Stuart Sutcliffe
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Produced for the BBC, this is a well-done hour-long documentary on the life of Stuart Sutcliffe, most known as the Beatles' bass player in the early 1960s, though he left to concentrate on art before his death in early 1962. Several important close associates of Sutcliffe and the early Beatles are interviewed, including his fiancee (and noted early Beatles photographer) Astrid Kirchherr, Klaus Voormann, Stuart's sister Pauline Sutcliffe, Rod Murray (an art school chum who shared a flat in Liverpool with Sutcliffe and John Lennon), Tony Sheridan, and early Beatles manager Allan Williams. The film is handicapped, however, by the lack of any archive footage of Sutcliffe (or the Beatles from the time Sutcliffe was alive, for that matter), and also by the absence of genuine Beatles recordings on the soundtrack, with weak anonymous ersatz Beatles music serving as a poor substitute. More important, at least for the serious Beatles fanatics who comprise a significant portion of the viewers most likely to be interested in this DVD, is that the story's been told so many times in other formats that there's little that hasn't been said (in so many words) by the narrative or the people interviewed elsewhere. It's interesting to hear Voormann (himself a respected bass player) claim that Sutcliffe, contrary to most reports, was actually playing bass fairly well in his time with the Beatles in Hamburg, and also to hear Sheridan somewhat abashedly recall that Paul McCartney was fighting "like a chick" in an oft-remembered onstage rumble with Sutcliffe. Yet there's a feeling that Sutcliffe's significance, both to the Beatles and as a visual artist, is being magnified a bit more than it deserves, though not extravagantly so. In addition, the theories (largely advanced by Pauline Sutcliffe) that Lennon and Sutcliffe had some homosexual interaction with each other, and that Lennon administered a beating that might have led to Sutcliffe's death of a cerebral hemorrhage, are discussed here despite the lack of solid evidence, though they're only touched upon (and dismissed by Kirchherr as "silly" and "rubbish"). The film does use some little-seen still photographs of Sutcliffe and the early Beatles, and includes a bonus gallery of Sutcliffe's largely abstract (and, to this day, not often circulated) artwork, though it doesn't seem to justify the claims of American art historian Donald Kuspit in the main feature that Sutcliffe was a major talent. Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide Releases:
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Stuart Sutcliffe|
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