Many of us saw Let It Be in theaters as soon as it became available in 1970. Now 54-years later, a restored version of Let It Be is streaming on Disney+.
So how does the new version compare with the original theater experience? Well the film has been completely restored, and it actually looks a lot better than it did in 1970. The film was not movie screen quality, because it was originally shot for television (and is still in the old TV ratio instead of wide screen). The new look of the film brightens the whole perception of it.
By 1970, most Beatles fans had seen A Hard Day’s Night, Help, & Yellow Submarine in theaters. We also knew The Beatles from their often humorous press conferences. What we had never seen was The Beatles working and creating in a recording studio. It was raw seeing them in real life instead of acting, and the playing was not smooth, but kind of herky-jerky rehearsals. We had never imagined John, Paul, George & Ringo in disagreements. That new reality became what the movie was known for. The Beatles had just broken up, and people thought this was the documentation of it. The film and the Get Back documentary did show there were fractures in the group, but the band members were able to come together for Abbey Road later that same year.
Now we understand that there never was a rock band whose members always got along. Seeing Let It Be again shows it is not as negative as its reputation. The Beatles are usually working well together, and mostly in a very friendly way. There’s a lot of jamming on old songs, but not really documentation of how their new batch of songs were eventually developed into the complete songs we see at the end of the film.
If we step back just a little to think about what they accomplished, it’s amazing. They came into the project needing to write a whole album’s worth of songs. In less than one month, January of 1969, they wrote the songs for Let It Be (with three #1 singles), plus songs that appeared on Abbey Road, and on their solo albums. They completed recording the tracks for the Let It Be album, with some overdubbing later.
Let It Be has something the Get Back documentary sorely lacked…complete performances of the key songs “Let It Be”, “Two Of Us”, “The Long And Winding Road”, and “For You Blue” (almost complete). It was a real treat to see The Beatles perform them in the studio, and with video and audio quality better than originally shown.
Another difference between the 8-hour Get Back and the 82-minute Let It Be is that there’s not much dialogue in the original film. It’s mostly The Beatles rehearsing and jamming. The infamous disagreement between Paul & George about a guitar part, and Paul talking to John about George not wanting to perform live are the negative parts of the movie. There are a lot more scenes of problems in the Get Back documentary.
Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg and Get Back director and film restorer Peter Jackson do an interesting 4-minute discussion before the film starts. You can see how happy Lindsay-Hogg is to finally have his movie streaming after having it disappear for 40 years. We get to see Lindsay-Hogg in the film, and he was about the same age as The Beatles. He certainly did superior work in capturing the rooftop performance. There are lots of good camera angles, and his crew did a great job of getting the reactions of the Londoners who heard the music.
Early in the film, we see Lindsay-Hogg concentrating the majority of the time on Paul McCartney. Some may interpret this as ego or bossiness on McCartney’s part, but it’s just the reality of what was happening. The majority of the songs are written by McCartney, so he’s leading the recordings. John Lennon had withdrawn from his once leadership role, probably because he was more heavily into drugs at that time. Neither George Harrison nor Ringo Starr demonstrate the dominant personality traits of Lennon & McCartney.
Overall, there’s more smiling and fun in the studio than most people remembered. About the last 30-minutes is the movie’s payoff. That half-Hour includes the final studio performances of “Two Of Us”, “Let It Be”, and “The Long And Winding Road”. Then the rooftop concert of “Get Back”, “Don’t Let Me Down”, “I’ve Got A Feeling”, “One After 909”, “Dig A Pony”, and another version of “Get Back” as the police arrive to shut down all the loud music.
After The Beatles “passed the audition” and the credits roll, we also get an early version of “Oh Darling”. It’s quite different from the Abbey Road recording, and Paul & John have fun with it. There are also some cool keyboard flourishes by Billy Preston. Since the Let It Be “Oh Darling” isn’t readily available, it’s included here:
Let It Be probably isn’t a movie we’ll watch often, but along with the Get Back documentary, it’s an important historical record. If only someone had filmed at least portions of The Beatles in the studio during the making of Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper.