Help!

Part 2 - Analysis

Whatever the truth about the authorship of the original script and its eventual rejection, there can be no doubt about the fundamental change of direction which the move into pure fiction heralded. For all its silent movie surrealism, the foundation on which Lester's first Beatles film ‘worked,’ was on artificially creating an appearance of genuine actuality, on convincing audiences that what they were perceiving on screen was an authentic slice of the group's life. In essence, what he presented was a film ‘about’ the Beatles. With Help! that changed. He was now making a film ‘starring’ the Beatles. Considering the enormous success of A Hard Day’s Night, the decision to move into pure fiction initially seems somewhat perplexing and, before we look at the film in detail, it's worth considering why the Beatles and the film's producers decided to break with a formula which had thus far served them so well.

This is a complex issue, and the problem is compounded by the fact that the Beatles have never discussed the matter in any great detail. Any suggestions I make are therefore inevitably speculative, but I believe the move to have been affected by a number of contributory factors. First, and perhaps most obviously, the film-makers had the money to do it. While I’m certainly not suggesting that the first film was made with a documentary aesthetic simply because the team had a more modest budget, it is reasonable to suggest that the budget of Heipl befitted a more lavish style of film-making than the previous movie, and that this allowed them to make a far more convincing and elaborate fantasy film than would have ever been possible in previous circumstances.

On a broader level, it must also be noted that the emphasis upon different forms of realism was, by 1965, beginning to wane. In particular, the British social realism of ‘kitchen sink’ films such as Room at the Top (1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961) and A Kind of Loving (1962) was giving way to the fiction of the spy cycles of James Bond and Harry Palmer, the everpopular Carry On series, and ‘swinging’ sex comedies such as Lester’s own The Knack (1965), which he shot between his two Beatles movies. Increasing American investment in more lavish British productions, coupled with a new sense of national affluence and optimism, had conspired against the ‘angry young men’, and the black-and-white Northern provincialism of the early sixties was gradually superseded by colour films which were increasingly London-based, lighthearted, and ‘international’ in both style and subject matter.

There were, however, other possible reasons why it was inadvisable to make another realist-oriented film. The Beatles were now living out a reality which would have contrasted too greatly with the clean-cut image upon which their popularity had until now depended. Introduced to the pleasures of smoking marijuana in 1964 by Bob Dylan,15 they were soon frequent users of the drug, and by early 1965 and the shooting of Help! they were, in Lester’s words, ‘stoned a bit too much and they kept losing the script. There were a lot of sequences where I’d be off-camera saying the line to them and they’d say the line back to me.’16 As the director explained in the BBC’s Hollywood UK television series, ‘The documentary style of A Hard Day's Night was no longer appropriate or even possible since by that time the Beatles were world celebrities living X-rated lives, and no longer able to appear as the lads from Liverpool.’17 In fact, Starr, recalls an amusing anecdote in the Anthology series to this effect, maintaining that at one point when shooting the ‘curling’ sequence, he and McCartney ran off the set so that they could indulge in a joint before having to return to the shoot.

On top of all this, the idea of making a fiction film probably appealed to the group because it allowed them to escape from participating in a movie which would, by implication, inevitably have to deal intensively with the concept of Beatlemania, a subject which was becoming increasingly unbearable for the group. By 1965, the novelty of their stardom was beginning to wear thin, and they had become increasingly disillusioned by the personal restrictions which came with international adoration and which had been so lightheartedly treated by A Hard Day's Night. Commenting some years later on Beatlemania, Lennon maintained that ‘all that business was awful. It was a fucking humiliation. One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent.’18 Indeed, if they could ill afford to expose the realities of their ‘X-rated lives’ to the public, then this was matched by their unwillingness so to do.

Perhaps, then, this totally fictitious film was partly instigated by the Beatles' own need to escape from the imprisonment of Beatlemania and to find themselves a scenario which was constructed ‘around’ rather than ‘about’ them, and a plot-driven film which neither they, nor their phenomenon, would have to ‘carry’ to anything like the same degree as before. Although they were playing a loose amalgamation of ‘themselves’ again, the plot-driven script and fantastical scenario allowed them to approach acting without the levels of self-consciousness and trepidation demanded by the authenticity of Owen's semi-realist screenplay, thus allowing them to become, in Lester's estimation, ‘passengers’19 in their own film, a notion which by 1965 they were probably keen to accept.

