Stuart Sutcliffe: The Lost Beatle

This 2005 BBC Four documentary, narrated by Paul Morley and featuring contributions from Astrid Kirchherr, Pauline Sutcliffe, Tony Sheridan, Rod Murray and Horst Facher, looks at the life of fifth Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe before his tragic death at 21. It makes the case that he would’ve been a significant artist in his own right, but spends a lot of its time looking at his work with the Beatles, so we discuss how well it manages to fulfil its brief. 

It’s also not the only BBC documentary of this period to be a bit coy about the idea of John Lennon having had a sexual relationship with a man (see also our episode on The Brian Epstein Story), and we ask how helpful this approach is and examine the techniques the film uses to further the suggestion.

• Watch the film free on YouTube: https://youtu.be/k1Yrwyfk2NQ
• Narrator Paul Morley is a regular figure on BBC pop music documentaries. He’s on record as not being a Beatles fan, and fair enough, but perhaps if you’re writing articles for the Guardian – albeit interesting and well-argued ones – about how the world wouldn’t be any different without them, you’re not the best candidate to voiceover documentaries about them: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/06/showing-off-the-beatles 
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499080/

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

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