John Lennon: Rare and Unseen

Considering all of the Beatles-related material on the market, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to release a program entitled Rare and Unseen, yet this documentary lives up to its name. The key components here are interviews and television appearances that either haven't been seen since their first airings in the 1960s and '70s and were thought to be lost, or have never been released on DVD, or haven't been available to American viewers (or so the distributors claim; while I'm no archivist, I've seen a lot of Beatles footage, and almost none of this looked familiar). The subject matter, on the other hand, is nothing new, as Lennon and others (including occasional comments by the remaining Fabs, as well as observations from talking heads such as Beatles press officer Tony Barrow and musician Phil Collins) discuss the furor over his remarks that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, the breakup of the band, and his subsequent life with Yoko Ono, among other topics. But most of Lennon's comments are more extensive than usual: of Beatlemania, he says, “I can't define it—I'll leave it to the psychologists, and let them get it wrong,” and his and Ono's avant-garde art experiments are dealt with at length in a TV appearance with David Frost. On the minus side, not a single note of Beatles or Lennon songs is heard (indeed, music is barely mentioned). Despite that major shortcoming, Lennon completists should consider this a strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (S. Graham)