Across Abbey Road · Scene 07 of 21 · Album 5 of 13

07 1:09–1:16 Era 5Help! 1965

“It doesn’t matter where or when”

The radio changes hands, and one by one the street stops to look.

All 21 scenes

The Scene

Scene 07 · Help! · 7 seconds · six shotsThe old woman lifts her hand from the radio and leaves it with the girl. Mike plays as he walks. Then the street, which has been looking everywhere but at him, starts to stop: one face turns, then a pavement of them, then the whole road, bus and all. He sings the last word of the line almost straight to us, and the film moves on to the next album.

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The Story

This is where the film’s loneliest scene turns. The radio passing from the oldest hand to the youngest is the song’s whole idea in one gesture: the music outlives the people who first heard it. And the street turning to look is the answer to the scene before. It takes them a while, but they hear him.

Shot by Shot

  1. 1 · The radio passes on · 1:09–1:11The old woman’s hand lifts from the little radio and leaves it with the girl.
  2. 2 · He plays as he walks · 1:11–1:13Close on Mike in the pale tunic, a star on his chest, the red guitar across his front.
  3. 3 · The street stops · 1:13–1:13A face in the crowd turns and finds him. Then another.
  4. 4 · They watch him cross · 1:13–1:14A pavement of people, stopped, following him across the stripes.
  5. 5 · The whole street · 1:14–1:15The wide view: the crossing, the crowd, a red bus held at the kerb, and one man walking through the middle of it.
  6. 6 · The last word · 1:15–1:16He sings the end of the line with the stopped crowd behind him, and the scene hands over to the next album.

What to Look For

You can’t miss itThe radio changing hands, old to young. You will see that girl and that old woman again, much later, in a very different kind of picture.

Look closerCount the people looking at him. At the start of this album nobody was; by the last shot the whole street is. And the star on his tunic: at the stadium that summer each of them was given a star badge by the crew of the armoured truck that drove them in.

All 21 scenes