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| Images courtesy of Apple Corps Limited |
Following the 1964 critically acclaimed commercial hit The
Beatles rock film A Hard Day’s Night by American comedy director
Richard Lester which coincided with the band’s album of the same name, the Fab
Four consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr
were forever synonymous with cinema.
Considered to be one of the greatest rock comedies in film history
playing off of a day in the life of the personalities of The Beatles, it
was only natural a year later they’d reunite with director Lester again for the
more patently absurdist and satirical spy musical comedy Help! also connected
to the album of the same name. Moving
from black-and-white to color over the course of the two Beatles-Lester
screen collaborations and on the heels of their 1967 psychedelic album Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney envisioned an experimental
film involving unscripted local (and widely popular) coach bus tours called Magical
Mystery Tour.
Intended to paint a portrait of Liverpool with hallucinatory
leanings, the film was put on hold while they worked on recording songs for the
upcoming animated The Beatles film Yellow Submarine. But when their longtime manager Brian Epstein
died of a prescription drug overdose, in the process of grieving the band went
ahead with recording the music for what ultimately became their next double-EP
(released as LP in the US) with Magical Mystery Tour. Following this, the band proceeded with what
became the Fab Four’s first set of directorial credits with the 1967 short
television film of the same name. Inspired
by Ken Kesey’s 1964 American bus tour Furthur with the Merry Pranksters
and by the impetus to replace stage shows with television broadcasts, the largely
improvised BBC TV film made up by the bandmates, few cast and crew members on
board went into production.
Co-written by their road manager Mal Evans who plays himself
in the film alongside the bandmates and featuring uncredited direction by Norman
Conquest filmmaker Bernard Knowles, Magical Mystery Tour more or
less follows Richard B. Starkey (Ringo Starr) and his widowed Auntie Jessie
(Jessie Robins) on their sojourn through England on a surreal and unpredictable
bus tour. Among the members on the bus
include the tour director Jolly Jimmy Johnson (Derek Royle), hostess Miss Wendy
Winters (Miranda Forbes), conductor Buster Bloodvessel (Ivor Cutler) and the
other bandmates. Over the course of the thinly
veiled quasi-surrealist “documentary” film, peculiar things begin to happen as
five magicians played by The Beatles and manager Mal Evans start pulling
pranks on the unsuspecting tourists.
Making pit stops along the way, the tour includes everything from makeshift
drag racing, a drill sergeant instructing in the ways of attacking a stuffed
cow and a waiter played by John Lennon shoveling endless piles of spaghetti
onto a plate.
Throughout the largely nonsensical freeform student film “home
movie” connected to an otherwise classic The Beatles EP, Magical
Mystery Tour segues into musical numbers of the bandmates performing the
tracks from the album. Reportedly some
of the footage during the track Flying was taken from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove, a move which prompted Kubrick to complain to the film’s editor
Roy Benson. The shortest running The
Beatles feature film to date, it was shot within two weeks and often times
the bandmates were working without a finished script and were making it up as
they went along, a move which irked some of the more trained actors on the
shoot. Shot by Ringo Starr under the
pseudonym Richard Starkey M.B.E., the footage has the unpolished feeling of an
acid infused countercultural student film even as its bandmates romp around in
animal costumes.
Originally shown in black-and-white in 1967 before Ringo
Starr phoned into the BBC to complain it was meant to be in color which was
shown again later (both times on British network television), Magical
Mystery Tour the short film was met with almost universal derision from
critics and avowed The Beatles fans alike. With poor numbers coming back from both
shows, the televised bomb was held off of US markets until roughly a year
later. Further still, independent film company
New Line Cinema ultimately bought the rights to the film in 1974 for a limited
theatrical run and home video distribution.
With much of the blame for the project’s failure placed on Paul
McCartney who wavered back and forth on the film’s merit or lack thereof, the
film despite the critical drubbing didn’t stop the album of the same name from
becoming a commercial success. Years
later, the glorified psychedelic home movie with The Beatles spawned a
parody film Tragical History Tour featuring the parody band The
Rutles.
Circa 2012 Apple Films (not Apple TV) oversaw a full digital
restoration of the film on DVD and Blu-Ray disc replete with a newly remixed
5.1 surround audio track. Released on
October 8th (US following a day later), the remastered DVD release
version of the film briefly entered the Billboard Top Music Video chart
at number one for the last week of the month, finally achieving the commercial
success it never saw originally. While
the film’s merits are still debatable among critics and fans, looking at it
years later though haphazard and incoherent there’s kind of a dated charm to
the piece and it nevertheless remains an integral part of The Beatles cinematic
lore. Considered a misfire that
developed into a cult curiosity in the years since, it points to an
intermediary period when the band lost their chief manager and through the
process of grieving kept on working towards pushing the envelope sonically and
lyrically whether listeners were ready or not.
Nowhere near the bar set by Richard Lester’s film collaborations with
the band but absolutely part of their silver screen saga.
--Andrew Kotwicki
