p113, April 12 1971

What is it about English schoolchildren? You can hardly make a bad picture about them. This one, Melody, is a pure delight, a film with great stars and supporting cast, fabulous camera work (Peter Suschitzky), a sensitive script and a fine score written and executed primarily by the first-rate Australian rock group, the Bee Gees. The stars are those two dirty diamonds from Oliver, Jack Wild and Mark Lester – plus newcomer Tracy Hyde, an eleven-year-old bird whose adolescent pinfeathers promise a beautiful plumage of full femininity. The story explores the generation gap with gentle clucking sympathy and no little humor, especially in the quintessential scenes of classroom and schoolyard antics where boys pitch pennies, swaggeringly puff away on cigs and the girls flutter together, tittering like sparrows about incipient urges and feelings they haven't quite sorted out yet.

Wild and Lester play chums from different sides of the tracks. Wild, as Ornshaw, has an old grandfather he tends in slummy digs while trying to keep himself together. Lester, all blonde silk as Danny, has brittle parents who hardly know he's there. Lester falls for Tracy Hyde, the Melody he spies doing ballet exercises in dancing class – a crush that can't help but cut into his relationship with feisty, sadly vulnerable Ornshaw, who loves goofing off and ogling birds in Trafalgar Square, hitting the penny arcades and hiding his loneliness behind his mimicry of adult idiocies. The most touching part, which is shot through with hilarious hijinks, comes as Melody tells her parents that, at something like 12, she wants to marry Danny. As her utterly perplexed father, Roy Kinnear turns in a performance that should melt the flintiest grandmum's heart trying to explain why it's best to wait.

The film braves bathos with the notion that these youngsters seriously want to spend their lives together, but avoids it by having the children, attended by hordes of chums, stage a mock (but very serious) marriage under a derelict viaduct. The teachers and parents try to raid the ceremony and are confronted by an array not so much hostile as whimsically vengeful for being treated as second-class citizens by adult authority. There's not a streak of real meanness anywhere in the picture. It's all cotton candy, Ferris wheels, sand castles and goldfish in glass bottles – a combination of graphic nostalgia and lyrical innocence that one seldom finds these days on the slavering screen.

S.K. Oberbeck

V.97 pp. 99-100 May 10 1971

Melody is about a lonely eleven-year old boy (Mark Lester) and a misunderstood schoolmate (Tracy Hyde) who fall in love and are ridiculed by the parents, teachers and peers, but who eventually wed in a ceremony conducted by the boy's best friend (Jack Wild). The denouement finds all the school kids backing the prepubescent romance and holding their teachers off while the happy couple pump away into the sunset on a railroad handcar. There are some good secondary scenes of teasing and classroom high jinks, and excellent photography by Peter Suschitzky, who tries to give spice to an otherwise far too sugary project.

"Melody features high romance between two 11-year-olds who want to marry to ‘be together always’ because it’s more interesting than school. The school these two attend, allegedly a state school, makes Dotheboys Hall look like a liberated version of Summerhill; it is run by morons and maniacs and these 11-year-olds are beaten for not consuming Latin whole . . . The teeny ones are drawn together, playing hookey at the beach, building sand-castles and huddling morosely in a cemetery (thank heavens they don’t play doctor; since Mark Lester looks 8 and Tracy Hyde a skinny 16, the platonic tone of the affair is appreciated). And though they despise adults and their ways and have appalling samples of domesticity at home, they decide to marry. The entire school faculty (complete with fat lady teacher on motorcycle) arrives to break it up, there’s a free-for-all during which the adults get their clothes torn off, a boy bomb-maker blows up Lester’s mother’s car and everyone flees while the young newlyweds take off . . . High comedy? Shades of If...? Producer David Puttnam and writer Alan Parker are neophytes, but director Waris Hussein knows from manure. After all, his last opus, Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx, dealt with the love life of a retarded dung-collector."

Judith Crist (4/5/71).

 Back to FAQ

William Wolf (4/3/71). 

Back to FAQ

"Melody is a pre-teen If..., the story of British school children who rebel and terrorize their faculty and parents. As you might guess, this new film is more charming and less plausible than the prep-school version. Even if you can withhold your disbelief about the pubescent set getting ‘married’ and becoming bomb throwers, you may still conceivably be fretful about the film’s apparent endorsement of an attack on adults
I recognize the limitations of the film and therefore don’t make great demands on it. Melody is a minor work with more commercial savvy than profound sincerity. It is derivative (nor only from If.. but also from the film which influenced that one — Zero for Conduct — which was about the same-age children). It is slick and has a name rock group, The Bee Gees, doing romantic songs on the soundtrack. The plot is pat, but director Waris Hussein does get some nice moments with his secondary characters like Roy Kinnear as the girl’s flabby father. In the leading roles are Jack Wild and Mark Lester of Oliver!"

Joseph Gelmis (3/29/71).

