehearsed anyway — then John says, “And I hope we passed the audition.” Because if anyone did pass the audition, in that entire decade, it was the Beatles.
As fans were well aware, Jackson’s series was culled from nearly 60 hours of behind-the-scenes footage originally shot by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for “Let It Be,” his little-seen, though often dismissed, 1970 documentary about those recording sessions.
After its initial theatrical run, Lindsay-Hogg’s film largely disappeared for more than a half-century with the exception of low-quality VHS versions and bootlegs. Fans tend to remember it as an intriguing historical document capturing the late-stage creative flights of a seismic musical force, but also as a divorce proceeding of sorts, with stark moments of internal discord as the band hurtled toward a nasty split.
By that view, “Get Back,” with its abundant moments of jokey banter and on-set clowning, was seen by some as an overdue corrective to “Let It Be.”
Little surprise but Lindsay-Hogg, 83, has a very different view. The acclaimed director had a hand in inventing the music video, with his promotional films for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s, and went on to win plaudits for the 1980s British mini-series “Brideshead Revisited.” He has fought for a half-century for “Let It Be” to get a second look and, in his mind, a fair shake.
On May 8, he will get his wish, when “Let It Be,” meticulously restored by Jackson’s production team, begins streaming on Disney+ in collaboration with Apple Corps, the company that oversees the Beatles creative and business interests. Lindsay-Hogg spoke to The New York Times about the culmination of a long crusade. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You have been working for decades to revive “Let It Be.” What finally changed?
Peter was the catalyst. He and I met in December 2018, before he really started on “Get Back,” and he said, “Tell me the story of ‘Let It Be’ — you know, what’s happened since you made it, because I’ve seen it pretty recently and I think that movie should come out.” So a year or two went by, and he told me that he had a very good relationship with Paul and Ringo and also with Sean Lennon and Olivia Harrison, George’s widow, as well as with Jonathan Clyde, who produced “Get Back” for Apple. So he started to advocate for “Let It Be” to come out. He and Clyde got a budget for the restoration work, and slowly it moved through Apple.
Is “Let It Be” just a short version of “Get Back”?
Peter very much didn’t want “Get Back” to look like he just pulled it from “Let It Be,” so if he wanted to show a scene that was in my film, he would show it from different angles and reconstruct it differently. There are scenes in “Let It Be” that aren’t in “Get Back.” They’re very different, although obviously they have many great similarities.
A lot of people remember “Let It Be” as a bad-vibes movie, probably in part because of that famous scene in which George and Paul bicker about George’s guitar part on “Two of Us.” Was that exchange another sign of the beginning of the end?
No one had ever seen the Beatles have a fight, but that wasn’t really a fight. Up to that point, no one had filmed, except in bits and pieces, the Beatles rehearsing. So that was new territory. That exchange between Paul and George, they never commented on, because it was the same kind of conversation that any artistic collaborators would have. As a director in the theater and in movies, I know that kind of conversation happens five times a week.
When “Get Back” came out, a lot of fans saw it as happy corrective to “Let It Be.” Is that accurate?
I would say most people who saw Peter’s picture as a corrective to mine haven’t seen mine, because no one was able to see it for 50 years. So unless they were children when they saw it in theaters, the only way most people would have seen it was on VHS or bootlegs, which changed the original aspect ratio and had dark and gloomy pictures and bad sound. That is part of the reason the movie was put in the closet for a long time.
How much does the digital restoration change the look and sound of “Let It Be”?
When Peter first showed me some restored images of the film, one was of a couple of the Beatles from the back, and their hair in the original looked very clumped. Then he said, “Now let me show you what we’ve been working on.” It was the same shot, but you could see the individual strands of hair. The new version is a 21st century version of a 20th century movie. It is certainly brighter and livelier than what ended up on videotape. It looks now like it was intended to look in 1969 or 1970, although at my request, Peter did give it a more filmic look than “Get Back,” which had a slightly more modern and digital look.
The four Beatles skipped the 1970 premiere of “Let It Be.” Was that in protest?
As we now know, the Beatles were in the process of breaking up when the film was getting ready to go. People were feeling perhaps rancorous toward each other; they weren’t getting on. They announced their breakup in April 1970, and “Let It Be” was released in May. “Let It Be” was collateral damage. People didn’t see it for what it was, and went looking for what it wasn’t.
As recently as 2021, Ringo said there was “no joy” in the film. Did the members of the band actually seem unhappy with it at the time?
Well, after we watched the rough cut in July, the day before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, John and Yoko [Ono], Paul and Linda McCartney, Peter Brown from Apple and me and my girlfriend went out for dinner at Provans in London. The film, I think, was regarded very much as a promising work in progress. There was no snarky business going on. We sat and had a good time like friends do. We talked about our childhoods, had a couple of bottles of wine. When we showed them the final cut in late November, we all went out for dinner again, to a place with a discothčque. We all had a nightcap and a chat, and Paul said he thought the movie was good. Ringo was jiving out on the dance floor. He’s a good dancer.
After 54 years, do you think fans will have a different perception of the film?
If you see it with no preconceptions, the picture works very well, and it’s clear that you’re looking at four men who have known each other since they were teenagers — well, three of them anyway — who love each other as brothers might. But they weren’t any more the Fab Four, the mop tops. A couple of them are pushing 30. They had stopped touring, which is a very big change for a rock ’n’ roll group. What you see in the movie is that the affection is eternal between the four of them. But they were living very separate lives now.
During filming, did you get the sense that they were on the verge of breaking up?
No, not at all. We started shooting with four Beatles. We ended it with four Beatles. It was not like the San Andreas Fault. I thought they might go off and do their own thing, follow their heart and release separate albums, but then get together, because the Beatles were a very powerful artistic force, and also social force. I didn’t think the Beatles were going to break up till they broke up.
Even critics of “Let It Be” would have a hard time arguing that their final live set on the roof of Apple Corps wasn’t a joyous moment.
How lucky can you get that the last line in the movie is from John, up on the roof. The set has been broken up by the police — which is good, because that’s as many songs as they had rehearsed anyway — then John says, “And I hope we passed the audition.” Because if anyone did pass the audition, in that entire decade, it was the Beatles.
Having access to nearly 6 hours of raw footage is nice, but imho nothing should ever replace the actual film that was released at the time, and which is what people would have actually been reacting to back then.
I have very little interest in going through 6 hours of raw footage that has been given an excessive digital makeover, far and beyond what was strictly necessary to restore it back to what it would have looked like at the time it was brand new. Since they'll probably do the same with Let It Be, it will be a mixed bag in terms of being faithful to the original film, but at least it will be available again, legally, which it hasn't been for several decades.
I mean, the last legit release of this documentary was in the early laserdisc era.
I have very little interest in going through 6 hours of raw footage that has been given an excessive digital makeover, far and beyond what was strictly necessary to restore it back to what it would have looked like at the time it was brand new. Since they'll probably do the same with Let It Be, it will be a mixed bag in terms of being faithful to the original film, but at least it will be available again, legally, which it hasn't been for several decades.
I mean, the last legit release of this documentary was in the early laserdisc era.
It's a movie that definitely needed a restoration and re release. It's essential stuff (as really most things that shed any light on the Beatles myth are)
X
Favorite Movies
X