He was the first
Big Brother
. The 1970 film
Let It Be
hit the screen almost 30 years before the still interesting television format was invented. Pioneers in everything, the
Beatles
had to learn to become brutally familiar with a camera that followed them down the table.
Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg achieved a world first:
Let It Be
is nothing more than a portrait of something that wasn't working quite right.
To see it is to understand the separation of the Beatles
. It even allows you to have several conflict hypotheses.
The documentary maker's edition was a journalistic success: on April 10, 1970, the Beatles broke up. On May 20, a month later,
Let It Be
premiered in London as a result of material filmed a year or so earlier.
Now
Let it be
, the real one, the original - not Peter Jackson's mellifluous version -
will be available from next May 8
in a version that is announced restored on the Disney+ platform.
A long and winding story
With this,
Let It Be
not only adds to the documentary
Get Back
, by the director of
The Lord of the Rings
- created from Lindsay-Hogg's filming - but, being at Disney, it demonstrates that rock became a classic product, for the entire public, even for those who consume Donald Duck and Pluto.
Let It Be
has nothing to do
with Peter Jackson's peaceful montage in
Get Back
, released in 2021, which was responsible for showing, among other things, that Ringo Starr was very sleepy. Seven hours of abnormal enthusiasm that are part of the art of omission. It is also clear that at the end of the '60s the thing was Paul McCartney & The Beatles.
An undeniable leadership that, with the film
Let It Be,
had already generated a certain disdain for Paul. For "Team Lennon", rejection was a matter of skin. Luckily, between one look and another (the original one and Peter Jackson's) there was time to review the scores and understand that without McCartney pulling, managing the group, the Beatles might not have even made it to the
White Album
.
Already on the back cover of
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
(1967), Paul has his back turned. What does that mean? That McCartney was a Barenboim, the director of that orchestra. The one who was in front of the band.
Long, winding and strange the legacy of the controversial
Let It Be
. As premonitory as it is emblematic.
It could easily be the best documentary in history.
The least Manichaean. The opposite of one of those authorized biographies. Also it is not the collapse of Fury in
Big Brother
, but the end of the best band that has ever existed.
Half a century later, Peter Jackson reworked the story. He tried to tell us that Paul - Paul first -, John, George and Ringo were fine and that the separations, alas, alas, come as a possible result of well-being.
Revalue Lindsay-Hogg
Lindsay-Hogg revealed to have been assertive with the choice of material. As he said in an interview: "It was fine, there was no need to do it again." The pain of global fans was so great due to the separation, that he was accused - like Yanina Latorre - of telling untruths about the outcome of the Beatles. They held him responsible, the same thing they later did with Yoko Ono and with McCartney himself. However, the director's material shows that the first to resign was George Harrison.
Before working with the Beatles, this Michael Lindsay-Hogg - unrecognized son of Orson Welles? - had done something similar with the Rolling Stones. It is seen that the Beatles wanted to copy certain behaviors of Mick Jagger and his people. Nothing serious, nothing artistic, nothing musical. He was envied by a manager, a producer, a law firm.
Until
Let It Be
we had not seen the Beatles rehearse. We also didn't know how they interacted creatively.
Let It Be
was also the band's 11th album. On May 8, 1970, it went on sale, coinciding with the news of the separation and in tune with the premiere of the documentary. Imagine: talking about anything other than the Beatles was impossible.
All the material had been filmed a year and a half before, during the month of January 1969. When filming finished, no Beatle wanted anything to do with the film. Apple Corps executives argued that the joke had been very expensive. In other words, there was no going back.
In the movie you can see the caste system: Paul, the boss. John Lennon, more concerned about the (omni)presence of Yoko Ono, appears listless. George appears at the annoying and evasive plot point when Paul tells him how and when to play his instrument. Ringo? Ringo knows that he is privileged and accepts the rules of the game without question. And yawning.
They look young and beautiful, although a halo of monotony ages twenty-somethings who go to rehearse like any ordinary citizen goes to the office. Fatigue runs through the entire film.
In total, Michael Lindsay-Hogg logged
96 hours of celluloid
. Later, in hard work suitable for movie theaters, he selected less than a now and a half. The first part of the film shows the band rehearsing in the freezing Twickenham Film Studios.
Paul and George will have an irritating exchange. McCartney says
Two of Us
may be better off without his riffs. "I'm going to play whatever you want me to play, or I'm not going to play if you don't want me to." George responds with an annoyance that must have had its counterpart offscreen.
At that time it is clear that they did not understand that the important thing about Big Brother is the journey, the journey, the adventures. New to being spied on through the window, the Beatles decide to close the documentary. There appears
the famous recital on the terrace
, a finishing touch with an avant-garde spirit where they -said this in a less metaphorical than literal sense- prove to be above the public.
On April 15, 1971,
the Beatles won the Oscar for Best Soundtrack
for
Let it Be
, the film that, inadvertently, chronicled the dissolution.
Let it Be
competed with Henry Mancini, of the
Pink Panther
. None of the four were present when “And the winner is… The Beatles” was heard.