A Musicale Melange (1929) User Reviews

Melange: A Mixture; A Medley

[boblipton · 5/10 · 1 March 2019]

This is one of hundreds of short subjects produced by Vitaphone and competing companies in the early days of sound. Often vaudeville or cabaret acts, they ranged all over the shop.

In this one, Barbara Kerjulf's act consists of a singer, three harpists and a violinist, all seeming to be very young women -- the harpist on the left looks to be about 16. They sing sentimental, old-fashioned songs, but their dress is very modern (for 1929), including bobbed hair and knee-length skirts.

Visually, it's actually quite advanced for the era. There are frequent cuts, from the initial view of all the performers, to medium close-ups of the individuals. Sometimes the camera pans.

Strange But Entertaining

[Michael_Elliott · 20 January 2013]

A Musical Melange (1929)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Vitaphone short features the Kjerulf Mayfair Quintette in their only film performance and a quick Google search really didn't turn up too much on them. Their act is basically five women, three on a harp, one on a violin and another that does the singing. The songs performed are "Sextette," "Neapolitan Night" and "Lonely Little Bluebird," which must have been what they were remembered for as this here did turn up a few other mentions across the internet. It's always funny watching these Vitaphone shorts because quite often you're seeing a group, act or person who might have made pennies on a vaudeville stage and this one film is all that we can really remember them for. The music here, is, what you'd call "sweet" I guess. It's pretty simple and slow but I reckon if you needed to come down from an angry rage that the music would put you in a somber mood. I think fans who enjoy going through these Vitaphone films should at least be slightly entertained.

A bit painful to watch

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 10 July 2014]

It's very easy to see and hear performances like you'll see in "A Musicale Melange" and think that they are god-awful. However, back in the 1920s when Vitaphone was making sound shorts like this, they were well received and the music seemed pretty hip! Now I am not trying to say that I liked "A Musicale Melange" (I thought it was painful and awful)...but I am trying to put it in some context. Vitaphone was experimenting with film and found that these shorts were cheap to make and their New York location made filming various musical and vaudeville acts pretty easy--so the parent studio (Warner) kept funding them through the 1930s--long after the need to use these as experiments had passed. Ah,...who am I kidding?! Kjerulf's Mayfair Quintette's performance is pretty dreary and could be used to elicit confessions from criminals!