7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Freda Kelly was a shy Liverpudlian teenager when she was asked to work for a local band hoping to make it big. Freda had faith in The Beatles from the beginning, and The Beatles had faith in her. For the first time in 50 years, Freda tells her stories of serving as secretary to the Beatles even after their breakup. One of few films with the support of the living Beatles and featuring original Beatles music.
Starring: Freda Kelly, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo StarrMusic | 100% |
Documentary | 70% |
Biography | 3% |
History | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
What is there left to say about the Beatles, almost fifty years since their historic TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which officially launched Beatlemania in the U.S.? After all the press coverage, the interviews, the albums and concerts, the TV appearances, the films, the biographies, histories, bio-pics, documentaries and tell-all books, hasn't everything been said? The answer turns out to be no, and the new stories come from an unlikely source who has been hiding in plain sight for years. Freda Kelly was a teenager from Liverpool and an early fan when the Beatles were an unknown band playing the dank club called the Cavern (and the drummer was a fellow named Pete Best). Purely by chance, Freda was plucked from the crowd and handed what became every girl's fantasy job: secretary to the Beatles, head of their official fan club and, as time went on, buffer and gatekeeper to their privacy, which Freda guarded with the loyalty of a family member. She might as well have been one. In one of the deleted scenes, she recounts a private party following the premiere of John Lennon's early acting foray, How I Won the War, where only the inner circle was invited: the Beatles, their wives, their parents, their manager Brian Epstein—and, of course, Freda. When the band broke up in 1970, Freda's discretion continued. Instead of cashing in by selling memorabilia (of which she'd acquired a huge collection) and spilling secrets, she packed up what she could and retreated to private life, raising two children and gradually letting everyone around her forget that she was ever anything but a working mother. Every so often, though, a clip of the Beatles on TV would jog her memory, and she would say a few words. Her son, Timothy, would ask for more information, but his mother never wanted to talk about it. Then Timothy died young, and she regretted holding back. When she became a grandmother, Freda Kelly decided it was time to "get the story down". She didn't want want her daughter's son Niall to remember his "gran" as just an old lady with gray hair sitting in the corner. So she contacted a family friend, documentary film producer and director Ryan White, nephew of Billy Kinsley of the Merseybeats, another band that played the Cavern when the Beatles were coming up. Even White didn't know about Freda's past. She'd kept it so quiet that, according to White, 95% of the movie was news to Freda's own daughter.
Good Ol' Freda is the first feature shot by Austin Hargreave. The film was financed by a Kickstarter campaign and shot digitally. The image on Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has presumably been sourced directly from digital files. It's a clean, sharp and noise-free image that brings out all the detail in the source, whatever that may be. Archival news footage looks rough, but the contemporary interviews and many of the photos still look splendid, and director White and his editor have resisted the temptation to dress up the stills with digital trickery other than pans and zooms. Colors for the interview sequences appear to be natural. The average bitrate of 18.00 Mbps would be low for a dramatic film, but for an 87-minute documentary with so many still images, it seems reasonable. In any case, there were no visible artifacts.
The film's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is clear and efficient, unless your ear has trouble adjusting to Freda Kelly's Liverpool accent, which isn't particularly thick. As with most documentaries, this is a basic, front-oriented mix in which voices predominate. Background music sets the tone, and White's music supervisor, Matt Lilley, has assembled a great soundtrack consisting of four original Beatles' songs, plus original versions of songs covered by the Beatles, including "Twist and Shout", "I'm Ready", "Honey Don't", "Boys" and "Long Tall Sally". These are routed to the left and right fronts, with support from the surrounds, to establish a period environment that ably supports White's visuals.
In a world obsessed with fame and fortune, Freda Kelly is an anomaly, a throwback to an earlier age when people didn't automatically seek the spotlight and thought there was more to life than money. At seventeen, she discovered a local band that played music she loved, became a regular at their performances, and got the chance to accompany them on the fast track to stardom. Some critics were disappointed that Good Ol' Freda didn't spill new secrets about the Beatles, but they may have missed the film's most obvious revelation. The key to Freda's longevity with the Beatles and their families, and to the esteem she still commands, is that she never took either herself or Beatlemania too seriously. For her, these were four youngsters from Liverpool like herself, who just happened to be doing something wonderful. When her part in the thing was done, she went back to what she was before: a regular person, who now had a family. Try to imagine the rarity of someone like that to people strapped to the rocket that propelled Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr during those heady years. To have someone in the inner circle who was both fan and friend, who knew you when and took care of you now, who was loyal without question but also wouldn't brook any diva nonsense, because she knew where you came from—that's not someone a star finds every day. That's why the Beatles held onto Good Ol' Freda for as long as they could. Highly recommended.
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