Village Beat (1964)
Catalogue note
In 1964, riding high on the success of British musicals, producers Jeremy and David Fosternott released Village Beat.
Imagine how they felt when they read critic Andrew Sarris' prophetic words, "The Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals".
That's right, devastated, because Sarris was writing about the Beatles film "A Hard Day's Night", annoyingly released on the same day. Nonetheless, Village Beat did the rounds of minor cinemas across the country, and post-showing refunds were a tad lower than expected.
Whilst the story is no more than boy meets girl, they don't fall in love at first.
But then life in the village - a series of events depicted here in the trailer, each more mysterious than the last - brings them together, and they are given their love for each other by an old wise woman. Hence the main song - Given. It's not a film you will often see televised; it shares the fate of so many in the archives.
But just on occasion, it's fun to dust off a clunker to remind us of happier brighter times. At least in the movies.
Where the descriptive note presents historical persons, productions, institutions or events, these may be fictional. The Guild makes the AI origin of the work explicit and does not present synthetic material as genuine archival evidence.