On His Birthday, Top 10 John Lennon Films

[Scuba]

http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/10/187881/his-birthday-top-10-john-lennon-films

“It’s my sodding career, liberating -- all right?” “HOW I WON THE WAR”

The same year Lennon co-made “Magical” he reunited with “A Hard Day’s Night” and 1965’s “Help!” helmer Richard Lester to co-star in 1967’s “How I Won the War.” The almost 109 minute-feature was scripted by Charles Wood, who also wrote 1968’s antiwar “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” “How I won the War” is significant in that it reveals Lennon’s growing political awareness and movement towards a pacifist stance. Set during World War II, Lennon and Lester mock militarism and show the futility of combat. Towards the end, when Lennon’s character Gripweed is grievously wounded, he questions war. One of the soldiers muses that after WWII he’ll move on to Vietnam. (See:

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Hamburg Days: “BACKBEAT”

Ian Hart reprised his role as Lennon in this biopic that takes place before John’s Barcelona trip with Epstein. 1994’s “Backbeat” finds the pre-Ringo Beatles performing in Hamburg 1960-1962, and the future pacifist Lennon is not so very “peacey lovey” in this early look at the Liverpool Lads. In fact, if not downright unlikable here, John’s a hard edged brawler as he fights to reach “the toppermost of the poppermost!” The biopic suggests that Lennon actually may have killed somebody during a fight. Nevertheless, with its depictions of the so-called “Fifth Beatle” Stu Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff), Stu’s German lover Astrid Kerchherr (Sheryl Lee) and drummer Pete Best (Scot Williams) -- all important figures in Fab Four lore -- most Beatle-maniacs will probably dig this pic shot on location in the U.K. and Germany. Especially since “Backbeat” has a great soundtrack, with songs such as “Twist n Shout”; it won a BAFTA Award (the U.K. equivalent of the Oscar) for Film Music and was nominated for Best British Film. (See:

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Working Class Hero: “THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON”

This superb 2006 documentary revealing the Nixon regime’s not-so-secret war against Lennon is must see viewing -- and helps explain why Tricky Dick beat George McGovern in the landslide election of 1972. As the post-Beatles Lennon sought to relocate to New York, he agreed to join forces with other top pop musicians and antiwar activists to embark on a rock tour that would have rocked America. The plan was brilliantly simple: Lennon and company would perform at concerts across the USA to rally youth and register voters to defeat Nixon and Agnew in the presidential election. Fearful that Lennon’s star power would help topple the Nixon Administration, the dogs of war were sicced on John and Yoko, who were subjected to intense harassment by the FBI and INS. An old U.K. drug charge was used against Lennon, forcing him to divert his attention from the campaign trail to an epic court fight for legal immigration status, which derailed the planned antiwar concert tour. Throughout the ordeal Our Man John kept his sense of humor: After eventually winning, when Nixon, John Mitchell, and others implicated in the Watergate scandal fell from grace, Lennon wittily told a reporter this only proved “time wounds all heels.” Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Carl Bernstein, Tariq Ali, Gore Vidal, etc., appear in the doc. From a political point of view this is the best Lennon documentary. (See: www.imdb.com/title/tt0478049/.)

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All We Are Saying is: “GIVE PEACE A CHANCE”

Danny “News Dissector” Schechter’s nonfiction film, made with the cooperation of Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon (who appear in it), was an effort to stop Bush’s invasion of Iraq -- that is, Pres. George H.W. Bush’s war back in 1991, when this documentary was made. It features various musicians including Little Richard and Lenny Kravitz, in cameos singing versions of “Give Peace a Chance”, which John composed in 1969 and became the anthem for the anti-Vietnam War movement. Schechter’s hour-long film is little seen because it came out while the media was beating the drums for the Gulf War and posed a counter-narrative to the jingoistic war hysteria. As a Variety headline put it the doc was “Selling Peace At a Time of War.” Ron Kovic, who was depicted by Tom Cruise in Oliver Stone’s 1989 antiwar movie “Born on the Fourth of July”, appears in the film that used Lennon’s lyrical legacy to once again stand up to what Dylan called “The Masters of War.”

Others: "A Hard Day's Night", "Magical Myster Tour", "The Hours and Times", "Nowhere Boy", "LennoNYC", "Across The Universe".