More importantly for the increasingly powerful yet world-weary Beatles, the film's lighthearted premise enabled them to use their fame to their own advantage and to make requests of the writers and producers which would, by conventional film-making standards, be considered ludicrous. Indeed, some years later McCartney revealed that the scenes shot in Austria and the Bahamas were contrived by the writers at the group's request simply because they were places they wanted to visit. As McCartney puts it, ‘I remember one of the first conversations was, hey, can't we go somewhere sunny? ... The Bahamas? Sure, we could write a. scene in where you go to the Bahamas. And skiing? We'd like to go skiing! It was like ordering up your holidays.’20 While some writers have alleged that the Bahamas locations were chosen purely for tax evasion purposes,21 it is clearly likely that, for the Beatles at least, the move into fiction was above all a tonic which, in the spirit of democratic compromise, allowed the group to escape the rigours of Beatlemania. whilst simultaneously stoking its flames. As McCartney commented some time later,’ ... that was what we were trying to do, get on with our lives but at the same time make a film.22

Another possible influence on the move to fiction was the fact that the success of A Hard Day's Night had triggered a host of imitation vehicles for British stars such as Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits and the Dave Clark Five. As Peter Noone commented, ‘Herman’s Hermits’ first movie was basically a pure copy of that genre... Everybody was making one.’23 Although Lester has said that this was not necessarily a major factor in the move, few could deny that it was theoretically prudent of the Beatles' camp to avoid falling into a style which, by 1965, was fast becoming a cliche. While clichéd repetition might well have been acceptable for some of the less adventurous artists of the era (step forward, Cliff Richard!), such an approach was hardly in keeping with the Beatles' style. After all, their previous musical and cinematic success had seemed, at least in part, to stem from their willingness to stay ‘one step ahead of the game’. Indeed, while their previous film had broken with the array of conventions discussed in the previous chapter, the success of their musical career had also partly stemmed from their being the first pop group to write their own material and to arrange it with unparalleled versatility. By 1965 it was clear that audiences and critics not only wanted the group's product to develop and change, they expected it, and anything less than a new direction would be intolerable. But what kind of cnew direction’ were the Beatles taking and, more precisely, what kind of fiction film did Help! turn out to be?

The most popular British film of 1962 was the United Artists feature, Dr No. Its success was consolidated a year later by From Russia with Love, and in 1964 by the enormously popular Goldfinger. The Bond cycle was the biggest cinematic attraction in Britain and, by 1965 and the making of Help!, it seemed there to stay. Although clearly not conceived from the outset as a Bond parody or pastiche, Help's finished screenplay manages to mine the popularity of the Bond films in a number of ways. First, the subject matter and narrative construction of the film seem highly reminiscent of the Bond cycle and, although Lester maintains that the Bond connection is limited to a number of inconsequential jokes (he holds that ‘you could take all the Bond references out and the film would remain the same’24), I would argue that Behm and Wood's screenplay includes many quintessentially ‘Bondesque’ ingredients.

The most obvious pastiche of the Bond cycle is the story itself, which, like the then recent Goldfinger, involves a spy-oriented chase through similar exotic locations, the Beatles film substituting Austria for Switzerland. Moreover, the film employs many sequences which were fast becoming staple ingredients of the Bond cycle, including a set-piece fist fight (where the Beatles are attacked by a group of Clang's henchmen) and a car chase sequence (of sorts) in which Ringo, dumped in the boot of Professor Foof s car, is freed by George after he heroically commandeers the vehicle by making it spin off the road. Furthermore, there are close similarities between the two film's pening credit sequences. Like Goldfinger, Help! employs an elaborate opening credit song (a slightly tinted black-and-white sequence in which the Beatles, projected onto a white screen in Clang's lair, perform the title track while he throws darts at them), its entrance delayed by an opening scene which establishes the initial narrative equilibrium.

