Despite his already epic, nearly eight-hour docuseries, “The Beatles: Get Back,” getting released in 2021 (read our review), filmmaker Peter Jackson’s obsession with the Beatles is not quite over. The filmmaker has restored “Let It Be,” director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s original 1970 film about The Beatles, and Disney+ will release the movie on May 8, 2024, the first time the film has been readily available in 50 years.
“Let It Be” has been out of circulation almost as soon as it came out, at the time, it was seen as too negative and too focused on the Beatles in-fighting during the Get Back album sessions. Following its 1970 release, the doc was promptly vaulted, only found here and there on VHS or bootlegs.
READ MORE: Peter Jackson Has Another Film Project With The Beatles In Mind
“Let It Be” is only 80 minutes in length, and for “The Beatles: Get Back,” Jackson went into the Apple archive and dove through the hours and hours of footage that Lindsay-Hogg shot for the doc (and the director has suggested he could’ve made an even longer cut).
First released in May 1970 amidst the swirl of The Beatles’ breakup, “Let It Be” is now to take its rightful place in the band’s history. “Let It Be” contains footage not featured in the “Get Back” docuseries, bringing viewers into the studio and onto Apple Corps’ London rooftop in January 1969 as The Beatles, joined by keyboardist Billy Preston, write and record their Grammy Award-winning album Let It Be, with its Academy Award-winning title song, and perform live for the final time as a group.
“’Let It Be’ was ready to go in October/November 1969, but it didn’t come out until April 1970,” Lindsay-Hogg explained in a statement about the context of the movie’s release. “One month before its release, The Beatles officially broke up. And so the people went to see ‘Let It Be’ with sadness in their hearts, thinking, ‘I’ll never see The Beatles together again. I will never have that joy again,’ and it very much darkened the perception of the film. But, in fact, how often do you get to see artists of this stature working together to make what they hear in their heads into songs. And then you get to the roof and you see their excitement, camaraderie and sheer joy in playing together again as a group and know, as we do now, that it was the final time, and we view it with full understanding of who they were and still are and a little poignancy. I was knocked out by what Peter was able to do with ‘Get Back,’ using all the footage I’d shot 50 years previously.”
“I’m absolutely thrilled that Michael’s movie, ‘Let It Be,’ has been restored and is finally being re-released after being unavailable for decades,” Peter Jackson said. “I was so lucky to have access to Michael’s outtakes for ‘Get Back,’ and I’ve always thought that ‘Let It Be’ is needed to complete the ‘Get Back’ story. Over three parts, we showed Michael and The Beatles filming a groundbreaking new documentary, and ‘Let It Be’ is that documentary – the movie they released in 1970. I now think of it all as one epic story, finally completed after five decades. The two projects support and enhance each other: ‘Let It Be’ is the climax of ‘Get Back,’ while ‘Get Back’ provides a vital missing context for ‘Let It Be.’ Michael Lindsay-Hogg was unfailingly helpful and gracious while I made ‘Get Back,’ and it’s only right that his original movie has the last word…looking and sounding far better than it did in 1970.”
As for the way the film is often remembered in a darker light, in a recent New York Times interview, Lindsay-Hogg downplayed the fighting, explaining, “No one had ever seen the Beatles have a fight, but that wasn’t really a fight.”
“Let It Be” finally comes back to light on May 8 on Disney+, and a new trailer is surely right around the corner. Watch the “The Beatles: Get Back” clips in the meantime.
