“It All Began With a Melody”: A Musical Review

Following the recent premiere of “It All Began With a Melody,” a film made in collaboration by Caden Stockwell ’25 and Phoebe Neilsen ’25, Staff Writer Max Feigelson ’27 discusses his takeaways from the post-screening Q&A.

“It All Began With a Melody”: A Musical  Review
Movie promotional poster. Photo courtesy of Caden Stockwell ’25

Movies are difficult to make. They not only demand the individual imagination and work ethic required to craft a story from nothing, but also a group of people working towards that imagined end. In college, movies are even more difficult to create. To make a movie is an impressive feat of independent and collaborative skill; to make a movie in a high-pressure academic environment requires even more dedication. But Caden Stockwell ’25 and Phoebe Neilsen ’25 didn’t just make a movie in imperfect conditions, they made the most difficult type of movie one can make without visual effects or animation: a musical.

The “musical” label is often overused, but from hearing Stockwell and Neilsen discuss their movie in the post-screening Q&A, “It All Began with a Melody” is a love letter to a genre the creative duo clearly adores. The plot is relatively simple: two long-lost lovers learn that they happen to be in an idealized vision of a small town, but through a combination of unfortunate timing and a shared reluctance to see one another, they never interact. The emotional depth of the film is in its style and music. In this way, “It All Began with a Melody” follows in the footsteps of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “La La Land,” and “The Phantom of Paradise” without reservation. The colors pop, the songs are catchy, and the characters’ emotional amplitudes span heights only possible with musical expression. The highs are coded in autumnal yellows and reds, and the lows are in purples and blues. Very little is abashed here, and Neilsen and Stockwell know it.

On the performance side of things, the cast can sing. Neilsen’s composition asked a lot of Dylan Schor ’25’s vocal range, in particular, but he stretched it to meet the task. Schor’s highest notes pushed him to his limit, asking for every ounce of his effort and bringing greater authenticity to his portrayal of Adrien, the male lead whose desire and confusion constitute a bulk of the film’s narrative thrust. The same could be said of Isabelle Anderson ’25, who plays Bee, the target of Adrien’s affections and the other musical lead in the film. Anderson’s most memorable moment is the final number, a stripped-down concert performance of her newest single to an audience that, unbeknownst to her, includes Adrien. Anderson is able to soak up this cinematic attention and rise to the challenge of taking up so much of the audience’s time: this is the most authentic and emotionally enduring moment in the film, in this reviewer’s opinion.

As a duo, Stockwell and Neilsen’s talents complement each other nicely. Stockwell’s direction clearly pushes the cinematic grammar towards visual simplicity and narrative logical consistency, while Neilsen’s music gives the project an emotional and poetic depth. Just as good action movies use action sequences as integral to their narrative, good musicals use music to move narrative along rather than brood or repeat what we already know to be true. For this standard of quality to be met, the composer and the director must be in lockstep. One must fill in depth where the other shoots for clarity. One must choose to linger when the other seeks to reach the next narrative beat. This will be seen as an early film in the future of Stockwell and Neilsen’s future filmographies, but if “It All Began with a Melody” is an early project for these two collaborators, then in the spirit of “Casablanca,” it’s looking like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Correction, May 6th, 2025: A previous version of this piece misstated twice the name of the director Phoebe Neilsen as "Phoebe Mohring." These have been fixed.

Complete your gift to make an impact