The Compleat Beatles (1982)

Director: Patrick Montgomery                           Writer: David Silver
Starring: Malcolm McDowell (narrator), George Martin and Gerry Marsden

In the preface to Philip Norman’s biography of the Beatles, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, he begins by saying that he would like to acknowledge the assistance of the four members of the band in writing the book . . . but he can’t, because they wouldn’t grant him any interviews. The same could be said of this documentary of the group. Made without any assistance from The Beatles, The Compleat Beatles was, for a dozen years, the only real filmic biography of the group and, while supplanted by The Beatles Anthology which came out in 1995, it can never really be replaced. Though there are no modern interviews with the band, director Patrick Montgomery and his researchers came up with a treasure trove of previously recorded interviews with the group, as well as new interviews with musical peers like Gerry Marsden and Marianne Faithfull, music writers and, most significantly, extended interviews with the Beatles’ producer George Martin. While Martin also figures extensively in the Anthology, his comments here are actually more incisive and specific to the recordings than the Beatles’ own documentary on themselves.

The segment of the film about the early years of the band also have a wealth of interviews by people who don’t appear in the Anthology. Bob Wooler, dj at the Cavern Club, Allan Williams, the Beatles’ first manager, Bill Harry, editor of The Mersy Beat, and Tony Sheridan, who the band backed on their first recording sessions in Germany. Since the Anthology contains no narration and only the observations of the band members and those in the inner circle, this film, in many respects, can be seen as a companion piece. While it’s only two hours long, it does a nice job of summing up the career arc of the band and includes a wealth of archival footage, not only of the band but of the related issues about them. For instance there is the backlash to John Lennon’s comments about the group being more popular than Jesus, or the reaction of the U.S. fans to their first visit. Local interviews with fans, especially in the United States, are prevalent, as are those with musicians like Bruce Johnson of the Beach Boys and Billy Preston who played on the “Get Back” sessions that would become the album Let It Be, and music writers who were around at the time and talk about the impact that the music had back then.

Today almost every bit of footage of the Beatles is available to fans, the concerts, the television appearances, and the interviews. But thirty years ago that was not the case. Montgomery was able to pay for the reproduction rights to all of their studio recordings, but also managed to find early recordings that don’t even appear in the Anthology. The director also had access to the concert footage from Washington D.C. on their first tour, the Shea Stadium concert, and especially the concert in Japan at the Budokan. On the other hand, very little footage from their feature films was available to the production. At the time this film came out the fledgling USA Network was doing a lot of music programming in the evenings, including all of the Beatle’s feature film and the entire cartoon series. But as far as biographical material about the band was concerned, this was it. And even though the bulk of the footage has become rather dated over the last few decades, as a unified whole it is still an extremely impressive documentary. The Compleat Beatles continues to stand on its own as a significant document of one of the most influential groups in pop music history.