The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1977)

Excellent, smart action film.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This hour long documentary was made by NEMS Enterprises, Brian Epstein's company, and is by far the best document of a Beatles live show during Beatlemania. Long available only as a "grey" video/DVD, much of it is included in the Beatles Anthology DVD series in beautiful quality.Broadly, the first half hour shows the lead up to The Beatles performance (build up, backstage, support acts etc.) and then, shorn of two numbers, The Beatles' short set (typically less than half an hour for the full set) follows.This was, at the time, the largest audience for a live performance ever, at 55,600. The colour is terrific, the audience is deafening, and the performance is surprisingly good considering how loud the screaming was and how primitive their amplification was (their sound was relayed into the stadium's PA system for added volume, and they had no foldback speakers so they couldn't hear what they were playing).It is worth pointing out that what you hear isn't what the audience heard (not that it could hear anything!), The Beatles visited the studio to create "live sounding" overdubs to sweeten the recorded sound, although for Act Naturally they simply overdubbed the master tape as released on the Help! album.Watch it to see how these four young men reacted to the hysteria of a startling night.

The Beatles at Shea Stadium documents the band's groundbreaking concert for 55,600 screaming New York fans on August 15, 1965. Made as a TV special using 12 cameramen, the film gives a comprehensive picture of what the event was like, including: setting up the stage, The Beatles' helicopter flyover (they weren't allowed to land on the baseball field, so they had to land on the World's Fair building and travel to the stadium in an armored truck), some of the opening acts (Brenda Holloway and the King Curtis Band, Sounds Incorporated), tuning up in the dressing room, and most of the actual Beatles show (two songs were edited for time). Introduced onstage by Ed Sullivan (they had taped an appearance on his show the day before), The Beatles ran across the ball field to the stage in their new, Help!-style beige military jackets to play to what was then the largest crowd ever at a rock 'n' roll show. The Beatles give their all to entertain the distant, cheering crowd, occasionally cracking up at the sheer enormity of the event.