I Wanna Hold Your Hand

February 1964. A band arrives in America and will appear on Sunday evening on the country's most watched television programme. In New Jersey a few teenagers are fixed on that day: one will try anything to get near the group, one wants to take photographs, one is not interested at all and is only keeping her friends company, and one says he hates the whole thing. All of them go to Manhattan and try to get into the hotel where the band is staying. None of them manages what they came for. Robert Zemeckis directs and wrote the screenplay with Bob Gale. Steven Spielberg is among the producers. It is Zemeckis's first film. It failed commercially and the studio lost faith in new directors; the pair's next film failed as well, and success came only on the third attempt. The idea is never to show the band. The members' faces never enter the frame; there is only the crowd, the sound and a distant view, and the narrative stands entirely with the fans. It proceeds close to real time across one day; the structure is built like a chase. The period is drawn in detail; American youth culture, dress and the order of television at the start of the sixties are given directly. Its limit is the number of characters; there are five strands and some are not worked enough. Who it is for: anyone curious about seventies American comedy and sixties pop culture. Who it is not for: the humour is coarse, the pace is tiring, and the narrative is thin for a viewer uninterested in the band.