The Beatles were not only a group that challenged the recording industry, and of course, the world of entertainment. They acted also as avant-gardè multi-media artists.

Not only they helped improving the pop music marketing with their innovative LP packages and stuff but also created new kind of media that would become a mania in the XXI century: the reality show. Yes, almost 100% of the scenes shown on Let It Be are cine realitè - the bare truth captured by the lens of cameras directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.

In fact, although the band was working on the edge of their break-up, almost 90% of the scenes are cheerful and enjoyable. The main bulk of the footage shows Paul McCartney trying to find ways of enhance the Beatles performing and figuring out what to do in the future. Although John Lennon seems to be distracted by his future wife presence, Yoko Ono, he also looks to be happy playing and having fun - even dancing around to the sound of I Me Mine, sung by George.

By the way, George Harrison the most "unhappy" character also appears on the film having a ball singing rock and roll tunes. The lowest point (or highest, depending on the way you look at it) seems to be a row he had with Paul, but it only consumes about 5 minutes of the whole picture.

At last but not the least, Ringo Starr is shown for the first time ever playing a song - Octopus's Garden - that would later take part of Abbey Road - the LP that marked the end of the Fab Four as a group, but the begining of the Beatles as an universal legend.

The final (and most infamous) film by The Beatles is a fly-on-the-wall documentary that captures the band during the tense rehearsal and recording sessions for what would turn out to be the last album released by the group.

The biggest problem with this movie is that the movie itself doesn't live up to it's legend. This film is like finding a stack your best friends holiday movies and watching them without your friend telling you where they where shot or what was happening in them. In the context of cinema verite, this could be an exciting prospect, however even the films of cinema verite throw you a few bones now and then.

If you didn't know anything about the Fab Four's later years this is what you'll get out this movie: a band jamming in sound stage then cut away to the band jamming in building then cut away to the band jamming on roof - the end. The film only works if you have piror knowledge of the events of early 1969 that lead to the band demise. Thus film itself suffers from the same hurdle that most rock movies of this time come across: a lack of narrative. Why are they on the roof? What is the building they're jamming in, are they recording? Where's the control room or desk? Worst of all, is that out of nearly a month of filming there was the footage that could rectify this.

In 1996's 'The Beatles Anthology' we got the scenes of the band and crew discussing the concert on the roof, talking to the crew about why they chose a sound stage and more importantly the aims of the whole 'Get Back' project. In this version, we don't even get a hint that there's a project going on in the first place.

Even adding some subtitles at the bottom of the screen could give the audience members who aren't fanboys a clue of time and place. Instead what we have is film that's mostly performance based with a collection of random and bearly auditable sound bites. What could have been a study in the disintegration of a major rock group becomes the first example of those "on-tour" DVD's that show your favourite band goofing off to hand held cameras for 70 minutes.

The one scene that does give us a clue is the infamous Paul and George argument. This one scene jump out of nowhere as if the editor forgot to cut it out. The rest of the film, however has a very light and somewhat directionless feel to it.

On it's first cut, this film ran for an epic 3 1/2 hours and included many of the mentioned scenes including when Peter Sellers visits the band during a session. But all this was trimmed down by The Beatles (without J & Y) to a short 80 minutes on only it's second cut. And Lindsay-Hogg, not knowing (like the rest of the world) that the Beatles were almost through, saw no other option then to put together a scatter-shot fluff piece from hundreds of hours worth of footage to fulfil a six year old contract the band had with United Artists from way back in the Beatlemania days.

If this film ever gets re-released, it would be great to see a total redux. This would include all the meetings the band has with the crew, the on camera interviews with Paul and of course some of the tense moments that occurred while making the movie. Yes, there is the famous scene of Paul and George arguing over how the lead to 'I've Got A Feeling' should be played but for the rest of the bickering that most Beatles fans have heard on bootlegs of outtakes have all been glossed over.

On the positive side - the performances are great. Even if 'Let It Be' did boast some of the fabs weakest efforts the music is still worth sitting through the seemingly pointless scenes of dialogue. In saying this, 'Let It Be' is not a bad movie, in fact I'd say it's a great movie that's been miss treated and poorly hacked up. Which is why it's only worth it if you know enough already to read between the lines.

As a life-long Beatles fan don't expect objectivity here - I first saw this in the early 70's and found it riveting … and got the same feeling tonight. This was an early ordinary rockumentary about 4 ordinary yet very talented blokes in their late 20's at the peak of their creative powers, in the process of readjustment to being mere hairy bickering mortals again after experiencing a few years of quasi-godhood. "Mr. Epstein" was long dead although Paul was trying to fill his shoes, and their Apple Empire was shrinking. The Beatles almost on their own created intelligent pop/rock music, which imho has not moved on since 1969 where they left it. There have been many excellent innovative and intelligent rock bands that have come and gone since, many borrowing and adapting from the Beatles back catalogue – however I don't count the many cash-in rip-off bands such as Oasis. Has anyone since not ripped them off at some point? I've lost count of the number of times over the decades I've heard a "new" piece of music and said to myself "I've heard that before somewhere – ah yes, such and such by the Beatles". Apart from the quantum leaps in sound technology since then nothing of any lasting musical value has been added – there has been no progression. Led Zeppelin filled stadia – but did they fill billions of hearts? Queen was popular – but did they rule the world? Pop and rock music may have always been ephemeral, but along with Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Lata Mangeshkar, Frank Sinatra and Jimi Hendrix the Beatles weren't. Never mind about their timeless music, they even managed to look timeless while everyone else around them in here looked dated by the early '70's. God works in mysterious ways.

John, Paul, George and Ringo got together first in Twickenham Studios then in the Apple basement in January 1969 to rehearse some new songs with the assistance of almost-5th Beatle Billy Preston (and occasionally actual-5th Beatle George Martin) and with the hope of playing live again sometime soon. Yoko (definitely not 5th Beatle) would have probably been on stage with them. As it turned out on they only made it to the Apple roof on 30th January, disturbing the peace of the police on the streets of London below. The Rolling Stone review of the film from 9th July 1970 that I remember so well was typically over-reverential but had some telling points – the first being how deliberately grainy the photography was which still can take some getting used to and that there was over 800 hours of footage from 4 cameras to edit down to the brief 80 minutes we got. How on Earth can it ever be properly remastered and will more ever be officially available in our lifetimes? Maybe we should also bear in mind that the film was to be called Get Back as a return to simplicity for the band, and that McCartney originally penned racist lyrics for this sublime song which thankfully weren't incorporated into any of the final versions. There's a lot of classic pop music in here – from their own then new stuff to rock'n'roll standards from the '50's, which the Beatles were in an ideal and unchallengeable position to translate for listeners both of the Old World of pop and the New World of rock that they left behind them.

Highlights: A splendid cod version of Bessame Mucho from McCartney; a loving version of You Really Got A Hold On Me from Lennon; the videos for Two Of Us, Let It Be, Long And Winding Road; and Get Back, Don't Let Me Down up on the freezing roof; so many others. Overall: to a fan, a beautiful and sad account of a unique group of individuals struggling and failing against disintegration; this should also be essential viewing to fans of intelligent pop/rock music who might have sometimes wondered where U2, Bon Jovi, Kings Of Leon et al came from – so far though, this was the artistic pinnacle.