Customer Reviews

Let It Be [VHS]

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2 star:		(2)
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Before pulling it together for "Abbey Road" later that year, The Beatles limped through sessions for "Get Back", which would finally be released as "Let It Be" in 1970 with a little help from Phil Spector. John was more or less pleased with the end result - "When I heard it I didn't puke" - but Paul was said to have been horrified by the chorus of female voices on "The Long and Winding Road". The recording sessions seem to be less than pleasurable; Paul lectures George on how to play guitar and George snaps back while John merely glares when Paul starts in on him. Ringo sits off on the periphery during these tense moments. It's not all sour apples, though. There's some laughter and cheerful jamming in the studio, and the finale is the riveting concert on the roof of Apple that brings the town to a standstill. Distribution of this film has been slim to none over the past twenty years, so let's hope for a DVD release soon!

This film is of tremendous historical value, and quite entertaining as well. The rooftop concert is so much fun, and is The Beatles last live performance! Paul, if you are reading this, please do all of us fans a favor. As a bonus to the Let It Be release, why not show the entire rooftop concert without the edits of crowd reactions, just as the studio versions were shown in their entirety? It's the last Beatle performance, and deserves to be shown complete. Give the greatest band in history their due.

Let it Be is the story of how four men, mostly friends from their teens, grew apart from each other but who were so close that they did not know how to deal with it.

You have to wonder why it was that they never spilt before they did really. Given the enormous strain that they must have been under as the icons of a generation with people expecting them to perform miracles, with no private life, where some people were trying to take them for every penny with few people that they could trust...well.

Let It be is ostensibly the story of music in the making and while there is music, or scraps of it aplenty, the action is on the five main characters who dominate throughout. Most attention is foccussed on John and Paul and Yoko and the viewer is pummelled by the raw and powerful and mostly simmering emotions between these people. George and Ringo get pulled into the middle on occassion and are seen to withdraw to lick their wounds.

This is a story of a popular, innovative, experimental, highly successful group in decay. Caught up in an artificial hothouse existance with no outside personality strong enough to tell them to grow up, make up and move on. The musical prowess of these individuals is still there for all to see and their obvious joy of playing together in a live situation when on the Apple roof demonstrates what a powerful musical force they were. Awesome.

Let It Be is a warts and all movie. It makes me sad because all of these years later with first, John and more recently, George, both no longer with us Paul McCartney still harbours ill will for Yoko Ono which often is shown by public humiliation. Many see this movie as showing a side of the Beatles to the world that they would rather not show. In my view this movie shows that the Beatles were not gods but human like the rest of us with real feelings and passions. It shows them as being natural not manufactured and making music about life through living life as fully as they could.

There are many individual moments throught this movie which moved me, which brought me to tears, which made me laugh, which made me sigh. Best of all was the roof but there are magical moments throughout. For anyone who lived in the Beatles and post-Beatles era it is a remarkable record of four remarkable men and some of the other unsung remarkable people around them in the craziness. As John Lennon said, 'Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans'.

Too true.

I understand that the Vhs and LD versions of this documentary were released around 1981. Since then I have never heard of it being released again. I watched it on television some time in the early eighties (unfortunately I did not record it then).
It seems that most visual products of the Beatles have already been released either in Vhs tapes, LD or DVD but not this documentary. There must be a reason behind that bearing in mind that it is still a very much if not the most sought after item by millions of beatle fans in the world, young and old, who have yet owned it. It might be that the surviving members of the Beatles did not want it to be released again. Why? Simply because it was a sad and miserable documentary which showed how the band was about to be broken up under the tension among its members. Following the death of George Harrison, I wonder and I very much doubt that this will ever be released again in DVD, Vhs or whatever version.
Luckily, a friend of mine bought the bootleg VCD version of it somewhere and somehow, and he kindly let me watch it in his place.
The Beatles is still the all time greatest and the most influential rock n' roll band in the world. There is no question about that. It has even become part of the western civilization. I do not see that the popularity of the band would ever fade or even lessen in decades to come. More than 30 years after the breakup of the band, even its out-take (visual or audio) is treasured by the fans. There can be no other successful band in the world, past present or even in the future, which can reach such a dimension.

I must say, Amazon does not yet have this on DVD but I ordered the English version on DVD that plays in my American DVD player from some company in Russia, the only drawback is that it isn't tracked, you have to sort of fast-forward like a VHS tape. However, I am still glad that I bought it. Yes, there are arguments and the ever-present Yoko (Yucko as I like to call her) but there are some wonderful scenes of the group jamming together, smiling, laughing and just having fun! The tension is at times visible but not overwhelming. Of course, we do see the downside, each one of The Beatles are more individuals at this point, they look different from each other and have distinctly different music styles. Some may be mad at me for this but Paul did seem as though he was trying to take over. However, I will admit that Ringo and George didn't want the decision-making responsibilities and John was falling further into the Yoko-void and losing interest in other things he once cared about.

But as I said, there are some great scenes. For example, the rooftop concert at the end. John and Paul are smiling at each other, joking around and fooling around with some of the songs. Everyone truly looks as if they're enjoying themselves. Even right up to the end The Beatles still had their magic, no fights could ever take away the fact that as musicians, they gelled like no other group ever has before or since! Their coming together for songs like "Don't Let Me Down" "Let it Be" "The Long and Winding Road" "I've Got a Feeling" "Get Back" and John and Paul singing together for "Two of Us" shows that there was still cohesion, combined creativity and joy in the making of their music!

