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A hard day's night

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Movie propaganda

A hard day's night, nominated for two Academy Awards and featuring The Beatles in their feature film debut, is one of the greatest rock and roll comedy adventures ever. The film has a fully restored negative and digitally restored soundtrack.

The year is 1964 and four young lads from Liverpool are about to change the world - if only the madcap world will let them out of their hotel room. Richard Lester's boldly contemporary rock and roll comedy unleashes the fledgling Beatles into a maelstrom of screaming fans, paranoid producers, rabid press and troublesome family members, and reveals the secret of their survival and success: an insatiable lust for mischief and a life-affirming addiction to joy.

The film takes on the just-left-of-reality style of a mock-documentary, following "a day in the life" of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as fame takes them by storm. On their way from Liverpool to a London television stage, they must evade a teenage mob, outwit a press conference, answer fan mail and give one of their trademark, faint-inducing performances. But even this manic schedule gets interrupted as Paul has to oversee the shenanigans of his irrepressible grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell), a "real mixer" whose love of dissension threatens to break the band apart. Soon John and grandfather are butting heads, George is considering a modelling career and Ringo goes missing in the streets of London.

Throughout it all, witty one-liners, classic pop songs and world-class charm build up to happy-go-lucky moments of liberation that capture the sheer exuberance, innocence and rock and roll spirit of four young men trying to make their own rules in a world determined to confine them.