All This and World War II

Everyone seems to want to know why this film has never been released in any official form for domestic consumption. Here's my guess. Copyright clearance. Most of the documentary footage is probably public domain, so it's not that. But there is a LOT of feature film footage from all over the place included, and I'm sure it would be a nightmare to clear it all for commercial publishing of the film. Then there is the music. Beatles would cost a lot, and there's a lot of Beatles in it - let's face it, it's wall-to-wall Beatles, and what is this film likely to return? The significance of the Second World War is rapidly diminishing in a world besieged by a whole new set of super-villains (take your pick). As you can read here, folks either LOVE it or LOATH it. Fascinating! Don't hold your breath expecting this one to be legally available soon. It's just too hard.

I remember when this movie came out, and begging my parents to drive me to the theatre to see it. I willl admit, you have to be a fan of the Beatles and into WW2 history to really get into this movie. I am not lying when I tell you that I'm staring at the album soundtrack right now on my shelf in front of me. I could never figure out why they have never released this movie out on video, being that so many 'stinkers' are thrown on the shelves every year. I will admit, when I went to see it (over 20 years ago), there were few people in the audience at the theatre. But the way that the music is in sync with the film footage was really great, but I'm relying on a twenty year old plus memory of the film.

All This and World War Two is essential Lennon and McCartney as recorded by other artists. Some interpretations and productions are next to brilliant. All this (and World War Two) is played on a backdrop of amazingly choreographed historical and artistic footage of the War in question. When can we see and hear this on disc in our own homes?

Mind-imploding cinematic disaster from Twentieth-Century Fox pairs archival World War II footage and Fox films from (primarily) the same period along with "choice" Beatles covers. It's sort of like THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! gone terribly wrong. Did people think that this film would have some sort of educational purpose? Maybe a Fox executive thought this would fill in the void for Beatles fans desperate for the band to reunite? Some of the stock footage is quite interesting, like Japanese-American owned businesses disguising their ethnicity and footage of James Stewart enlisting. So too is a look at some of the fictitious films Fox made in response to the war (in one clip, a woman hears news of Pearl Harbor on the radio and says, "Oh, it must be Orson Welles!"). But most of the music is pretty awful, and cuing "The Fool on the Hill" and "Nowhere Man" with Hitler and Mussolini respectively can't take the place of a scholarly exploration of the subject.

I would love to see this movie again. I saw it at the CINERAMA Dome in Hollywood, CA, 1976. The vinyl LP was a double album and had lots of cool stills and lyrics. I still remember the footage of the youngsters riding out to the english countryside in trains with gas masks on. What will it take to get this film printed again?