However, while the story seems to pastiche the subject matter and narrative construction of the Bond films, Help! conversely seems determined to include elements of spoofery which deliberately and self­consciously parody the Bond cycle. Indeed, although Lester feels that ‘it would be dangerous’ to describe such elements as parodic (he prefers the term ‘pastiche’ maintaining that ‘you don’t parody something that is in itself a parody’25), it seems to me that the film's core of humour is dominated by intelligent and effective parodic tendencies, and that the film gently and affectionately sends up several aspects of the Bond movies, most notably the stock characters of the 007 pictures (and particularly the stereotypical ‘Bondesque' villains), who are invariably transposed into comic figures. Perhaps the most obvious example is the comic recreation of the mad scientist ‘type’, Professor Foot (Victor Spinetti), whose implausible inventions designed to secure him world domination consistently backfire to humorous effect. Likewise, the bumbling, accident-prone cult leader Clang (Leo McKern) is clearly imbued with ‘Bond villain’ character traits. Like Auric Goldfinger, he is both exotic and power-crazed, yet his attempts to recover the sacred ring of Kaili inevitably end in comic misfire. In a similar manner, the Beatles film also parodies the fickle heroine (Eleanor Bron) who, like Pussy Galore, switches sides to help the ‘good guys’ when she sees the error of her ways. Beyond the humorous sending-up of these stereotypes, the film also manages to poke fun at the Bond films' obsession with scientific gadgetry, and the narrative is crammed with comic scenes which ridicule the sophistication and ruthless efficiency of the hi-tech devices featured in Goldfinger, Indeed, the ordinary and ineffective household paint which is used to coat Ringo is clearly a jokey send-up of the deadly skin-suffocation spray used by Goldfinger, while Oddjob's equally deadly steel bowler hat is hilariously parodied by the ineffective, unfurling turban used as a weapon by Clangs henchman, Blutha (John Bluthal). Given the fact that the Bond producers, Broccoli and Saltzman, were so protective of their franchise (they famously blocked Peter Roger's spoof Carry on Spying from featuring a character called ‘Double O Six and a Half’) Lester and the Beatles should probably count themselves lucky that the Bond films shared the same distributor.

By overtly parodying and pastiching elements of the Bond films whilst also mimicking elements of their narrative construction, Help! manages to ‘have ts cake and eat it’, poking gentle fun at the cycle whilst simultaneously employing their formulaic properties to enhance the film's commercial appeal. In this way, Helpl can be regarded as a precursor of a number of other similarly exploitative (although vastly inferior) Bond spoofs, such as Our Man Flint (1965), In Like Flint (1967) and the Dr Goldfoot series.

However, despite its fictional premise and parodic inclinations, it would also be true to say that there are some fundamental similarities between Helpl and the group's previous film, although these are often marked by subtle yet significant developments and variations.

First, Lester's direction retains several similarities and, although it is less formally eclectic than its predecessor, he imbues the film with a similar fondness for surreal slapstick and playful formal humour which are clearly derived from his love of silent comedy. Perhaps the best example of this is his use of the unexpected surreal intrusion of title cards which, intercut with causally unrelated shots of the Beatles romping in a wood, signify ‘end of part one’, ‘intermission’, ‘end of intermission’, and ‘part two’. Likewise, Lester shoots the Beatles walking simultaneously into four ordinary-looking terraced houses before a cut to the inside of the houses reveals that they are all part of an enormous and luxurious sixties ‘pad’ crammed with sunken beds, Wurlitzer organs and state-of-the-art technology.

