The Riverside Press-Enterprise
‘Let It Be’ film returns by long and winding road
Long dismissed, the movie showing the Beatles’ last work is restored after 54 years
In 2021, director Peter Jackson’s sprawling and vibrant Beatles docuseries, “The Beatles: Get Back,” streamed on Disney+ to nearly universal acclaim. The threepart epic, which ran nearly eight hours, captured the drama and frenzy as John Lennon, Paul Mccartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded, over the pressure-filled month of January 1969, what would become the last album that the Beatles released, “Let It Be.”
As fans were well aware, Jackson’s series was culled from nearly 60 hours of behind-the-scenes footage originally shot by director Michael Lindsay-hogg for “Let It Be,” his little-seen, though often dismissed, 1970 documentary about those recording sessions.
After its initial theatrical run, Lindsay-hogg’s film largely disappeared A lot of people remember
Q Q for more than a half-century, You have been working for “Let It Be” as a bad-vibes except on low-quality VHS decades to revive “Let It Be.” movie, probably in part because
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versions and bootlegs. Fans tend What finally changed? of that famous scene in which The four Beatles skipped the to remember it as an intriguing George and Paul bicker about 1970 premiere of “Let It Be.”
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historical document capturing Peter was the catalyst. He George’s guitar part on “Two of Was that in protest? During filming, did you get the late-stage creative flights of and I met in December 2018, Us.” Was that exchange another the sense that they were on
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a seismic musical force, but also before he really started on “Get sign of the beginning of the end? As we now know, the Beatles the verge of breaking up? as a divorce proceeding of sorts, Back,” and he said, “Tell me the were in the process of breaking
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with stark moments of internal story of ‘Let It Be’ — you know, No one had ever seen the up when the film was getting discord as the band hurtled toward what’s happened since you made Beatles have a fight, but ready to go. People were feeling a nasty split. it, because I’ve seen it pretty recently that wasn’t really a fight. Up to perhaps rancorous toward each
By that view, “Get Back,” with and I think that movie that point, no one had filmed, except other; they weren’t getting on. its abundant moments of jokey should come out.” So a year or in bits and pieces, the Beatles They announced their breakup in banter and on-set clowning, was two went by, and he told me rehearsing. So that was new April 1970, and “Let It Be” was released seen by some as an overdue corrective that he had a very good relationship territory. That exchange between in May. “Let It Be” was collateral to “Let It Be.” with Paul and Ringo and Paul and George, they never commented damage. People didn’t see
Little surprise, but Lindsayhogg, also with Sean Lennon and Olivia on, because it was the it for what it was and went looking 83, has a very different Harrison, George’s widow, same kind of conversation that for what it wasn’t. view. The acclaimed director as well as with Jonathan Clyde, any artistic collaborators would
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had a hand in inventing the music who produced “Get Back” for Apple. have. As a director in the theater As recently as 2021, Ringo video, with his promotional So he started to advocate for and in movies, I know that kind of said there was “no joy” in films for the Beatles and the Rolling “Let It Be” to come out. He and conversation happens five times the film. Did the members of the Stones in the mid-1960s, and Clyde got a budget for the restoration a week. band actually seem unhappy with went on to win plaudits for the work, and slowly it moved it at the time? 1980s British miniseries “Brideshead through Apple. Revisited.” He has fought for a half-century for “Let It Be” to get a second look and, in his mind, a fair shake.
On May 8, he will get his wish, when “Let It Be,” meticulously restored by Jackson’s production team, begins streaming on Disney+ in collaboration with Apple Corps, the company that oversees the Beatles’ creative and business interests. Lindsay-hogg spoke to The New York Times about the culmination of a long crusade.
Q Q Is “Let It Be” just a short version of “Get Back”?
Amany great similarities.
When “Get Back” came out,
A a lot of fans saw it as happy Well, after we watched the corrective to “Let It Be.” Is that rough cut in July, the day accurate? before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, John and Yoko (Ono), Paul and Linda Mccartney, Peter Brown from Apple and me and my girlfriend went out for dinner at Provans in London. The film, I think, was regarded very much as a promising work in progress. There was no snarky business going on. We sat and had a good time like friends do. We talked about our childhoods,
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Peter very much didn’t want I would say most people who “Get Back” to look like he saw Peter’s picture as a corrective just pulled it from “Let It Be,” so to mine haven’t seen mine, if he wanted to show a scene that because no one was able to see it was in my film, he would show for 50 years. So unless they were it from different angles and reconstruct children when they saw it in theaters, it differently. There are the only way most people scenes in “Let It Be” that aren’t would have seen it was on VHS in “Get Back.” They’re very different, or bootlegs, which changed the although obviously they have original aspect ratio and had dark and gloomy pictures and bad sound. That is part of the reason the movie was put in the closet for a long time.
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How much does the digital restoration change the look and sound of “Let It Be”?
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When Peter first showed me some restored images of the film, one was of a couple of the Beatles from the back, and their hair in the original looked very clumped. Then he said, “Now let me show you what we’ve been working on.” It was the same shot, but you could see the individual strands of hair. The new version is a 21st century version of a 20th century movie. It is certainly brighter and livelier than what ended up on videotape. It looks now like it was intended to look in 1969 or 1970, although at my request, Peter did give it a more filmic look than “Get Back,” which had a slightly more modern and digital look. had a couple of bottles of wine. When we showed them the final cut in late November, we all went out for dinner again, to a place with a discotheque. We all had a nightcap and a chat, and Paul said he thought the movie was good. Ringo was jiving out on the dance floor. He’s a good dancer.
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After 54 years, do you think fans will have a different perception of the film?
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If you see it with no preconceptions, the picture works very well, and it’s clear that you’re looking at four men who have known each other since they were teenagers — well, three of them anyway — who love each other as brothers might. But they weren’t any more the Fab Four, the mop tops. A couple of them are pushing 30. They had stopped touring, which is a very big change for a rock ’n’ roll group. What you see in the movie is that the affection is eternal between the four of them. But they were living very separate lives now.
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No, not at all. We started shooting with four Beatles. We ended it with four Beatles. It was not like the San Andreas Fault. I thought they might go off and do their own thing, follow their heart and release separate albums, but then get together, because the Beatles were a very powerful artistic force and also social force. I didn’t think the Beatles were going to break up till they broke up.
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Even critics of “Let It Be” would have a hard time arguing that their final live set on the roof of Apple Corps wasn’t a joyous moment.
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How lucky can you get that the last line in the movie is from John, up on the roof. The set has been broken up by the police — which is good, because that’s as many songs as they had rehearsed anyway — then John says, “And I hope we passed the audition.” Because if anyone did pass the audition, in that entire decade, it was the Beatles.