![]() However, Magical Mystery Tour is without any of the jokes or real comedic acting. There is actually an odd similarity to Monty Python’s Flying Circus in many of the scenes: the incoherent jabbering of the army drill sergeant played by Victor Spinetti (derived from his performance in the stage play ‘Oh, What a Lovely War!’) brings to mind Graham Chapman’s famed military portrayal ("Stop being silly!"), the sped-up camera work of a marathon akin to Python’s ‘Upper Class Twit of the Year’ sketch, Auntie Jessie’s dream of eating massive quantities of food like the morbidly obese Terry Jones in The Meaning of Life (with John Cleese’s skeevy waiter played by John Lennon, including thin mustache), and the white coat and tails old-style dance ending of The Beatles performing "Your Mother Should Know" akin to similar style vision of heaven in The Meaning of Life. Strangelove) given color washes – only can only imagine how dull it would have looked in black-and-white. One can certainly tell that viewing it in the black-and-white initial BBC1 broadcast would have taken away from that – the instrumental "Flying" sequence was aerial footage (unused footage from Stanley Kubrick’s famed Dr. It should be said that visually the film was likely ahead of, or at least on the leading edge of its time, with rich colors. The dream romance between Ringo Starr’s Aunt Jessie and the conductor Buster Bloodvessel is just thrown in there, like most everything else. ![]() In fact, after "Walrus" and big final dance number "You Mother Should Know", the best musical portion is one not by The Beatles, but the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing "Death Cab For Cutie" with a stripper. There are some strong moments, most notably their only video ever of "I Am the Walrus", but oddly less is done visually in the songs than in the rest of the film ("Fool On the Hill" is just shots of McCartney on hills, while "Blue Jay Way" is just distorted images of George Harrison sitting cross-legged playing a chalk drawing of piano keys on the floor – visual film stunts that members were interested in at the time, but don’t really hold up). ![]() The Beatles and the rest of the cast mostly just bounce around on the bus and in scenes that start nowhere and go nowhere. The film itself is still essentially a hippie mess, with virtually no plot or even real acting. And now that low point comes to DVD, in full color, with extras that include a director’s commentary by none other than Sir Paul McCartney. Some of that was no doubt due to the BBC airing the special in black-and-white, though it was shot in color (most television sets in Britain at the time were still black-and-white), but it still has remained a low point in The Beatles’ seminal story. Hunter Davies, The Beatles’ only authorized biographer, said, "It was the first time in memory that an artist felt obliged to make a public apology for his work." Without a plot or even real performances, the critics called it an indulgent, and audiences didn’t think much better. Moreover, this was not a BBC-run production, but solely from the greatest band in rock ‘n’ roll. ![]() The group had previously done films with music in Help! and A Hard Day’s Night, but those were of the early mop-top Beatles, in suits & in black-and-white – this was the late sixties hippie Beatles, in full colour. On Boxing Day (the day after Christmas in the U.K.), 1967, BBC 1 aired The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, a one-hour special conceived, produced, and directed entirely by the Fab Four.
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