Moreover, Lester applies the same pioneering techniques to the musical sequences as in A Hard Day’s Night, again using pop music as an accompaniment to non-performance-oriented action. The best example of this occurs in what is arguably the film's most memorable sequence, where the Beatles' most recent single, ‘Ticket to Ride’, accompanies footage of the group attempting to ski down the Austrian piste. Interestingly, however, the majority of this sequence was shot in a reverse manner to the more carefully staged antics of the ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ scene of the previous film: the director merely instructed the group (who were totally untrained skiers) to go and play around on the slopes, and then edited the largely unchoreographed footage to fit the song in post-production. As such, the ‘Ticket to Ride’ sequence is arguably the first time that the full potential of editing for pace and rhythm was prioritized above choreography in a pop film. Moreover, there were other formal developments in the presentation of the musical numbers. In the sequence which accompanies McCartney's ‘Another Girl’, Lester presents the group's performance in a semi-diegetic manner, simultaneously combining a realist and an anti-realist approach as McCartney is shown realistically lip-synching fragments of the song's words but actually ‘playing’ a bikini-clad model as though she were his bass guitar!

Interestingly, the technique of employing semi-diegetic performance footage was shortly to become integral to the pioneering promotional clips of Joe McGrath, who on 23 November 1965 directed the group in their first ten promotional videos, which were made through Intertel and financed by the Beatles’ management agency, NEMS. These promos, which featured several different versions of five Beatles songs (‘We Can Work It Out’, ‘Daytripper’, ‘I Feel Fine’, Ticket to Ride’ and ‘Help!’), occupy a unique position in television history for a number of reasons. They were the first independently produced pop films to be made and distributed specifically for the international market, anticipating the beginning of contemporary pop video. Moreover, while their ultimate raison d’etre (to allow the Beatles total control over their image and to be seen simultaneously all over the world) closely mirrors that of the group's move into feature films, so too does their form. Unlike the performance-oriented construction of contemporary pop shows, several of McGrath's promos partially disposed of this notion, the most notable example being the ‘I Feel Fine’ clip, which features the group miming into a punch-bag while Ringo rides an exercise bicycle.

Another similarity between Helpl and A Hard Day's Night is the music of the soundtrack itself, although, as we shall see, there are again subtle differences and developments within. Like A Hard Day’s Night, the film contained a quota of seven new Beatles numbers and again showcased the impressive versatility of their songwriting. Like the previous film, the Help! soundtrack included folk ballads (Lennon's ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’) upbeat rock and roll numbers (McCartney’s The Night Before’) and love songs (Harrison’s  plaintive ‘I Need You’). In keeping with established precedent, Harrison was again allotted one solo vocal performance (‘I Need You’) with the remainder equally divided between Lennon and McCartney. Again, the action is accompanied by a quota of previously successful Beatles songs, including the group's own recording of ‘She’s a Woman’ (the British and American B-side to their 1964 number one ‘I Feel Fine’) and another orchestral arrangement of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Moreover, like the soundtrack album to the previous film, the British and American LPs were issued in different formats. While the US release coupled the seven new Beatles tracks featured in the film with the orchestral score, the British release complemented the film songs with seven other numbers. Despite these similarities, there are some interesting differences in the musical and lyrical content of the Beatles' film songs. Unlike the happy-go-lucky and optimistic sentiments of the Hard Day's Night music, the lyrics of Lennon's contributions to Help! boasted a more serious, confessional and mature tone. Indeed, in some ways Help! marks the turning point at which Lennon (perhaps under the influence of Bob Dylan, whom the Beatles greatly admired) began to abandon the notion of writing throwaway, ‘boy meets girl’ lyrics in favour of a more heartfelt and ‘genuine’ self-expression which transcended the bland love themes of old and heralded the start of a more introspective approach in the Beatles’ songwriting. Indeed, the Dylanesque lyrics of ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’, with their intricate wordplay and tone of morbid self-pity and doubt, evoked a far more complex and ‘adult’ emotional depth than any of the love songs which appeared in A Hard Day's Night. The title track, whilst ‘written to order’, rejected the love song format altogether, the introspective and subconsciously confessional lyric being based on its author's personal feelings of insecurity and desperation as the onslaught of Beatlernania took its toll. As Lennon himself explained, ‘I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.’26 Although a number of critics have maintained that Lennon’s songs began to become more lyrically complex prior to the making of the Help! soundtrack (T'm a Loser' from the Beatles for Sale album is often cited as his first ‘personal’ and/or self-revelatory song 27), the title track was the first Beatles song to reject the love theme formula outright, and as such can be viewed as something of a watershed in the Beatles' recording career. As Mark Hertsgaard remarks, ‘It was the first Beatles song in which the words were the point at least as much as the music.’28 Indeed, although the song's lyrical significance went largely unnoticed by audiences (as Lennon said in 1980, ‘Most people think it's just a fast rock and roll song’29), it was nevertheless a precursor of the introspective self-expression which was to become a trademark of their subsequent recordings.

