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| Maria (Julie Andrews) is introduced singing against the Austrian Alps. |
Release Date: Mar. 2, 1965. Running Time: 174 minutes. Screenplay: Ernest Lehman. Based on the stage musical by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, based on the book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, by Maria von Trapp. Producer: Robert Wise. Director: Robert Wise.
THE PLOT:
It has become clear to the Sisters at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg, Austria that Maria (Julie Andrews) is not suited to the life of a nun. Though she's well-liked, she has difficulty following the many strict rules - even such basic ones as punctuality.
The Mother Abbess (Peggy Wood) decides to give the young woman a chance to reflect by assigning her as governess to the seven children of Georg Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer), a widowed former sea captain who was highly decorated during the First World War. It's a rocky adjustment for Maria. Georg is a stern man who runs his household as if he's still in the military, and the children misbehave to try to get his attention.
With perseverance, kindness, and a talent for singing, Maria wins over first the children and, eventually, Georg as well. The house becomes a happy place for the first time since his wife died, with Maria leading the children in putting on musical shows for first their father and then his guests, eventually drawing the eye of Georg's friend, promoter Max Detweiler (Richard Haydn), who believes such a family music group would be a huge draw.
But this is all occuring in 1938, just before the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Hitler's Germany. The Nazis are coming - and Georg's disdain for them may make himself and his family into targets!
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| Maria wins over Georg's children with enthusiasm and kindness. |
CHARACTERS:
Maria: Julie Andrews plays yet another singing governess who changes the lives of a stern father and his children... but her Maria is not just a retread of Mary Poppins. Andrews injects a tentative quality into the early scenes, moments of hesitation that make it clear that she doesn't actually feel the self-confidence that she tries to project. This matches several story beats. Notably, when Maria is confronted with her feelings for Georg, her reaction is to retreat, in part to avoid conflict with Georg's fiancée (Eleanor Parker) and in part out of fear of her own feelings. This keeps her feeling like a fully rounded human being rather than a "Too Good to Be True" Hollywood creation.
Georg von Trapp: His initial sternness seems to be an emotional defense after the death of his wife. Once he reconnects with his children, he immediately becomes a warmer figure, though actor Christopher Plummer's innate reserve holds back an arguably too-quick transformation from seeming like a complete thaw. He again smiles and laughs with his children, but he remains icy with outsiders - particularly the Nazi supporters who prevail on him to accept that "the Anschluss is coming."
His role made him into an international star. Even so, Plummer never liked the film, dubbing it, "The Sound of Mucus." Director Robert Wise would state that Plummer's attitude actually was an asset, the actor's cynicism keeping the story from descending too far into sentimentality. It is worth noting, though, that his best acting comes in the final Act, which has a much darker tone than the rest of the film.
Baroness Elsa von Schraeder: Eleanor Parker fills the antagonist role for much of the movie as Georg's fiancée. To the film's credit, she never comes across as a villain. She's calculating in her pursuit of Georg, and she acts to protect her interest when she perceives Maria as a threat to the relationship. But even this manipulation amounts to simply telling the right person the truth at the right moment. Parker plays the character as self-interested, but she never shows any active malice. This helps to maintain the light tone of the first two hours - which, in turn, increases the contrast when the final Act arrives.
Max Detweiler: A mutual friend of Georg and the Baronness, Max freely describes himself as a sponge. He's come to Salzburg looking for a music group to promote, but he stays to enjoy the good life as Georg's houseguest. Not for free, mind you - He trades his charming, witty company for the privileges of enjoying the other man's wealth. Georg even at one point tells him that he's "expensive, but very funny." He is also a genuine friend, aiding the Von Trapps in their escape even when it means putting himself in danger. Even before that, it's clear enough that Georg trusts him. Otherwise, there's no chance he would leave his children in his care when he goes on his honeymoon.
