Scene Selection — Geoff Carter: The ‘four-headed beast’ returns on DVD

Friday, Sept. 27, 2002 | 9:08 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

George Harrison was my favorite Beatle. I felt his passing more keenly than that of John Lennon's (admittedly, I was too young when Lennon was killed to appreciate his significance) for several reasons, not the least of which was his calm, reasoned performance in "A Hard Day's Night," available this week on DVD (Miramax Home Entertainment, $29.99).

The Beatles begin the picture as a four-headed beast -- famously running into a train station, trying to avoid an amorous mangling by a horde of fans -- but soon split off into their respective personas.

John Lennon is the sardonic one, Paul McCartney the cute one, Ringo Starr the shy outsider and George Harrison is ... well, George just is, that's all. He takes to film so naturally that it's little wonder that he became a producer down the road.

Watch George's face as he teaches another character to shave. His expression is a meekly innocent, good-natured comic deadpan; it's the face Jim Carrey has been trying to nail in his serious roles, without success. And a scene in which George tells off a marketing consultant ("Have I said something amiss?") is so individualized that no other actor could have pulled it off.

It's pure George, playing the best George he could.

No Beatles were tapped to create this two-disc DVD, and while that may strike the average consumer as blasphemy, music and film fans should rejoice: The absence of Paul and Ringo allows the makers of "A Hard Day's Night," most notably director Richard Lester and musical director Sir George Martin, to step forward and summon the spirit of the times.

Not that they're needed, really -- an absolutely gorgeous transfer of the 1964 film brings Beatlemania to life once more. Shot in black-and-white out of budgetary considerations, "A Hard Day's Night" is timeless; it looks no different from Sam Jones' film about the American band Wilco, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," released this year.

But the two pictures live in entirely different universes: Where Wilco's film delves deep into the music business, The Beatles' film flees from it, into fancy.

In the universe of "A Hard Day's Night," the lads can be in two places at once. They can charm anyone into anything and twist the world to their will. In other words, they live in the world of rock video, which they more or less created with this film. (Lester puckishly notes that when MTV sent the director an award as "The Father of Rock Video," he "demanded a blood test.")

As edifying as the disc's many documentaries are (only Sir George Martin can get away with saying that certain Beatles songs "just aren't very good"), the film has little trouble explaining itself, once you know where to look for explanations.

Nearly everything you need to know about the revolution of The Beatles is in "A Hard Day's Night." You can see the myth of the band coiling itself around the lads, who in spite of all the attention simply act naturally.