ABSTRACT
And in the end? Patrick Cargill’s superintendent from the ‘Metropolitan scuffers’ in Help! may have spoken for many at the time when asking the Beatles ‘How long do you think you’ll last?’, but last they have, ever-popular and influential down the generations. The Beatles’ musical legacy is incontrovertible, but beyond their variable solo ventures the quartet have also remained a significant presence in (fictional) film culture, especially its ‘youth heritage’ narratives. For instance, Beatlemania narratives drive both I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Zemeckis, 1978), set at Ed Sullivan’s CBS Studio 50 (and the first executive-producer credit for Steven Spielberg), and its antipodean variant Secrets aka One Crazy Night (Pattinson, 1992), a coming-of-age tale set around the Fab Four’s June 1964 arrival in Melbourne. References to their cultural import can be found in myriad movies and various contexts, from Almost Famous (Crowe, 2000) where the veteran groupie is called Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), through to Sister Act (Ardolino, 1992) where convent-dwelling Deloris Wilson (Whoopie Goldberg) lists Jesus’ disciples as John, Paul, George and Ringo (without ensuing Mid-west record burnings). The Beatles’ songbook shapes ‘structures of feeling’ in youth-centred films ranging from the jukebox musical Across the Universe (Taymor, 2007) with its 1960s star-crossed lovers, to the rom-com mystery of Yesterday (Boyle, 2019), two films with rooftop concerts in the style of Let It Be.
