BY LEE PFEIFFER
If you're a Beatles fanatic, chances are you already caught up with this book which was released last year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four's second feature film "Help!". Photographer Emilio Lari gets billing on the front cover but the accompanying text inside was written by Alastair Gordon, who provides insights into the film and the filming. There is also a brief (sadly, very brief) foreword by the movie's director Richard Lester. The bulk of the book is dedicated to photos that Lari took on the set of "Help!" as unit stills photographer on the production. It should be noted that Lari only worked on the UK-based sequences, primarily at Twickenham Studios and on the major sequence shot on the Salisbury Plain where the group plays a concert amid some military war games that are going on. Thus we don't get Lari's perspective on what he would have shot for the Bahamas scenes. Nevertheless, the book provides a gold mine of rare and previously unseen photos all captured with great skill by Lari. There is a playfulness apparent in the photos as this was shot during a time period when the lads from Liverpool were still trying to come to terms with their meteoric success. We see them lounging between takes strumming on guitars, smoking cigarettes, John donning a long woman's wig, posing with soldiers, walking among fans and on-lookers and clowning with Richard Lester, who seems to also be having the time of his life. Given what we know about what was to lie before them (i.e infighting, squabbling, Yoko and the ultimate breakup of the band), it's a pleasure to look back on The Beatles during their short-lived period of innocence and wonder, when they could still just concentrate on having fun and creating musical magic. It always struck me as odd that, with the exception of Ringo Starr, the Beatles never showed any interest in pursuing a career on the big screen. (A notable exception was John Lennon's co-starring role in Lester's "How I Won the War"). Each member of the band was a natural on screen but for whatever reason, Starr was the only band member to find success in the medium of cinema. Perhaps they sensed that film would distract from their creative abilities in the field of music. "Help!" had its pleasures but didn't come close to having the enduring impact of "A Hard Day's Night". Their third feature film, the animated "Yellow Submarine", disinterested them to such a degree that they wouldn't even provide their own voices for their cartoon alter-egos and limited their involvement in the project to a brief cameo appearance. Their final film, "Let It Be", was simply a filmed version of a recording session. We'll never know what could have been had the Beatles pursued more cinematic ventures, but this book does provide some wonderful memories of what they did achieve on film.
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