Let It Be Film - end of an era

[Tex]

I bet M L Hogg saw "Get Back" and was aghast at the 16x9 framing and extreme grain removal.

I would bet he stipulated that he had final approval if he was going to give his endorsement and promotion. You do NOT want the original director crapping on your product.

I believe back in the day they would slightly blur the image to remove some grain. Thankfully these days they have smarter digital tools.

It appears the new "Let it Be" strikes the right balance between the grainy-as-hell 16mm film and no-grain digital.

The original was NEVER intended to be a movie just a TV documentary. In "Get Back" Paul even talks about the picture quality difference and that it might be a problem upscaling from 16mm to 35mm.

I recently scanned some 40+ year 16mm negatives and you can definitely tell they have degraded. Thankfully I was able to use photoshop and the restore/enhance tools at myheritage (not a paid plug!) to get them to decent quality. I have no idea where the original prints went to probably stolen.

[Lord Reith]

I was thinking about how back in the day I ran into a LIB laser disk in the local video rental store and was able to talk my parents into renting it, along with a LD player, plus a VHS player - so that I could try to record a copy of it. I figured it out and had what I considered a decent copy of the movie self-bootlegged. (This is the kinda stuff that kept me mostly out of trouble in middle school!)

Wow, that was enterprising of you! I don't think I have ever even seen a laser disc in real life. the closest I came was when i found the Japanese RSG laserdisc in a record shop around 1990. I was REALLY pissed off that I didn't have a player so I could buy it because it had clips of It Wont Be Long and other songs I had never seen them perform. But in retrospect I was lucky, because RSG and LIB and all the other Beatles laserdiscs were NTSC. So even if I'd had a player, they wouldn't have displayed on my PAL tv.

My Let It Be story:

It was either 1979 or 1980 when I first saw this on TV. I had only been a fan for about four years, but had many of their albums and had seen Help twice on tv (and loved it). So I figured this was another Beatle romp, and one Saturday night me my mum sat down to watch it (I know it was a Saturday because my dad was on the night shift). I was pretty excited and of course had hooked up my shitty cassette recorder to the headphone output of the television, something which i did regularly at that time (and still have tapes of things like Dr No).

So the movie comes on, and with no idea what to expect both me and my mum were coming at it completely fresh. But within minutes, we both were struggling to understand what the hell was actually going on. It played out like a documentary but there was no narration, so it was difficult to understand what they were doing in a big hangar with coloured lights and fur coats. The dialogue on the tv speaker at least was completely unintelligible. The singing - the thing I loved most about The Beatles - was ragged and out of tune, and to this day I can hear my mums voice clear as a bell in my head as Paul added the "harmony" for Across The Universe "Oh that sounds terrible!" And I had to agree. If this in fact was The Beatles underneath all that hair, it was certainly them on a bad day.

It got more and more confusing as people seemed to be deep in conversation with their backs to the cameras and guitars playing over the top. Then suddenly out of nowhere a black guy appeared on organ with no explanation. Really terrible version of You Really Got A Hold On Me with John singing out of tune. At this point my mum gave up and went to bed, and I was seriously considering shutting off the cassette and following suit.

But then, all of a sudden, it got good. A magical and sweet version of Long And Winding Road, and engaging footage of them on the roof singing and playing great at last. And then, suddenly, it was all over.

I played the tape back a few times and grew to enjoy some of the songs more, and I still have it. In 1984 to commemeorate the death of John it was shown on tv one last time. Fortunately we had a vcr by this time and so i taped it. But the picture came out all wobbly!! Never mind, I had incorporated redundancy into my plan and had my sister tape it as well. And her copy looked just great.

Over the years I wondered why it along with Help was never shown anymore. Of course, Help returned in about 1987 but LIB never made it. Until now. I'm actually far more excited about the AUDIO than the film itself, especially hearing the twickenham stuff in stereo and conversations which were previously inaudible. So I'm anticipating i will enjoy it quite a lot.

[jpgrcat1960]

In 1984, I was in the US military stationed in West Germany, went home on Humanitian leave
My adoptive mother had a stroke

I did see a copy of Let It Be on Laserdisc, & bought it, took it back with me
but never got a player.

Went back to US, did get someone who had a player to watch it, only once
Situations happened & ended up selling it

Another was a CD Video, of Macca's Once Upon A Long Ago, 3 song CD with video 5" disc
Same thing, during that period..I had a few LD's

[Wogew]

"Let It Be" was on in a cinema in Oslo back in ca 1978 and a couple of friends of mine were going to Oslo to the movies. One of them was going to see "2001 A Space Odyssey" in the Colosseum, Norway's biggest cinema, the other one was going to see "Let It Be" at a smaller theatre. I was an idiot and went along to "2001 A Space Odyssey".
Ever since, I have had plenty of opportunities to see that movie, whereas "Let It Be" was to my knowledge never again screened in Norway.
In 1981, on a trip to Berlin, I arrived to find that a local cinema there had been screening "Let It Be" up to the day before. The posters were still up, and a brochure about the film was available in the foyer. I grabbed a handful.
Around the same time, video rental shops had started business, and in one of those in Oslo, they had "Let It Be". A photocopy of the front cover occupied the place on the shelf where the video cassette belonged, but it was never in when I visited. Finally, they sold it to someone for ridiculous money.
The year after, I went to an address where a guy was getting rid of his record collection of mostly Beatles records. He had had them transferred to tape and figured he no longer needed the records. In his collection I saw a VHS copy of "Let It Be", which was not for sale. He may have been the guy who got the one from the video shop.
Around 1984 I was finally able to get a VHS bootleg copy. Since then, I have had several upgrades and DVD transfers, and at one point I was lent a VHS video which was a 1st generation taping of the 1982 BBC TV screening.Of course, I got the HMV Furmanek crop-a-thon.

