dir George Dunning, scrpl Lee Minoff, Al Brodax, Jack Mendelsohn & Erich Segal, cin John Williams, ed Brian J. Bishop
“Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland. 80,000 leagues beneath the sea it lay, or lie. I’m not too sure.” – Narrator
Yellow Submarine isn’t exactly a Beatles film. By this stage in their career, the Beatles had become disenchanted with film, and saw an animated feature as a good way to fulfill their contract with United Artists. Most of the film’s songs were recycled from earlier albums, and the band’s speaking parts were poorly imitated by voice actors. Were it not so fun, it would be tempting to simply dismiss Yellow Submarine as a money grab.
Expounding on their caricatural performance in Help!, here the Beatles are living together in Liverpool, in a modest brick building called The Pier. Inside, the building is impossibly large—like Oscar’s trash can or Snoopy’s doghouse—filled with endless corridors of doors, each opened to reveal something more outlandish than behind the last.
As the film opens Young Fred has escaped Pepperland from an invasion of Blue Meanies, a gang of nasty, music-hating villains who have imprisoned inhabitants of Pepperland. He arrives in Liverpool to persuade the Beatles to rescue their doppelgängers, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
And so the band sets out to the rescue, in Fred’s Yellow Submarine, traveling through a series of vividly painted, pop art seas, all set to a collection of popular Beatles songs.
I’m uncertain whether the film was specifically intended as a rejection of Disney animation. The cartoon style here is the anthesis of Disney’s realistic multi-planed technique, opting instead for a rudimentary psychedelic style. The Blue Meanies themselves seem to spoof Mickey Mouse, with their mouse-eared hats. If criticism was intended, it’s quite subtle and doesn’t come across as mean spirited.
As with Help! I suspect one’s enjoyment of Yellow Submarine largely depends on how one feels about the Beatles themselves. As an unabashed admirer of the Fab Four, the film works on multiple levels.
Unsurprisingly, the film, like their music, mostly deals with peace and love. Anger and negative thoughts are defeated with love and song. Violence is resisted through pacifism. At the very least, it certainly works as an appropriate children’s fable.
Yellow Submarine, though obliquely, also showcases the Beatles at the top of their game, when there remained the biggest band in the world. As such, the film is filled with moments of profundity about the band’s importance to history.
When the Beatles find themselves in the Sea of Nothing, in the company of Jeremy Hilary Boob, PhD, they are surrounded by emptiness, a simple white screen. When they begin singing Nowhere Man the Beatles dance across the screen, suddenly filled with beautiful colors and flowers in their wake. As they perform the Sea of Nothing comes alive with their creations. It is a perfect metaphor for a moment in time when the Beatles seemed capable of anything.
When rescuing Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Ringo suggests that their glass prison is Beatle-proof. John explains that, “Nothing is Beatle-proof.” Watching even the band’s cartoon incarnations sing and dance their way through Pepperland, I must agree.