A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
There’s a Beatles movie in prime time on TCM tonight, and I’m recommending it. Big surprise. But there are plenty of extra reasons to watch this particular telecast of 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night, the first, best, and most seminal film starring the fab four. For one thing, this Saturday night showing means that A Hard Day’s Night is being presenting, discussed and acknowledged as one of TCM’s “The Essentials.” A very well-deserved honor. Second, it’s followed by two films that are connected directly to the group’s film aesthetic. At 9:45 p.m. ET, TCM is following The Beatles’ 1964 breakthrough movie musical with It’s Trad, Dad!, a prototypical early rock music movie that came out two years before, in 1962. In the U.S., it was released as Ring-a-Ding Rhythm, and you can decide which title is worse. But the film, by any other name, featured performances by such acts as Chubby Checker, Del Shannon, Helen Shapiro, and Gene Vincent, and is most notable because it was directed by Richard Lester – the same guy The Beatles chose to direct A Hard Day’s Night. And then, at 11:15 p.m. ET, comes The Knack… And How to Get It, a 1965 comedy, also directed by Lester, starring Rita Tushingham as a sweet country girl caught between two suitors – one innocent, the other a womanizer.