It’s strange to watch a movie for the first time and feel like you’ve already seen it. Though it’s natural that Let It Be, the 1970 Beatles documentary by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, should feel familiar to modern audiences: Not just because the moment it chronicles was an iconic one for the band, but because the raw footage from which it was made was also the foundation for Peter Jackson‘s nearly-eight-hour-long Disney+ series Get Back (otherwise known as the thing your family spent all of Thanksgiving 2021 watching).
Until its debut this week on Disney+, Let It Be has never been available for streaming, and was never even released officially on DVD — its 1981 VHS/Betamax/LaserDisc release was, until now, the only time it was been legally available for audiences at home. Yet, now that it’s been beautifully restored by Jackson’s Park Road Post Production, it’s possible to appreciate it both in direct connection with Get Back, and as a film in its own right.
Get Back used its epic-length runtime and groundbreaking technology to really mine over 55 hours of footage for drama. By contrast, Let It Be comes in at a tight 80 minutes, leaving most moments of conflict on the cutting room floor; its goal is to deliver a portrait of artists at work, the platonic ideal of brevity in comparison to Jackson’s maximalist approach.
Let It Be starts so simply: An empty room, slowly filling with recording equipment and instruments, followed by bearded Paul McCartney tickling the ivories. From there, things escalate to The Beatles in full swing. There’s zero context for who most of the people are in that room, which isn’t perhaps a great example of documentary filmmaking — this is not a complete document. However, inserting any real context would burst the bubble of intimacy created by Lindsay-Hogg’s free-wheeling cameras, the ultimate fly-on-the-wall experience.
When Get Back was released, much was made of the surprising revelations buried in the original footage, most notably including George Harrison quitting the band at one point. Harrison’s departure is edited out of Let It Be — while Lindsay-Hogg’s choice of footage does feature some tension between the bandmates, the movie otherwise seems happiest to catch the guys in moments of play.
There’s McCartney messing around with “Bésame Mucho,” Ringo Starr and Harrison noodling on “Octopus’s Garden,” John Lennon and Yoko Ono waltzing about the studio, and so many other moments. The presence of six-year-old Heather McCartney brings with it such charm, as well, and we get so much just from the brief snippets of them working through specific songs, calling out chords as they play: “D, D, B to B minor, D de.” These are four men communicating with each other in the one language they know how to speak together: music.
