The Legendary ‘Let It Be’ Beatles Documentary Is Restored and Heading to Disney+
As Disney+ continues to invest in music documentaries and concert films, the streamer is dipping back into the Beatles well and will release the band’s long-unavailable Let It Be documentary.
After years of keeping the 1970 documentary locked in the vaults, the Beatles have allowed Peter Jackson to restore the film. The last time that Let It Be was available in any form was in the early 1980s. Despite getting a release on VHS and laserdisc, Let It Be was long buried by the time that the DVD era dawned.
While restoration attempts reportedly began in the 1990s and 2000s, it may have long been assumed that the surviving Beatles were not interested in the film returning to the limelight. However, in 2016, Paul McCartney said that was not the case.
A Restoration by Peter Jackson
Jackson, of course, was the man behind The Beatles: Get Back, which was a major hit for Disney+ in 2021. The legendary filmmaker’s Park Road Post Production used the same technology that it employed to restore the footage used in Get Back to revitalize Let It Be.
Interestingly, Jackson used hours of footage originally filmed by Let It Be director Michael Lindsay-Hogg to create The Beatles: Get Back. Prior to the later release, Jackson vowed that Let it Be would see the light of day again and that his film was a companion piece to the 1970 documentary.
“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,” Jackson said in a statement.
“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.”
Restoring Both the Video and the Audio
As part of the restoration process, Jackson and his team have adjusted the color of Let It Be. The film’s dreary was one of the biggest criticisms of the original film by fans. Additionally, Jackson’s team has restored the audio.
“With Lindsay-Hogg’s full support, Apple Corps asked Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production to dive into a meticulous restoration of the film from the original 16mm negative, which included lovingly remastering the sound using the same MAL de-mix technology that was applied to the ‘Get Back’ docuseries,” a press statement said.
For his part, Lindsay-Hogg sounds thrilled with Jackson’s restoration of his film.
“’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,” the director recalled.
“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 the 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.”
Let it Be will premiere on May 8 exclusively on Disney+.