The Next Picture Show

It’s never shown on television and you can’t put it in your Netflix queue, but Beatles fans have a chance to see the group’s rarest film, Let It Be, when it’s screened at the Princeton Public Library Aug. 6 as part of the library’s Great Artists Change film series.

The documentary chronicles the Fab Four during what was certainly the most contentious period of the group’s existence. The idea was to make a television special of the band recording an album (originally to be titled Get Back) and performing a concert. It was also intended as a way for the Beatles to “re-unite” after recording The Beatles. That record (commonly known as The White Album) saw very little collaboration between band members and illustrated the various musical styles each member was pursuing.

“The film is sort of an oddity,” says Bruce Lawton, a film archivist and historian who’s providing the print for the screening. “It’s essentially a home movie. It started out (because) they were trying to do something different and get out of the doldrums, which didn’t really happen, something else did.”

What did happen is that the band essentially fell apart, even though it would go on to record Abbey Road after filming and recording Let It Be (the film and album were released after the Beatles’ official breakup). The movie has lots of great music, but also some tension (particularly in a famous exchange between Paul McCartney and George Harrison) and a seemingly disinterested John Lennon (who stays close to Yoko Ono). At one point of the sessions, Mr. Harrison quit the band (though that isn’t shown in the movie).

Mr. Lawton says the major reason Let It Be was released theatrically was to fulfill the Beatles’ movie contract with United Artist. None of the band members was too interested in working with director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, though, because they had moved on to their solo careers.

Rumors of a theatrical and DVD release pop up now and then but it’s recently been reported that both Mr. McCartney and Ringo Starr find the film depressing and prefer to keep it under wraps.

Also noteworthy for the screening is the print owned by Mr. Lawton. Even if you can track down an old VHS copy of Let It Be, its quality is going to be poor. The film was originally intended to be a television special. For its theatrical release, that image was blown up to fill wider movie screens. For television and VHS, that widescreen image was “condensed” to fill television screens (a process known as pan-and-scan), resulting in a severe distortion of the original composition. Mr. Lawton says his print is in-line with what was seen in theaters and is a big improvement over television screenings.

Although he says there are hours and hours of unused footage from the Let It Be sessions that fans would love to see, Mr. Lawton says the existing film captures the band intimately at a turning point in its life. And watching it, it is like watching the end of the greatest rock ‘n roll band that ever was.

“The fact that the movie was released later, after Abbey Road, it’s almost like they planned their own epithet.”

Let It Be will be screened at the Princeton Library, 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, Aug. 6, 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.