Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

The jukebox musical film, where existing songs are strung together to tell a story is not a new genre. Singin' in the Rain is perhaps the best and best-known example, but the film's reputation owes much to the distinctive directing style, witty script, strong story, and excellent approach to the music and the integration of the songs into the plotline. Sgt Pepper's Lonely-Hearts Club Band is the total antithesis of this, with crummy versions of great songs, shoehorned into a vague and confusing storyline, albeit starring a once in a lifetime cast.

The story revolves around the titular band, led by Billy Shears (Peter Frampton), and his friends the Hendersons (The Bee Gees), and some magical musical instruments that protect the town of Heartland. The band are lured away to Hollywood and the big time by their greedy manager (Paul Nicholas) and a sleazy record company executive (Donald Pleasance), who lure the naive musicians into a life of debauchery and mega stardom. Meanwhile along comes the villainous Mr Mustard (Frankie Howerd) to try and steal the magic instruments and then, I don't know, there is something about an evil scientist, Dr Maxwell (Steve Martin) and a cult leader, Father Sun (Alice Cooper). Oh, and George Burns is the mayor of Heartland. I won't lie, I lost track of and interest in the plot several times.

Musicals seem to be written in two ways. Either the story is written first, and the songs come second, and they, ideally, help drive the narrative forward, or the filmmakers are given a pool of songs to work with which they then must cobble together or shoehorn into a plot. With Singin' In the Rain the writers were given access to all the songs that Nacio Herb Brown had written for MGM musicals over a ten-year period, but these were used to add colour to scenes and move the story on. In Sgt Pepper, the characters are ill thought out and the situations lack any internal logic, with the likes of Mr Mustard and the Hendersons only included so that the corresponding song can be used, and with little in the way of dialogue, the lyrics are left to do a poor job of telling the confusing storyline.

Compounding the story problems is the terrible music, with the Bee Gees faring no better than they had on their previous attempts at covering Beatles songs for a film soundtrack, the bizarre All This and World War 2, (which suffered the opposite problem of trying to attach Beatles songs to an existing story, that of the Second World War), at best, adding nothing to the originals.

However, the film is not without merit, as Steve Martin delivers an entertaining version of Maxwell's Silver Hammer that is in keeping with his "Wild and Crazy Guy" persona of the time, and Aerosmith do a coolly menacing version of Come Together. If nothing else, the film provides an oddball insight into popular culture of the time, and where else are you going to get a cast like that?

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

A Hard Day’s Night is a film that rewrote the rules for how cinema and popular music work together and 50 years on the energy, wit and sheer joy of the film are undiminished. However, the template that it set was one that few if any have worked to the same level since, including the director and stars.  

The loose plot simply follows a fictional day in the life of The Beatles (John, Paul, George and Ringo all play fictional versions of themselves), as they travel by train to London to perform on a TV show. Along the way they are mobbed by fans, arrested by the police, separated, reunited and introduced to Paul’s mysterious, trouble causing, grandfather (played by Wilfrid Brambell of Steptoe fame) 

Alun Owen was brought in to put the script together, as the Beatles were fans of his Liverpool based play No Trams to Lime Street, and, having grown up in the area, he had an ear for Scouse dialect and dialogue. While never meant to be anything other than two-dimensional comic characters, the four Beatles that he creates each have distinctive personalities, while also having a definite group identity. It's almost a shame to think that much of this wonderful wordplay would have been lost on the films initial Beatlemania audience, who would have been too busy screaming the house down. 

Director Richard Lester was born in the USA but moved to London in the 1950s, working on commercials and TV shows, before making the 11-minute short The Running Jumping Standing Still film with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. The film became a firm favourite of the Beatles and led to Lester getting the job directing A Hard Day’s Night, and it is easy to see its influence on the innovative montage sequences of this film, with the sped up footage and radical idea of cutting the film to the rhythms of the music. A less obvious influence is the French New Wave, which can be seen with the handheld camera shots and use of real locations and people, as well as a casual disregard for rules and the "proper" way of making a film. 

The final element that makes this film so good is The Beatles themselves. They are not trained actors, and some lines fall flat, but generally they give a very good account of themselves. It does not surprise me that musicians can sometimes make a go of acting, as they are still used to performing, and in some respects, playing a role on stage. Plus, there is their wonderful music, with no hint of psychedelia or the complex studio experiments that would follow later in their career, just breathless exuberant 2 minute pop classics. 

