Gimme some roof
The much-bootlegged Beatles coda, restored and officially returned to the screen. By Tom Doyle.
Let It Be
★★★★
Dir. Michael Lindsay-Hogg
DISNEY+. S
LET IT BE, the film, was always a strange epilogue to The Beatles’ career, and one that they immediately disowned. None of the four turned up at any of its three premieres, held in May 1970 in New York, Liverpool and London, the latter nonetheless attracting the likes of Spike Milligan and Lulu plus exes Jane Asher and Cynthia Lennon. Only a month after the Daily Mirror ran the screaming front page headline, “Paul Is Quitting The Beatles”, emotions within the camp remained understandably raw.
Since then, the documentar y has undergone a weird afterlife: released on video tape and LaserDisc in the early ’80s; revisited in 1992 ahead of parts of it being used in the Anthology TV series, with a DVD release mooted and then scrapped in the mid ’90s, and again in the late ’00s. McCartney and Starr, it seemed, were not keen to remind a global audience of a time when The Beatles were bickering.
All of that changed with the arrival of director Peter Jackson and his extensive upgrading and positive spin re-imagining of the footage for the near-eight-hour-long Get Back. Now, likely as a thank you to Let It Be director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Jackson has been involved in this new, sanctioned restoration of the film, which employs the same audio and visual technology, while remaining free of the digital post-production techniques that made certain sections of Get Back look alien and odd. Lindsay-Hogg insisted that this new version retain its cinematic quality and hopes that it will now be “embraced for [its] curious and fascinating character”.
Of course, post-Get Back, we’re now viewing Let It Be through a different lens. If there was any sense that Lindsay-Hogg edited the original for ultimate dramatic effect, we now know that he chose – or was advised – to leave on the cutting room floor the scene where Harrison walks out of the band during the Twickenham rehearsals.
In his version, though, Yoko Ono seemed to get a rougher deal – depicted within the first few minutes as an unsmiling interloper plonked amid the Fabs, gazing adoringly at John as the band run through Don’t Let Me Down. Later, in a Two Of Us tr y-out where Paul does his Elvis impersonation and John goofs with his guitar, the scene cuts to Ono looking morose, as if she isn’t happy at all about this laddish camaraderie. Once again, we’re now aware that a key
“Watching The Beatles suddenly turn it on is still genuinely startling…”
scene where Ono and the soon-to-be Linda McCartney are seen smiling and amiably whispering while
The Beatles play Let It Be was similarly scrapped.
If Let It Be sometimes lacked balance, it’s also interesting to see how it was largely context-free.
The action cuts from
Twickenham to Savile Row to rooftop without any explanation whatsoever, and even the scenes of the policemen nervously arriving at Apple to stop the show is rendered dialogue-free, as the band hammer through Dig A
Pony. Nonetheless, watching The Beatles, after days and weeks of scrappy rehearsal, suddenly turn it on for an audience is still genuinely startling, even without Jackson’s hours of build-up.
And so, messy document that it was and is, Let It Be remains a compelling watch and now looks and sounds better than ever, particularly for those who’ve only ever witnessed it in scratchy, bootlegged form. In the end, much like the Let It Be/Let It Be… Naked/Get Back
versions of the audio material, it’s a welcome addition to the official canon, and viewers can now simply take their pick.