A HARD DAY’S NIGHT & The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
(1964, Richard Lester) The Beatles flee from screaming fans, jam in a baggage car, cavort in a field, weird out reporters with absurdist comebacks, and wow crowds at an orgasmic final concert. DCP. Approx. 85 mins.

THE RUNNING JUMPING & STANDING STILL FILM
(1959, Lester) Rehearsal for Fab Four, as goons Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers romp aimlessly in a field (rented for 5 quid). “Devised" by Sellers. 35mm. Approx. 11 mins.
11:00*, 1:10, 5:10, 9:20
*11:00 am show part of our weekly FILM FORUM JR. series. All seats $8.00. (Single feature only)

“Laden with cultural significance. Richard Lester’s mock cinema verité account of a day and a half in the life of the world’s most famous rock‘n’roll band created a heady mixed-media synesthesia between pop art, pop music, new wave cinema, and new generation megalomania…A Hard Day’s Night served to integrate the Beatles into the nouvelle vague.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“The first (and, some would argue, the last) truly successful fusion of pop music and cinema…As well as positioning A Hard Day’s Night at the top of the music-movie pyramid, we should also view it as the pinnacle of the 1960s British New Wave.”
– Tom Huddleston, Time Out (London)

 “It was so joyous and original that even the early reviews acknowledged it as something special. After more than three decades, it has not aged and is not dated; it stands outside its time, its genre and even rock. It is one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies.”
– Roger Ebert

“The Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals.”
– Andrew Sarris

THE KNACK… AND HOW TO GET IT

(1965, Richard Lester) Lester’s Hard Day’s Night follow-up blends madcap surrealism with social satire, as just-off-the-bus Rita Tushingham mixes it up on her first day in London with blasé playboy Ray Brooks, repressed school teacher Michael Crawford, and anarchic painter Donal Donnelly. 35mm. Approx. 84 mins.
3:20, 7:25

“[A] wild and candid spoof of masculine sex drives and the popular image of male aplomb exalted by the young… With a camera that whizzes like a slapstick in the hands of an old burlesque clown, so swiftly does it dart around an area and whack the crucial points, he whips through this neo-Keystone business, flashing sight gags and throwaway lines so fast that it dazzles those accustomed to having their comedies milked and spelled out... And, maybe you will not believe this, but a certain delicious poignancy comes at the end when the right lad — the fellow who didn't have the knack — confounds and defeats his mentor by readily getting it.”
– Bosley Crowther, The New York Times