But tonight, I will finally be able to see it on the big screen, thanks to Disney, who invited members of the Norwegian Wood Beatles fan club to a free screening.

[joguema]

I have a friend in Copenhagen/Denmark and I asked him whether he would go to the cinema in order to watch LIB there. He had not even known about that, but he immediately started to search for more info like in which cinema and at which time it would be shown. Sunday late afternoon he informed me that he had talked to a friend, who had two tickets of which he would give one to him. Lucky guy!

[FestVideoRoom]

So, when I was 16 and got my first VCR -- a Sanyo Betamax -- in 1981, the first two tapes I purchased (and back then, commercial videotapes were EXPENSIVE) were Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Let it Be. My best friend in high school (hey, Seederman!) had already dubbed his IF Productions Beatles tapes for me so I was well and truly on my way on what has obviously been a LONG odyssey.

Let it Be has been a nagging thorn in all of our sides for years, but in 2024 it's seemed really odd to be in possession of incredible quality material that we never even thought we'd see and still have one of their four feature films posing this much of a problem.

A few years ago -- the very last time I screened the film at the Video Room at the NJ Fest for Beatles Fans -- I had a guest presentation scheduled in the room immediately following, so as the film's credits rolled I got on the microphone and said something to the effect of "Let it Be! Wasn't that great? Let's hope Apple gets their act together and puts it back out again soon!" in front of the assembled audience. I was told a couple of hours later by Bruce Spizer that the audience I was speaking to included Jeff Jones, the head of Apple.

Eep.

I must have looked like I had just swallowed a frog, but Bruce said that Jeff was OK with the film being shown "in that little room" and that he'd enjoyed seeing it.

That was in 2017 or 2018 (I can't recall which), and now here we are at long last...

I just need to be very cautious crossing streets for the next 48 hours...

Steve

[Rickenbacker325]

It had to be 1982/83 and my father bought a Zenith CED Video Disc player…the first two titles purchased were the Thing From Another World and of course Let it Be..which I still own..and when I watch Let it Be to this day I still remember all of the skips that were present on that disc.

A question I have is..does anyone have the CED and Laser Disc versions available to share??

Your considerations are appreciated!

[Sid Burnsteen]

At 68, I must be the oldest member here - on this thread, anyway. I was in the front row for LIB the night it opened here in Toronto, tickets won by my friend (by lining up at a radio station on a Friday morning rather than going to school), and it was very grainy. I had several more big screenings before the video era, including on a double bill with "Cold Turkey" (a Norman Lear comedy about tobacco cessation, starring Dick Van Dyke). I had the title song on silent B&W 8mm, which I'd sync to the record. First VCR was in 1978, and I soon had a decent bootleg to watch. I must've seen it a hundred times and am still looking forward - it will be like new! Wonder if they've fixed the few out-of-sync shots ... will be surprised if they haven't. The perfect (eventual) bonus item for me would be proper treatment of January 31. I could go on but will LIB!

[silvercup67]

In 1972, my jr high school had an after school showing of Let it Be. It might have cost 2 dollars to see it.
I remember vividly everyone hissing at Yoko everytime she appeared on screen.

Fast forward to the mid 1980's. I was wondering around a flea market and found a used VHS copy for sale for $20.00. I had the other available Beatles films, but this was the holy grail. I bought it on the spot, and still have it.

The last time that I watched it, was on an dvd download from somewhere here in the WebSphere. I still have that too.
As a fan, I will faithfully watch it at least once just to finally see the clean up job.

[dk2600]

I have a friend in Copenhagen/Denmark and I asked him whether he would go to the cinema in order to watch LIB there. He had not even known about that, but he immediately started to search for more info like in which cinema and at which time it would be shown. Sunday late afternoon he informed me that he had talked to a friend, who had two tickets of which he would give one to him. Lucky guy!

I had the deal with Disney and had them paying for the show, drinks, chips and all 139 free tickets through my distribution. Just few hours before the show we had to change cinema hall because Disney had locked the film to the neighbour hall and thus could not be shown. No problem we moved got the same row and seat in the new room and new tickets by email/textmessage.

I did the presentation, Lindsay-Hogg and Jackson introduced the film, that of course was a little longer with extra 2024 credits at the end and extra new music and a rise in volume and format when suddenly we had Dolby Atmos when coming to the roofconcert.

We had the same show of Get Back also paid by Disney and also days before streaming and way back in 1999 the same with 700 at a screening of Yellow Submarine dvd and too paid by at that time EMI.

Great to look back and had the luck to present all new Beatles products all those years the night before public release and have 250 fans buying the stuff as well when leaving the show. All with permission from Apple/EMI and now Universal UK. We even had Revolver with Dolby Atmos, though not released this way. Strange that no other country do this. If compared to population our show will have 15.000 guests in USA and that's a sale they understand.