Celluloid jukebox : popular music and the movies since the 50s / edited by Jonathan Romney and Adrian Wootton.

. Celluloid jukebox : popular music and the movies since the 50s / edited by Jonathan Romney and Adrian Wootton. 0851705065 (cased) series London : British Film Institute, 1995.
Call#: Van Pelt Library ML2075 .C455 1995

Celluloid Jukebox, edited by Jonathan Romney and Adrian Wootton, is a collection of essays from famous filmmakers and musicians all regarding the relationship of popular music and film since the 1950’s. In this book, many essays make stark remarks on the influence of A Hard Day’s Night in the connection between pop music and film. Andy Medhurst’s essay, for example, entitled “It Sort of Happened Here: The Strange, Brief Life of the British Pop Film”, on numerous occasions makes the claim that “the film which irrevocably sundered that connection [between pop music and film] was A Hard Day’s Night,” and that “the kind of static on-stage set-piece that was one of the many causalities of the new approach [was] pioneered by A Hard Day’s Night.” The section of the book, however, that is most supportive of my thesis is the final section of interviews, which asked a number of famous filmmakers what their favorite pop movies are. In response to this question, Cameron Crowe, Amos Poe, and Allison Anders all claimed A Hard Day’s Night.
Allison Anders, a producer of many notable films such as Martin Scorsese’s Grace of the Heart, is quoted as saying, “the very first intoxicated experience of music and movies working together, needless to say, [was] A Hard Day’s Night.” She then went on to say, “when I went to see the movie, I didn’t see the movie itself until I saw it for maybe the tenth time because we were screaming through the whole thing. So it was like seeing a concert with all the little girls.” This quote supports my thesis that A Hard Day’s Night was the first film to successfully unite the pop cultures of film and music in a way that no film previously had, and that it in fact is the first true rock and roll film. Anders’ response to the film, like so many others’, was because of the novelty of the style of this production. A Hard Day’s Night really was like watching a concert for an hour and a half on the silver-screen, and therefore was indeed a rock and roll film. It was different than any other films that came before it, and it forever changed the way music and film interacted. This book, Celluloid Jukebox, gives a great inside understanding of A Hard Day’s Night’s influence on music’s role in film. It speaks of all the films to the present that have used pop music in a similar fashion to the 1964 Beatles’ comedy, and therefore is a great source for my thesis.

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Celluloid jukebox : popular music and the movies since the 50s / edited by Jonathan Romney and Adrian Wootton.