I think this film, along with "A Hard Days Night" "Help!" "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Yellow Submarine" (even though the characters' voices were not their own) are MUST HAVES for anyone who truly likes The Beatles and can appreciate them for being the greatest group of musicians who ever lived!

Just click the go button to be notified when the item is available and it will add to the number of people who want it, supply&demand will eventually work!! as for the documentary itself, (i got a bootleg copy Vhs made from a laser disk), its awesome!! the rooftop preformance RULES!!, and its VERY interesting watching them work in the studio.. i hope the DVD has the infamous "Outtakes" (they are just as good as the film)

My review is based on a VHS copy of the film recorded from TV in the early 80's. Again there appear to be plenty of conspiracy theorists around speculating about why this isn't on DVD yet. Most of them want to blame Paul...again (surprise surprise!)
If Paul didn't want to be seen in bad light, why then include the Let It Be filmed "Paul-George argument" in the Anthology Series? Paul himself has admitted he can see how he might have contributed to certain tensions at the time. But remember, as others have pointed out, the band was a hotbed of various moods and emotions at the time...John, joined at the hip with Yoko, was ready to leave the Beatles to do his own thing; George's songwriting had developed significantly but was frustrated at the limited chances to showcase his work; Paul was trying to hold it all together but inadvertently alienated the other members in the process; Ringo being Ringo just went with the flow. Plus the Apple thing was happening, the Klein management issues etc. etc.
Bickering aside, what the film does reveal however is a band that could work together and play some great music when need be. I'm quite confident that another edit of the film would probably paint a different picture. Tensions occur in any band no matter how tight they are. These guys spent the best part of their youth together. That they made the brilliant "Abbey Road" after this is a testament to their huge talent.
If a DVD were to be released, I would hope it's mixed in 5.1 and included a 2nd disc of unreleased footage and other special features. I can't wait!

The biggest problem with this movie is that the movie itself doesn't live up to it's legend. If you didn't know anything about the fab fours later years this is what you'll get out this movie: Band jamming in sound stage then cut away to band jamming in building then cut away to band jamming on roof - the end. The film only works if you have piror knowledge of the events of early 1969 that lead to the band demise. Thus film itself suffers from the same hurdle that most rock movies of this time come across: a lack of narrative. Why are they on the roof? What is the building they're jamming in, are they recording? And the sad fact is that there is footage out there that could rectify this.

In 1996's 'The Beatles Anthology' we got the scenes of the band and crew discussing the concert on the roof, talking to the camera's about why they chose a sound stage and more importantly the aims of the whole 'Get Back' project. Even some subtitles at the bottom of the screen could give this mess a bit of direction. If this film ever gets released it needs a needs a new cut, including all the meetings the band has with the crew, the on camera interviews with Paul and of course some of the tense moments that occurred while making the movie. Yes, there is the famous scene of Paul and George arguing over how the lead to 'I've Got A Feeling' should be played but for the rest of the bickering that most Beatles fans have heard on bootlegs of outtakes have all been glossed over.

On the positive side the performances are great, even if 'Let It Be' did boast some of the fabs weakest efforts the music is still worth sitting through the seemingly pointless scenes of dialogue. In saying that, 'Let It Be' is not a bad movie, in fact I'd say it's a great movie that's been poorly hacked up. This makes it only worth it if you know enough already to read between the lines.

I just read this in the Feb. 20, 2003, issue of Rolling Stone magazine and had to share it here. It refers to 50 hours of tapes stolen from the Get Back/Let It Be session that were sold on CD by bootleggers as the "Day by Day" series:
"The arrests in Holland and London climaxed a year-round intercontinental hunt for the tapes, which have been missing since the early 1970s. A source close to the Beatles says the tapes were essential to work now being done to prepare the Let It Be film for release this fall on DVD."
So an official release may be forthcoming, but in the meantime the bootleg DVD is available on several Internet sites. Many people have commented about the tension in this film, but I would like to add that there's also quite a bit of good-natured human behavior here. When Paul's daughter sneaks up on Ringo and bangs his drum, Ringo acts like he's about to jump out of his skin, and she's delighted. This isn't the best film in the world. Frankly, some of the singing is off key, and some of the rough versions of the songs pretty much suck. But, hey, it's the Beatles! It's fascinating to see them work that material into what it eventually became. This is a DVD for Beatle fans and collectors. I don't think someone with only a passing interest in the Fab Four would care much about it. For me, it's a must have.

The original Idea behind this film was to show the band all working and making music together. What we witnessed however was The Beatles coming apart at the seams and Paul McCartney's desperate, but fruitless, attempts to keep the stuffing from falling out! Those who watched this film on its first release were given a glimmer of hope at the time with the brilliant, now famous, impromptu Roof top performance. It was a cold drizzly day that welcomed the band to play together live again like no other band would play again. It was the end of decade, the end of an era and the end of the greatest Rock and Roll band the world had ever known. A poignant occasion is marked as one Member steps up to the microphone and says to a visible audience that only just out numbers the film crew and themselves. "I'd like to thank you all on behalf of the group and myself, and I hope we passed the audition".Bring on the DVD.