BLU-RAY MUSIC

Stephen Dawson has waited more than 50 years to watch the classic Beatles movie, A Hard Day’s Night, and reports that it was worth it.

Director: Richard Lester Starring: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington and John Junkin

Tardiness can sometimes provide benefits: my first experience of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was on this Blu-ray disc. The benefits of this soon became obvious because you get the DVD in the same box. The DVD clearly demonstrated how much better even a fifty-year-old movie looks on Blu-ray.

It turned out that even though the DVD is locked to Region 4 (the Blu-ray is region free), it is encoded with US-style 480i60 video, rather than Australian-style 576i50. That’s a good choice because were it delivered Australian-style, then either the movie would run four per cent faster, and the pitch would be four per cent higher, or it would have to be reprocessed in complicated ways that would likely lower the picture quality. Pitch is important because ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is, in a sense, a traditional musical. The story is simple: it’s a day in the life of the lads. There are lots of set piece comedy routines, some of which still work rather well, and some of which went out of fashion around the time of Buster Keaton (or, perhaps, Benny Hill). Some bits had sour old me laughing out loud. And then there are the famous teenage girl fans, all overcome by emotion. Hundreds of them.

Throughout, the fab four lift the material. They’re natural on-screen performers, relaxed and smooth. It’s fascinating to see them in those moments just as their transformation into THE BEATLES! was starting.

Interesting question: why the M rating? The M rating was from 2002 and previously it had been G. I asked the relevant government department and it turns out that the movie itself remains G rated, but there was some bad language in one of the special extras so the disc was rated M.

The sound defaults to 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio. The original was mono and both that and a stereo mix are provided in Dolby Digital format. Of course it opens with the eponymous song, which it turns out was written in one night when the producers requested a song to match the movie title.

With the 5.1 mix there is virtually no separation in the action, just the tiniest amount of bleed into the surround channels, with an even spread of essentially mono sound across the front three channels. The songs, however, are delivered in creditable stereo. The recording quality is essentially identical to that of the LP, which is to say decent early 1960s pop.

The picture is a very attractive black and white, sharp, detailed, clean and bold. There’s a bit when Ringo is walking beside a canal where the focus slips, but that’s a rarity.