Igår, den 16 april 2024, tillkännagavs det officiellt att regissören Michael Lindsay-Hoggs originalfilm med The Beatles från 1970 kommer att få en exklusiv premiär på tv-kanalenDisney + den 8 maj 2024, efter 54 års väntan!

Let It Be hade premiär den 13 maj 1970 i USA och den 20 maj samma år i UK. Äntligen får filmen sitt rätta värde i Beatleshistorien! Tidigare har vi sett filmen genom en mörkare lins. Men nu har filmen kommit ut i ljuset i och med den restaurering som regissören Peter Jackson och  hans företag har genomfört efter att ha använts sig av samma häpnadsväckande teknik som han använde sig av när hans film The Beatles: Get Back hade premiär på Disney + den  25-27 november 2021.

Denna nyligen restaurerade version av Let It Be innehåller filmklipp som inte ingår i The Beatles: Get Back-filmen. Efter att ha sett den filmen har många Beatlesfans längtat efter att få ta del av en restaurerade utgåva av originalfilmen. Under Lindsay-Hogg’s fulla stöd, bad Apple Corps Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production att dyka ner i arbetet med att restaurera originalfilmen med utgångspunkt från originalnegativen som är i 16 mm:s film. Och inte bara filmbilderna utan även ljudet har fått genomgå samma procedurer som filmen The Beatles: Get Back med den numera kända MAL-tekniken, som står för Machine Assisted Learning.

Michael Lindsay-Hogg berättar själv:
”’Let It Be’ was ready to go in October/November 1969, but it didn’t come out until April 1970. 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. 

Peter Jacksons tankar kring arbetet med originalfilmen Let it Be:
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,” says Peter Jackson. ”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.

Originalfilmen Let It Be från 1970, regisserades av Michael Lindsay-Hogg, med filmstjärnorna John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison och Ringo Starr, med specialframträdanden av Billy Preston. Filmen producerades av Neil Aspinall med The Beatles i rollen som exekutiva producenter *). Fotografisk regissör var Anthony B Richmond.