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director: chris marker
producer: michael shamberg
cinematography: yves angelo
first aired: december 1989

        


if you’re going to film three blokes in a studio, they may as well be bernard sumner, johnny marr and neil tennant. according to michael shamberg, this abbey road footage was originally interspersed with shots of a woman walking through a forest and singing along to the track—presumably where the brief glimpse of a parrot comes from. the more perfunctory end product was evidently deemed too static for american audiences as a new film was made the following spring, but there are a few touches that lift it from complete awkwardness: the opening shots of the trio gazing upwards, bernard’s half-singing/sighing of the final line, and the flickering cut to marr’s guitar head at the end. these aspects and the warm photography make its absence from the best of dvd a slight regret, but of course it’s on the earlier promos collection as well as the ubiquitous youtube.