A Hard Day's Night is one link in a fairly long cultural chain, one which spans a generation and an ocean. Lester clearly likes the energy of American silent trailblazers like Buster Keaton, and surreal invention of the Marx Brothers, the latter being a big influence on The Goon Show, two members of which (Milligan and Sellers) Lester worked with on The Running Jumping Standing Still film. The Goon Show had a fanatical fan in the shape of one John Lennon, and he would talk enthusiastically of the influence it had on both his work and his outlook on life. And, let’s not forget that the Goons also influenced Monty Python, whose Life of Brian was rescued at the last minute with a large cheque from George Harrison. 

Few groups or directors have managed to recreate the magic or energy of A Hard Day's Night, including Lester and the Beatles themselves. The following year they would team up again to make Help, but the end product feels lethargic and sloppy, straining too hard for laughs, with a general feeling of nobody caring as much this time around.

All This and World War II (1976)

All This and World War 2 proves, as a famous man once said, that there is a fine line between clever and stupid. No matter how clever the idea of cutting newsreel and movie footage from the 30s and 40s with the music of the Beatles (not the originals, but covers by stars of the 70s such as The Bee Gees and Leo Sayer) may sound on paper, the end result is very, very stupid.

The main problem is that the choice of songs is rarely either appropriate or very imaginative for the footage, and by limiting herself to Beatles tracks, director Susan Winslow has to shoehorn something in, regardless of relevance. Good taste does not really come into it, which is why in the first two minutes, we see scenes of Hitler visiting his forces, and soldiers marching around doing soldier things, all set to "Magical Mystery Tour" (complete with a Nazi brass band "playing" along). While I am sure there was uncertainty and trepidation around the world as to how the war would turn out, are they seriously comparing the outbreak of war with a "Magical Mystery Tour"?

Even a relatively downbeat pop song such as “Help”, seems crass compared to what we are shown of the individual heroism of soldiers or the wider struggle of the UK's attempts to get the USA involved. Sometimes the juxtapositions are not inappropriate, or silly, but crashingly obvious, with Hitler gazing wistfully from atop his Bavarian mountain retreat, while “The Fool on the Hill” plays in the background, or “Getting Better” while things are, well, getting better for the Allies. Most of the time though the musical choices are just pointless and inexplicable, such as “Polythene Pam” playing behind scenes of people trying on Gas Masks, “Maxwell's Silver Hammer” for scenes of men signing up for the Draft, and, most bafflingly of all, the bombing of Pearl Harbour set to “I am The Walrus”.

The simple fact is that much of this footage does not need any musical accompaniment, being dramatic, chilling or moving enough on its own. It certainly does not need these versions of the songs, none of which improve on the originals, and many of which manage to suck any life and emotion out of the original and replace it with dullness or phoney overwrought schmaltz, which jars terribly against real images of heartbreak and sacrifice.

Rather than just stringing together footage at random, director Susan Winslow does try to create a narrative arc, stretching from Chamberlain and his talk of appeasement, right up to the birth of the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, World War 2 is just too complex a thing to boil down into 80 minutes, without skimming over or trivialising many of the aspects of it. A perfect example is the issue of race in the armed forces. We see footage of white troops training, followed shortly by footage of black troops training separately, implying that among the forces fighting a racist ideology there was an element of segregation and racism. However, later we see a montage of Allied troops (an African-American, an Irishman, a Sikh, a Pole, and a Frenchman), proudly announcing where they are from. So are they saying there was no racism? Alternatively, is it more complicated than that? This is a subject worthy of a documentary of its own, but here, it is shown and quickly discarded as the narrative marches remorselessly onwards to the next event, without giving any further explanation or context.

This leads me to wonder what the point of All This and World War II is. It is a documentary but it has no message or point of view, and a distinctive gimmick, but no substance. The skimming over or avoiding of themes and events means, unless anyone is unaware who won the war, it is useless as an educational tool. If the Beatles and World War 2 mix is meant as a joke, it is a five-minute joke stretched over 80. In addition, despite some occasional lapses in good taste, it stops short of being truly offensive, so does not even pass muster as a work of pure provocation.