Hacker Cinema
A Hard Day's Night
1964 · Film · 88 min
Directed by Richard Lester
Capturing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in their electrifying element, 'A Hard Day's Night' is a wildly irreverent journey through this pastiche of a day in the life of The Beatles during 1964. The band have to use all their guile and wit to avoid the pursuing fans and press to reach their scheduled television performance, in spite of Paul's troublemaking grandfather and Ringo's arrest.
1 positive6 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
A Hard Day's Night is great because it's basically just them goofing around. The rest of the Beatles films have their charms, but they're not actors. I really can't imagine that the idea was to do a straight LOTR adaptation, it must have been some kind of parody. The whole appeal of the Beatles on screen is that they're funny.
I agree the absolute pitch that orchestras played at may not have been consistent like it is today. However, perfect pitch is not really about Western standards or whether A equals 440. It's the ability to remember a pitch in absolute terms.
As a musician, I have a finely-tuned sense of relative pitch. I can pick out chords and melodies easily, but I don't know the reference key unless I hear an instrument and I'm told what note it is playing.
My son has perfect pitch. This became apparent when we watched the movie "A Hard Day's Night", and he complained that it was out of tune with respect to the Beatles albums he had heard.
I listened carefully to the two sources, and it turned out the movie was about a quarter tone flat compared to the recordings. Only a person with perfect pitch would notice that. The rest of us forget the absolute value of a pitch in a matter of minutes or less.
Same situation -- trained musician, excellent ear (I can make those Karaoke backing tracks) - but zero absolute/perfect reference without a tuning fork or tuned instrument.
Funny story: Watching "A Hard Day's Night" with my son, when he was around 8 years old: "Daddy, why are the Beatles out of tune?" (The tracks in the movie were slightly off-pitch compared to the album.)
Turns out he has perfect pitch. As in, he can start singing a song in the exact pitch he learned it -- close enough to sound in tune with the recording. This is accuracy to the discrimination level of trained musicians -- I estimate about 0.5% or 1/10 of a semi-tone.
Oddly, or not, it took him several years to learn to hear music on a relative basis -- to hear C-G as similar to D-A. Transposed songs (Sinatra sings "Something" in F) sounded to him like completely different songs.
Now he has developed an excellent musical ear, and taught himself to play bass.
relevant: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=34782.0
> is (I think) a still from the Hard Day's Night movie.
Yes it is.
The sequence beginning at 1:58 is (I think) a still from the Hard Day's Night movie. The sequence beginning at 4:29 uses the Help! album cover
To critique the critic, that review, although quite cutting, seems like a clumsy attempt the channel the spirit of Roger Ebert, e.g.:
> Spice World is obviously intended as a ripoff of 'A Hard Day's Night' which gave The Beatles to the movies... the huge difference, of course, is that the Beatles were talented—while, let's face it, the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women under the age of 30 standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts.
Damn, that man could scathe. More here: http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=61250
I'm not sure I'm able to visualize this correctly. Let's say we have an array of strings containing the top 20 movies from Rotten Tomatoes:
The Wizard of Oz The Third Man Citizen Kane All About Eve Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) Modern Times A Hard Day's Night The Godfather E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Metropolis It Happened One Night Singin' in the Rain Laura The Adventures of Robin Hood Inside Out Repulsion Boyhood North by Northwest King Kong Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
What would this data structure look like?
...and "A Hard Day's Night" was written one night to match the movie title, which was chosen essentially at random.