I Saw A Film Today…

In Which We Serve a Brief Encounter of

two legends of the silver screen

David Lean & Noel Coward

with two fellow

Blithe Spirits of This Happy Breed

John Lennon & Paul McCartney "Events are 'meaningful coincidences' if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related..." - Carl Jung

1) On Monday 27th February 1967 a story appeared in the UK paper the Daily Mail about Melanie Coe - a 17-year-old girl who had fled her family home because of strife and her unhappiness with her parents. The story was headlined "A-Level Girl Dumps Car And Vanishes"

http://www.predigitalmedia.com/Daily-Mail=27th-Feb-1967=She's-Leaving-Home.pdf

2) The story inspired Paul McCartney to write the song She's Leaving Home about the growing phenomenon of teenage runaways. McCartney wrote the majority of the song. He collaborated on the composition with - who primarily contributed the Greek chorus counterpoint of the parents' views - lines such as: "what did we do that was wrong?", "we sacrificed most of our lives" and "we gave her everything money could buy”

3) The girl in the newspaper story happened to be a Beatles fan so she became familiar with the song but she was completely unaware that it was her personal story that had inspired it.

4) Many years later McCartney was on a British TV show and recounted how a newspaper story had inspired that song. The girl's mother happened to see that interview and realized that the song had been based on the family drama involving her daughter that had been reported in the Daily Mail.

5) By one of life's coincidences, four years before McCartney wrote the song - Melanie Coe had met Paul and the other Beatles briefly. On Friday 4th October 1963 made their first appearance on the ninth edition of a new UK TV pop show Ready Steady Go! 13-year-old Melanie was one of four girls who participated in a miming (lip-syncing) competition. Paul was the sole judge - and he selected her as the winner of the contest and gave her the prize.

Fortunately that sequence survives and is on YouTube!

https://youtu.be/IgQ1qNPciic

6) In 2012, Peter Shelton, a critically-acclaimed, New York-based British film editor in his sixties was curating and editing The Peoples' War - a video presentation about the British home front during World War II for an exhibition at the Norton Museum in Florida. As part of his research he viewed a large number of British films made during the war - including some of the less heralded movies of the era.

7) Among the films he screened, was a now comparatively forgotten 1944 film - This Happy Breed - the second of four film collaborations between Noel Coward and David Lean. (The others being In Which We Serve - 1942, Brief Encounter and Blithe Spirit - both 1945.) It was an early British three-strip Technicolor film - though reflecting David Lean's creative vision the colors are subtle and muted rather than presenting the vivid hues usually associated with that film process.

Noel Coward David Lean

8) The film stars Robert Newton and Celia Johnson as a married couple raising three children. One of their kids is a teenage girl named Queenie - portrayed by Kay Walsh - who was the first wife - and an occasional writing collaborator - of David Lean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Happy_Breed_(film) 9) Incidentally - Noel Coward took his title This Happy Breed from the famous This Sceptred Isle speech – the barbed paean to given by the dying John of Gaunt in Scene 1 - Act II of William Shakespeare’s historical play Richard II about the fall of the Plantagenet king. The play was written in 1590. In the speech, the phrase This Happy Breed refers to the English people.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle. This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise. This fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war. This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall. Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands. This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

10) While viewing the film Shelton was struck by the poignancy of a short sequence about the teenage Queenie and how by chance it seemed to resonate very precisely with the lyrics of a celebrated Beatles song written 23 years later. It was a scene in which She's Leaving Home...

11) Intrigued by the coincidence, Shelton decided to see what would happen if he synchronized three-and-a-half-minutes of the film sequence from 1944 with that three-and-a-half-minute audio recording from 1967. After he had completed the blending he was struck by how organically the two elements meshed.

12) His friend and frequent collaborator on film and video projects, producer and Beatles scholar Martin Lewis, was exhilarated by Shelton's discovery and the inspired new video and suggested that - with Carl Jung's observations on the topic of serendipity in mind - Shelton's audio-visual fusion should be entitled:

A Meaningful Coincidence... View it here: https://vimeo.com/447725938

Peter Shelton Martin Lewis

Further reading about the story behind the Beatles song:

• https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-beatles/shes-leaving-home

• http://www.beatlesradio.com/the-beatles-50-years-ago-today-february-27-1967

• http://www.beatlesebooks.com/shes-leaving-home