do you fight? Insults to Yoko? Behind the legend of the recording of 'Let it be' and the breakup of the Beatles

For a Beatles fan, this is manna from heaven, each detail taking on tremendous power: Paul's brown shoe bobbing up and down in time with George's guitar; the moment when John gets a sentence wrong and George smiles when he hears the mistake, while Paul looks at them to make sure John isn't left off the hook; an assistant squats down while holding a clipboard with the newly written lyrics to Dig a Pony on it, so John won't forget it; horns blare in the street as John belts out Danny Boy at the top of his lungs between songs; the beauty of Ringo's watchful eyes behind the drums and George's Mona Lisa smile as their nerves wear off and the group takes flight, holding John in the ecstasy of the Don't Let Me Down chorus. We watch as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr form a band that fits, live and direct; the alchemical mix of tough and tender (McCartney wields his Höfner bass like a bearded ship captain, Lennon's vulnerable smile peeking through his long hair) shudders like it was the first time. Poignantly, those most surprised by the Beatles' magic seem to be the members of the group themselves.

“We went to London and organized a screening for Apple,” says Jackson, referring to the company the Beatles founded in 1968 and still manages their legacy. “They were excited. Then Paul saw the footage, then Ringo. So, at that moment we thought what was the most important thing: 'Let's include the entire concert in the documentary. Let's show it complete."

That concert (also featuring a hilarious subplot involving a bewildered 19-year-old cop receiving noise complaints, which Apple employees cunningly wriggle out of) forms the climax of Jackson's film, a daily of 21 days of the Beatles in their intimate creative world. Assembled from 60 hours of archival footage, the documentary shows the band improvising, arranging, composing, arguing, goofing around, fiddling with instruments, struggling and ultimately coming up with Let it be.

Originally all these sequences had been filmed for Let It Be, the vérité documentary by Michael Lindsay-H Michael Lindsay-Hogg in which a version of the roof concert of about 22 minutes appeared but which ended up being known, for the few who saw it, for very different reasons. The feature film was released in May 1970, a month after the Beatles broke up, and was largely considered a depressing testimonial to the band's dissolution, before being withdrawn shortly thereafter. In bootleg versions, the original 16mm film was converted to 35mm for the big screen, where it looked somber, with heavily saturated blues and greens. A Beatles fan since the 1970s (he was eight years old when they broke up), Jackson had a pirated copy on VHS, the product of four consecutive copies, whose blurry quality confirmed the sad opinion that he had of that period. In fact, the director was the first to be skeptical when he learned that Apple planned to rescue those images. "The truth is that I didn't say yes," recalls the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and three-time Oscar winner. “I replied: ‘Can I watch the footage first? I'll answer you later. Because I thought I would love to do a Beatles movie, but not one that focused on their breakup. That's the group movie I would ever want to make."