By Dave Marsh
What do you get from the newly released 10 hour,eight videocassette "The Beatles Anthology" that you wouldn't have gotten out of last fall's six hours on ABC?Simple:more
More music,more interviews(using language that ABC's censors would never have allowed),more documentary footage,more home movies,and more inside analysis from Neil Aspinall,Derek Taylor,and producer George Martin,the band's advisers.Definitely more interpretation from the surviving three of the Fav Four themselves.
Much of this constitutes pure lagniappe, a savory addition to what was already a rock 'n' roll feast.The expanded format allows the producers and director Geoff Wonfor to include additional snippets from Hamburg, the full first perfomance on The Ed Sullivan Show,and best of all, four songs from the 1965 concert at New York's Shea Stadium.
Judging from the way the footage from that concert is positioned in the set-with a teast climaxing the fourth tape and the full thing kicking off tape five-Wonfor and the Beatles must find the Shea show as central to what the group was as I do.That performance presents the Beatles in the fullness of their glory:They were never more deeply beloved by more people, and despite the fact that they obviously couldn't hear themselves, the playing on these four songs is a quick quarter hour of perfect-beat music,strikingily filmed if not particularly well recorded.
"Anthology" sags in spots,especially in the audio montages, whose only visual accompaniment is aimless footage that pans a Fab Four shrine. "Anthology" also takes the idea of the Beatles by the Beatles to an unnecessary extreme. At this length,the absence of commentary by certain crucial figures,notably wives and girlfriends,becomes more glaring-especially when we are told that George Harrison met Patti Boyd,his first wife,while shooting "A Hard Day's Night."
Then again,"Anthology" is the only rock 'n' roll movie I've ever seen -A Hard Day's Night included- that lets you see what having your limo window pounded upon by screaming teens lookis like.If that's not worth $159.98,it's certainly worth the rental fee.
© TV Guide
