Beatles ’64 offers a candid view of the British band during their first visit to the US
Martin Scorsese’s Beatles documentary gets up close and personal with the band and documents their first visit to the United States
It is often claimed that the Beatles’ arrival in America, three months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in some unquantifiable way lifted the spirits of a depressed nation, allowing it to move forwards into the light.
Perhaps reliving it in 2024 will bring similar relief – although of course, some will just long for the past. It’s a thought repeated by Paul McCartney himself in the documentary Beatles ’64, which premieres on November 29 on Disney+.
The film, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, is the latest repurposing of footage shot by Albert and David Maysles when the band appeared on American television on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.
The Maysles’ footage was originally used for the BBC documentary What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA, and formed the substance of the 1991 documentary The Beatles: The First US Visit.” But there is more of it here, interspersed with new interviews with McCartney, Ringo Starr, and fans and friends who participated in the moment, along with archival interviews with George Harrison and John Lennon and some needless social context from Marshall McLuhan and Betty Friedan.
Happily absent are later-generation pop stars testifying to the band’s genius, or worse, singing their own versions of Beatles songs. Not even the Beatles testify to their own genius.
