![]() A grotesque dream sequence features John Lennon literally shovelling food onto the plate of a gluttonous woman, from which a straight line may be drawn to the Mr Creosote scene in Monty Python’s 1983 film The Meaning of Life. The vein of surrealist comedy which runs throughout takes influence from The Goon Show and clearly predicts Monty Python’s Flying Circus, particularly the caricatures of authority figures like army officers and vicars. The largely improvised non-musical sections of the film are rougher around the edges, but not without their charm. ![]() “They are redefining what a promotional film is.” “The promotional films contained within the film do not make any attempt to depict the band playing live – Paul walks around some mountains, George plays a keyboard chalked on the road and ‘I Am The Walrus’ delivers an absurdist take on a concert setting,” Cockroft tells LWLies. The trippy instrumental track ‘Flying’ is accompanied by hypnotic aerial photography, originally shot for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, while other tunes play over abstract montages and preposterous mimed performances – all shot and edited with an eye on the avant-garde.Īccording to Steven Cockroft and Jason Carty, hosts of Beatles podcast Nothing Is Real, these musical sequences set a benchmark which generations of pop stars would follow. Building on The Beatles’ earlier promo films for singles including ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, these short segments illustrate their psychedelic melodies to transcendent effect. The film’s songs, naturally the highlight of any Beatles project, are rendered in a number of fantastically conceived musical chapters, which stand up superbly as self-contained music videos. McCartney summarised, “We were fed up of everything taking so long and being such a fuss,” while George Harrison was grateful the film provided a joint focus following Epstein’s death, stating, “It got us out and got us together.” To begin shooting with so little preparation was not simply an exercise in folly, but rather grew from a sincere desire to make an unfiltered artistic statement, free from the shackles of convention. As Paul McCartney put it, “We made it up as we went along.” Filming commenced without a script – all the band had were six songs, a brightly-painted coach, and a cast of distinctive supporting actors. As a work of multimedia pop art, Magical Mystery Tour challenged the preconceptions of an entertainment establishment which The Beatles had already outrun, and their vision was later vindicated by the emergence of MTV and the lavish music videos which have become so ubiquitous.Īrriving just months after the release of their seminal concept album ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and the subsequent death of their manager Brian Epstein, Magical Mystery Tour was the first project over which the band exerted full creative control, serving as their own producers, writers and directors (although Ringo Starr receives sole credit as director of photography). Influences of ’60s counterculture and cinéma vérité, once condemned as inexplicable, now seem ahead of their time. Running just under an hour and anchored by a series of extravagant musical sequences, Magical Mystery Tour is essentially the blueprint for the modern visual album popularised by the likes of Beyoncé and Janelle Monáe. While contemporary audiences may have been confused by the film’s amateurish production and lack of a conventional narrative, the film has become more accessible over time. Savaged by critics at the time, it is often regarded as one of the band’s few misfires – an indulgent and incomprehensible spasm of drug-induced absurdity. But more ambitious was their self-produced 1967 TV movie Magical Mystery Tour. Most influential were their appearances on the small screen in short musical promotion films which laid the groundwork for the modern music video. While earlier rock-’n’-roll acts like Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard had made (largely forgettable) movies at the behest of their management, The Fab Four embraced film as a means of artistic expression in its own right. Among the endless innovations which may be attributed to The Beatles is the marriage of pop music with video.
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