Melody [DVD] [1971]

The Formula transcended - but you'll yearn for a time machine.....I first saw this film as part of a double bill with The Railway Children in 1973. The Railway Children was O.K. - it had trains in it anyway, but Melody (or S.W.A.L.K. as I remember it being billed) seemed bursting with anarchic life. It was the world I knew, only less restrained. The Railway Children, if a little sentimental, became (therefore) a deserved family classic, while Melody went underground. Why, I cannot understand.Then, I was 11 and it was only because of this film that I could face going on to a secondary school where uniforms were compulsory - which I viewed as a kind of death. Maybe I could subvert the uniform and it would be like the school in the film? But for a start, there were no girls in the new school... In fact the one I'd just left was far closer.Now, I can see how formulaic Melody is: It aims to be accessible and to appeal to all ages. It is a little sentimental (though this is almost entirely the fault of the songs). It is partly a Never Never Land, conceived from 50's childhoods viewed through 60's liberalism and set in the early 70's - which were the true 60's for most ordinary people. It is always sunny, except for artistic reasons. The wastegrounds are so beautiful....But if there was a formula, by "Him up There" how transcended that formula is! The children are so real - even their occasional wooden-ness only deepens their reality. Jack Wild of course, can't help but steal every scene, he embodies the ideal, indomitable, working-class survivor, the one who would escape into that New World of sunlit uplands and perfect housing that was always coming...but never came...and which now we can see was perhaps just the last the gasp of post-war hope? Jack Wild was so alive - he and London ARE the film....but Mark Lester and Tracy Hyde are the still points of that turning world.The adults naturally are caricatures, but Melody's working-class family (brilliant character actors all) are shown to be true. Most of all, the details are astounding, the streets, the faces, the sunlight on buildings, the traffic fumes, the pub on Sundays, the railways and seaside - they have a documentary clarity, but freely associated, no points are being made - which only makes them all the more. The film is vitally social, politcal but beyond politics - naturally socialist!I knew many of these places and still know those of them left. Then it just seemed like everyday life, now I yearn for a time machine: this film is as close as you can get!Melody is one of the best films about London that I can think of, and probably the truest about the idea of young love.Even the fairly trashy pop-with-a-reaching-heart music is given power by the images it accompanies in the musical interludes. (If the film were soundtracked with greater music, say Radiohead's 'True Love Waits' or The Smiths 'Back to The Old House', would it become greater art?...or would the inevitable melancholy overwhelm??)Perhaps in this 'review' I've gone overboard? All I know is that this film kept me awake thinking how much I must write this - if only for myself. You may not find all of these things in it and perhaps it would be better that way? But I've always believed in the unquiet mind....sometimes anyway!If you know anyone with a time machine, let me know. It need only be able to travel backwards. As far as the thirties will do, and to return no later than the present day whenever desired.

I love this happy film with Mark Lester as actor and with soundtracks that includes Bee Gees songs ("In the Morning", "Melody Fair", "Sticks And Specks", "Give Your Best", "To Love Somebody" and "First of May").

Sunday afternoon great Old school film 👍🏻

This is a charming adventure of rebellion focusing on three youngsters - Jack Wild and Mark Lester coming together again three years after Oliver!, this time with Tracy Hyde as the love interest who has a touching romance with Lester, briefly causing a split with Wild, but this is not a film that could possibly end on a down note ... In fact it is quite similar to other films of the 70s and before, on the subject of youth rebellion against staid teachers, and is perhaps not really as good as some ... however it does have a certain rough-at-the-edges energy, a bit like John Schlesinger, and the three leads are good. To see Wild in particular makes it quite special, as he was rather like a British Mickey Rooney who sadly went a bit off the rails. But he had a lot of screen presence. Other cameos are very vivid - Roy Kinnear, for instance, as the girl's father, puts in a nuanced turn in just a few minutes of screen time. It features seven Bee Gees songs, and shows the London of 1971 with a lot of atmosphere, and a freewheeling charm that was absolutely the flavour of the times. It seem like a completely different world from now, but its appeal is well caught, so that it is now half-nostalgia piece, half story of the spirit of youth from the pen of Alan Parker, who would go on to write other films on friendship such as the inimitable Birdy - but that was still 13 years away ...

Marvelous, evocative and criminally overlooked film from Waris Hussain, previously director of many of the first Dr Who serials and despite being the first screenplay by director Alan Parker. I was in Africa when I got to see Melody in 1971, (titled S.W.A.L.K. for South Africa and by the sound of it the rest of the world), which despite (-or more likely, because of- its location and its hugely romantic text was a film I identified with as it was incredibly close to the circumstances going on around me when in London. Much later it took a lot of effort to get hold of on video -even then probably only surfacing because of its superlative Bee Gees soundtrack and to this day it remains one of my top ten films As a realistic portrait of London comprehensive school life, Melody is somewhere in between the never-knowingly-plausible 1967 opus 'To Sir with Love' -a sot of tabloid version of TV's 'Please Sir'- and the almost fly-on-the-wall realism of early 'Grange Hill'. While Mark Leicester would always be the weakest link, such is the rest of the production’s strength and Tracy Hyde's superb natural performance that his cherubic drippiness is almost overlooked –almost. Incidentally, while not wishing to get too ‘media studies’ on the reader, it makes for an interesting comparison with 'To SIr' and the other big, school-based film from the period, Lindsey Anderson’s ‘If’ (1968) the theme of all three being rebellion. While 'To Sir' is angled towards an 'Angels with Dirty Faces'-style social consciousness creating a clumsy microcosm for society -as though the kids' racism would have been entirely absent from the staff-room, 'If' simply adds a layer of pretentiousness as, in essence, a bunch over over-privileged spoilt brats throw their expensive toys out of the pram. The personal rebellion underlying 'Melody' is far more altruistic in that these are all working class, comprehensive school kids that really do have a lot to gain from uniting to overturn the stifling social values of both their culture and the equally oppressive values of a system designed to keep them down. And they do it without resorting to mass murder. Perhaps that's why this film was so ignored for so long. That said though, Melody’s ending still feels tacked on, even if it was a deliberate piss-take of 'If'.

I really enjoyed this sadly forgotten film from the 1970s. It was fun to see Mark Lester and Jack Wild three years after making "Oliver Twist."

DVD came early! Wasn't supposed to come until after Christmas but it came today! Packaged well. Works well. Excellent communication with seller. Pleasure doing business with. Highly recommend seller. Thank you!

perfecto

I firs saw MELODY when I was about the same age as the kids portrayed in the film. Watching it again took me right back to that time back in 1972! Talk about rejuvenating!!!

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