Musically, the songs which appeared in the film also displayed a growing complexity and maturity. While evoking the same eclectic versatility as the songs from the previous film, the Beatles were expanding their musical horizons in leaps and bounds, incorporating new instruments into their arrangements (the flute solo on ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’, Harrison's pedal steel guitar on ‘I Need You’) and complexifying the traditional ‘4/4’ time signatures of rock and roll arrangements with jagged, broken offbeats which, in the case of Ticket to Ride’, splinter and offset the traditional backbeat of old with a piercing freshness hitherto unheard in pop. Indeed, if audiences failed to consciously grasp the new lyrical direction of the Beatles' songs, it was impossible to miss the new ‘feel’ of the music of ‘Ticket to Ride’, which evoked, in Ian MacDonald’s term, the most ‘intense’30 sound the group had produced for some time.

Finally, the representation of the group remained very similar to that of A Hard Day's Night. Indeed, all the characteristics of their former screen incarnation are intact: Lennon's cutting wit is highlighted in the sequence where the group visit Scotland Yard (asked by a detective how long he thinks the group will last, he retorts by asking the detective how long he thinks the inquiries for the ‘Great Train Robbery’ will last), and McCartney's boyish sex appeal is also suggested by the inviting glances he receives from Eleanor Bron. However, within this schemata there are again slight differences, the most obvious being the absence of the ‘solo’ scenes which characterized the narrative construction of the earlier film and which results in the viewer perceiving the group as more of a single unit than four separate and individual personalities. Indeed, because the film is plot-driven rather than character-driven, the Beatles themselves really do become ‘passengers’ in a narrative which is so determined on assaulting the senses with nonstop visual slapstick, breakneck editing and formal trickery that their own characters tend to become somewhat submerged in an ocean of dazzling technique. Indeed, as one critic later commented, ‘In Help! they are still themselves, but are caught in such a web of wild comedy they seem at times as trapped as four flies waiting for spider Lester to bring them back into the parlour.’31

However, while the group's individuality becomes somewhat obscured in the film, it might be fair to suggest that Ringo is offered the most opportunity to ‘act’ and, although his sequences are perhaps slightly less character-based than those of the first movie, the narrative again revolves more around him (as the wearer of the ring) than any of the other Beatles. Starr had received the best notices for his performance in A Hard Day's Ntght and it was natural for him, as the group's ‘actor’, to take a bigger role in the second film. Furthermore, it would be fair to say that of the individual characters in the group he was the one with the most all-round appeal and sympathy. As Lester maintains, ‘If you're going to choose somebody to have [as a central character], he's the one that the audience has the most immediate bonding with. He was a very endearing personality.’33 Indeed, if Lennon and Harrison's projection appealed more to male fans and McCartney's to predominantly teenage girls, Starr’s naturally comic hangdog appearance and less sarcastic wit exuded an appeal which included but also transcended these factions and, as Starr has recalled, his fan-base also comprised ‘the mothers and the children’.34 Placing the most ‘popular’ Beatle at the centre of the narrative was therefore as shrewd a commercial move as adopting the family-oriented Bond-style story; it was a plea for mass appeal which echoed his developing musical role in the Beatles, as singer of a range of material which, as well as including teenage anthems (such as ‘Boys’) would comprise songs seemingly specifically tailored to suit the tastes of the mature adults or very young children who were normally considered beyond the potential radius of appeal for a pop band. Indeed, throughout his entire career as a Beatle, Ringo would be given or choose material that would mainly comprise of ‘adult’ country and western songs such as ‘Act Naturally’ and ‘Honey Don’t’, or predominantly ‘children’s’ material  such as ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘Goodnight’.

Continued... HELP!: Part three

© Bob Neaverson 1997 - 2008