my favorite movies of 1964:

(1) A Hard Day’s Night

(2) Dr. Strangelove

favorite of 1964:

A Hard Day’s Night

(The Beatles, Wilfrid Brambell. Directed by Richard Lester.)

This is more than just a fun hour and a half for Beatles fans, as Ebert explained in a beautifully written review:

It was clear from the outset that “A Hard Day’s Night” was in a different category from the rock musicals that had starred Elvis and his imitators. It was smart, it was irreverent, it didn’t take itself seriously, and it was shot and edited by Richard Lester in an electrifying black-and-white, semi-documentary style that seemed to follow the boys during a day in their lives. And it was charged with the personalities of the Beatles, whose one-liners dismissed the very process of stardom they were undergoing. …

The most powerful quality evoked by “A Hard Day’s Night” is liberation. The long hair was just the superficial sign of that. An underlying theme is the difficulty establishment types have in getting the Beatles to follow orders. (For “establishment,” read uptight conventional middle-class 1950s values.) Although their manager (Norman Rossington) tries to control them and their TV director (Victor Spinetti) goes berserk because of their improvisations during a live TV broadcast, they act according to the way they feel. …

When Ringo grows thoughtful, he wanders away from the studio, and a recording session has to wait until he returns. When the boys are freed from their “job,” they run like children in an open field, and it is possible that scene (during “Can’t Buy Me Love”) snowballed into all the love-ins, be-ins and happenings in the park of the later ’60s. The notion of doing your own thing lurks within every scene. …

In his opening sequence, which shows the Beatles mobbed at a station as they try to board a train, Lester achieves an incredible energy level: We feel the hysteria of the fans and the excitement of the Beatles, intercut with the title song (the first time movie titles had done that), implying that the songs and the adulation were sides of the same coin. …

More from Ebert’s review:

Lester did not invent the techniques used in “A Hard Day’s Night,” but he brought them together into a grammar so persuasive that he influenced many other films. Today when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the children of “A Hard Day’s Night.”

The film is so tightly cut, there’s hardly a down moment, but even with so many riches, it’s easy to pick the best scene: The concert footage as the Beatles sing “She Loves You.” This is one of the most sustained orgasmic sequences in the movies. … (My favorite audience member is the tearful young blond, beside herself with ecstasy, tears running down her cheeks, crying out “George!”) …

The innocence of the Beatles and “A Hard Day’s Night” was of course not to last. … The Beatles would go through a long summer, a disillusioned fall, a tragic winter. But, oh, what a lovely springtime.

Stream A Hard Day’s Night on the Criterion Channel (with extras including interviews with the Beatles and commentary) or Max. If you don’t subscribe to the Criterion Channel, try a free trial.

 

2nd favorite of 1964:

Dr. Strangelove

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

(Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, James Earl Jones. Directed by Stanley Kubrick.)

Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water? … Vodka, that’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water. … Water is the source of all life. … Why, do you realize that 70% of you is water? And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to refresh our precious bodily fluids. … Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

Here are 17 facts about Dr. Strangelove. The last one is: the movie was seen as such a compelling warning that it led to real changes in US foreign policy.

Stream Dr. Strangelove on Max or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.