The BeatlesThe Beatles’ 1970 documentary, Let It Be, has been out of circulation for 40 years, but a restored version of the famous film will land on Disney+ in a few weeks.
On Wednesday, 8 May, Let It Be will re-premiere on the streaming service. It has been restored via Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production, utilising the same techniques found in the eight-hour documentary The Beatles: Get Back to restore Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s original film.
Stating that he believes Let It Be, alongside Get Back, tells the complete story of The Beatles as they were captured on film at the time, Jackson said (per Variety), “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 called the combination of Get Back and Let It Be “one epic story” that “support and enhance each other”, while the latter documentary film will finally be “looking and sounding far better than it did in 1970.”
In a separate statement, Lindsay-Hogg recalled the sadness around the original release of Let It Be, as The Beatles broke up one month before the documentary’s release in April 1970.
“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,” Lindsay-Hogg commented. “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?”
Lindsay-Hogg added, “I was knocked out by what Peter was able to do with Get Back, using all the footage I’d shot 50 years previously.”
At the time of publication, no teaser for Let It Be has been released—fans will likely have to wait two weeks to witness the restored documentary.
With Get Back, Peter Jackson oversaw the task of directing a documentary film containing 55 hours of unreleased footage of the iconic band filmed in January 1969 when they were recording their seminal LP Let It Be.
Jackson commented about the project in a statement, “The 55 hours of never-before-seen footage and 140 hours of audio made available to us ensures this movie will be the ultimate ‘fly on the wall’ experience that Beatles fans have long dreamt about - it’s like a time machine transports us back to 1969, and we get to sit in the studio watching these four friends make great music together.”