 Back to FAQ

OLIVER! star Mark Lester plays Daniel Latimer, a preteen who falls in love with and decides to marry a young girl his age (Tracy Hyde). They inform their parents of their plans despite the pleas of an older friend (Jack Wild, another OLIVER! veteran). The plot isn't very convincing, but the actors' charming innocence more than makes up for it, and a plus for Bee Gees fans is a fine score performed by the group that sounds nothing like SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and includes "Teach Your Children," "To Love Somebody," and "Working on It Night and Day." Scriptwriter Alan Parker would go on to direct MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and PINK FLOYD--THE WALL, while producer David Puttnam would later deliver CHARIOTS OF FIRE.

Synopsis
At a South London elementary school, two lonely classmates of opposite backgrounds strike up a close friendship — Daniel Latimer, a well-bred introvert who is neglected by his middle-class parents; and Ornshaw, an aggressive cynic who lives with his impoverished grandfather. During the course of their many misadventures, Daniel and Ornshaw visit Piccadilly Circus andlater get thrashed by their Latin teacher for not doing their homework.
Their companionship is affected when Daniel spots 1l-year-old Melody Perkins doing exercises in ballet class and becomes attracted to her. Though Melody’ at first scoffs at Daniel’s awkward advances, she gradually reciprocates and returns his feelings.
Resentful that Daniel is spending so much time with Melody, Ornshaw joins the other students in jeering at the young couple, and eventually goads Daniel into a fist-fight. When Daniel wins, the two boys come to a new under-standing.
While playing hookey from school at the sea-shore, Daniel and Melody realize they are in love, and decide to get married. When the headmaster and the children’s parents respond to their marital intentions with incredulity and even ridicule, the other students come to regard Melody and Daniel’s predicament as a rebellion against the establishment and resolve to help them.
At a makeshift chapel by the railroad tracks, Ornshaw "marries" Melody and Daniel just as carloads of parents and teachers arrive to prevent the ceremony. In retaliation, the children attack the adults with home-made bombs and even blow up Daniel’s mother’s car. During the melee, the two young "newlyweds" escape on a railroad hand car.

Critique
SUMMARY. Reuniting Jack Wild and Mark Lester, the young stars of Oliver! (FF ‘68), Melody pleased most critics, many of whom acknowledged the picture’s thematic resemblance to such classics of rebellious youth as Zero de Conduite (1933), The Graduate (FE ‘67), and If.. (EF ‘69).
The N.Y. Daily News’ Wanda Hale wrote that this "delightful, refreshing and amusing" look at students in a London grade school culminated in "a wild, hilariously funny student revolution," and was directed by Waris Hussein with "tenderness, wisdom and humor." The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas asserted that the "enchanting" film —. "more an evocation of childhood on the brink of adolescence than a narrative in the usual sense" — was "filled with images of beauty and innocence."
And Newsday’s S.K. Oberbeck hailed Melody as "pure delight, a film with great stars and supporting cast, fabulous camera work (Peter Suschitzky), a sensitive script and a fine score written and executed primarily by the first-rate Australian rock group, the Bee Gees."
Although Variety’s ‘Gold’ challenged Oberbeck on the latter point ("the rock score is often inappropriate in tone"). and further conjectured that adults might be disturbed by the movie’s portrayal of "parents and teachers as ridiculous or ineffectual," he nevertheless concluded that ‘ individual scenes are wonderfully entertaining throughout," and that "screen-writer Alan Parker and director Waris Hussein are to be congratulated for attempting something that is a lot closer to what kids are about than the mush they’re usually served at matinees."
The Village Voice’s Richard McGuinness, however, was of two minds concerning Hussein’s direction: While commending Hussein’s "talent in giving every face and expression its right exposure, McGuinness objected to the director’s concentration on the film’s "heroes" (Mark Lester, Tracy Hyde) and sloughing off the "confused, resentful, apathetic people in life" (Jack Wild).
Overall, although the New Yorker’s Penelope Gilliatr held that the picture’s appeal was limited to the "under-sevens" (‘an adult is likely to find it as long as ‘The Ring,’ and anyone over ten could justly call it naive"), the majority supported Oberbeck that Melody offered moviegoers of all ages "a combination of graphic nostalgia and lyrical innocence that one seldom finds these days on the slavering screen."

Critical Consensus: 6 favorable, 2 mixed, 2 negative.
 

Initially a delightful series of delicate sketches of childhood (the friendship of a young, good-hearted ruffian with a gentle, middle-class lad; the latter's falling in love with a girl) which gets coarser and less credible as in seeking a climax it veers to comedy and even farce in its presentation of a battle between the students of a terrifying comprehensive school and its moronic masters.

Released July 25, 107 mins Cert A

Screened originally as Melody but re-titled SWALK for it's general release, British Lion's film was a strange mixture of initial delicate sketches of youth and, later, farce as it developed into a story of a conflict between the students of a horrific comprehensive school and their moronic masters. Among the youngsters involved" Oliver stars Mark Lester and Jack Wild.

Great Britain, 1971. 107 mins. Col.

Reuniting Jack Wild and Mark Lester (Oliver) in a charming comedy with music about rebellious preteens in a London grade school, Melody pleased most critics. Its wild and hilarious student revolution is hardly on a par with those in "Zero de Conduite" and "If. . . ", but the director, Waris Hussein, has handled his eleven-year-olds with tenderness and humor.

Two lonely youngsters in a South London elementary school strike up a close friendship - Daniel Latimer (Mark Lester), a well-bred introvert, neglected by his middle-class parents, and Ornshaw (Jack Wild), an aggressive young cynic who lives with his impoverished grandfather.

Their companionship is affected when Daniel falls in love with eleven-year-old Melody Perkins (Tracy Hyde) while she is doing exercises in ballet class. There is a fight; when Daniel wins, the friends come to a new understanding.

The decision of Daniel and Melody to get married greeted by parents and headmaster with incredulous ridicule - is interpreted by the other students as a rebellion against the establishment. They decide to help them. At a makeshift chapel by the railroad tracks, Ornshaw "marries" Melody and Daniel just as carloads of adults arrive to prevent the ceremony. In retaliation, the children attack teachers and parents with homemade bombs and even blow up Daniel's mother's car. During the melee, the "newlyweds" escape in a hand car. We are left to wonder: do they live happily ever after?

Is this a preteen "The Graduate"? Fluff and nonsense? Or a refreshing look at eleven-year-olds at a recognizable school? See it and decide.

The songs performed by the Bee Gees, include "Teach Your Children," "In the Morning of My Life," "Give Your Best to Your Friends" & "First of May"

 America

124:435-6 April 24 1971 pp. 435 & 436

 Back to FAQ

Films in Review

Melody

 Back to FAQ

Films & Filming

Melody

Sheila Steafel, in her second film to come under review in recent weeks - the other was Percy - emerges as a redoubtable actress, in a basically not very rewarding role as a young mother who embodies all the worst elements of snobbishness, liberal-mindedness, as long as her liberality is not strained too far, trendiness and sublime self-gratification over her method of bringing up her 11-year-old son Daniel Latimer (Mark Lester).

It is a portrait etched in vinegar and coated, ever so slightly, with honey; she delivers her barbs with head thrown back in a posture reminiscent of a cobra poised to strike, and has the rare faculty, shared by another revue-trained actress, Beryl Reid, of rounding out the character, so that one feels one knows all about woman's life, apart from her existence in this particular film.

Sheila Steafel's experience in this genre of revue, has come largely from the thin edge of the wedge to various comedians, and, as is generally the case, it has often been a very thin end indeed. Although in one TV play she appeared as a butch and lonely lesbian - not a very creditable performance, she has not, as yet, been called upon to show evidence of the warmth which suffuses all Beryl Reid's characterisations, but could nevertheless be a welcome addition to the short list of star-character actresses in films.

While Sheila Steafel and some of the other actors, notably Kate Williams and Roy Kinnear as Melody's (Tracy Hyde) parents, the one invariably pregnant and the other always either in the nick or the local pub, and James Cossins as the desperately would-be "with-it" Headmaster of Melody and Daniel’s school, express exactly the grown-up obtuseness which prevents their communicating with the children in their care, the film adds up to an uneasy blend of "If", with the schoolchildren rebelling with eventual violence against the faculty, whom they put to rout and ridicule, and "Twinky", with the 11-year-old sweethearts being "married" in a ceremony performed by their cockney mate at the school, Ornshaw (Jack Wild).

The affair is mercifully bereft of obvious sexual connotations and the children held up as idealistic innocents, in contrast with the invariably venal and foolish elders, but the film's message of "You must find me charming. Because I'm on the side of the lonely and misunderstood" is first vulgarised and then blared out of existence by the monotonous insistence of the Bee Gees' soundtrack music. Not to mention the invitation to find the blowing up of Mrs. Latimer's car by a home-made bomb in an Olvaltine tin made by one of the children, after all his previous attempts to detonate his amateur charges have ended in a feeble "plop", hilariously funny. Sheila Steafel's beautifully underplayed expression of slightly dismayed contempt is the most apt comment.

The atmosphere of the Comprehensive School, filmed on the spot at Lambeth, is meticulously observed, and the children well-chosen, notably a plump little girl with protruding teeth. Jack Wild manages to make a real person out of the scruffy and friendly Ornshaw, suggesting an English Mickey Rooney, without the obvious 'mugging' to which Rooney was too often prone. One hopes he doesn't have to face similar problems in the inevitable transition from the 'child'- he is already 17 - to adult actor.

One of the happiest touches at the school is the history master's idea of an infallible aide-memoire for some remote historical battle: Saucy Turtles Make Highly Teasing Bathmats!"

[ It was actually Saucy Turtles Make Terrible Bath Mats Charlie.  - SWALK ]

 Back to FAQ

Media & Methods

10:27 October 1973

 . . . and the Melody lingers on.

The older generation loses this one. Perhaps they have very little to say to the young. A beautiful little car, symbolic of what the adult world is really interested in, is blown up. The elders retreat. Daniel and Melody, defended by their best friend, Ornshaw, are protected from harm and escape the chaos. The hand trolley is on the old tracks. By pushing for themselves, the young can survive, and Melody with her Daniel rides off into the sunset. They will, undoubtedly, come back for tea . . . but not right now.