Mother Abbess: Though she knows Maria shouldn't become a nun, she never tries to force the course of the younger woman's life. Instead, she gently steers her into making the right decisions for herself, first by assigning her to the Von Trapp family and later through a simple conversation after Maria returns. When Maria reveals her feelings for Georg, the Abbess is the picture of patience as she tells her: "If you love this man, it doesn't mean you love God less." The only time she directly refuses Maria is when she begs to stay in the abbey: "These walls were not built to shut out problems. You have to face them." Peggy Wood is only in a few scenes, but she makes a strong impression every time she appears.
Rolfe: Another small part, but a critical one. Rolfe (Daniel Truhitte) is the love interest of Liesl (Charmian Carr), the oldest of Georg's children. He's an entirely innocent young man, and he and Liesl make an attractive young couple... until the final Act, when he joins the Nazis and becomes haughty and cold. The final scene between him and Georg is a particularly strong moment, well-written and wonderfully played by both Christopher Plummer and Daniel Truhitte.
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| The musical numbers are made to be cinematic rather than stage-like. |
A CINEMATIC MUSICAL, NOT A STAGE ONE:
The Sound of Music was developed as a project for William Wyler, director of past Best Picture winners Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur. Wyler was no fan of the stage musical, wanting to focus less on the singing and more on the Anschluss. To be honest, I think that would also have made for a good film, but it's safe to say that it would have been a very different one. Eventually, there was a parting of the ways, and West Side Story's Robert Wise was brought in to make a faithful adaptation of the stage play.
Faithful in content, I should say, because Wise made sure that the movie was its own experience. The previous Best Picture winning musicals that I've reviewed deliberately evoked the experience of watching them on stage. Wise's own West Side Story had musical numbers, directed (mostly) by Jerome Robbins, that mingled purely cinematic techniques with decidedly stage-like ones.
The Sound of Music's numbers are purely cinematic. This starts from the very beginning, as a series of gorgeous introductory shots of the Alps lead to the iconic helicopter shot that moves in on Julie Andrews singing the title song. When the abbey nuns sing Maria, there's a sustained shot of the nuns moving down a long abbey hallway toward the camera - a visual effect that could not be as effectively replicated on stage. Later, Maria teaches the children Do-Re-Mi against a series of location shots spanning the countryside and Salzburg.
In short, it's explicitly a movie - and the absence of any moments that break that internal reality brings the viewer that much more completely into the world of the story. This, in turn, enhances the effectiveness when the tone changes near the end, because even the musical numbers do not create any deliberate artificiality.
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| Maria and Georg (Christopher Plummer) fall in love. Key to the film's success, the romance actually works. |
OTHER MUSINGS:
Somehow or other, I had managed to never see The Sound of Music prior to this set of reviews. I'm now uncertain whether I should be sorry I had never watched it before, or whether I should be glad to have gotten to view it with fresh eyes. I had my doubts as to whether I'd like this. In the end, I loved it.
It's a thoroughly charming movie. All the individual elements come together just right. The characters are likable; the locations are gorgeous; the musical numbers are mostly very good and are well-integrated into the story; most of the comedy is funny; and the tone is engagingly light and bouncy right up to the point when things suddenly become tense and dangerous. Everything fits together, with the end result being greater than the sum of its (very good) individual parts.
For all that he didn't much like the project, Christopher Plummer ends up being the perfect foil for Julie Andrews, his reserve grounding her buoyancy. Andrews, in turn, brings the enthusiasm needed for us to believe that Maria's able to push past his defenses. The early scenes in the abbey plant the idea of her as a disruptive force. She brings that disruption to his well-ordered household, pushing back against his rules and procedures almost as soon as she arrives.
Their budding attraction is sold visually even before it becomes a plot point. They're frequently framed together, and scenes repeatedly show her battering against his comfortable withdrawal. When she bickers with him over his distance from his children, he paces anxiously back and forth while she stands firmly in place, giving her the power in the argument.
Even when their relationship thaws, she prods him to join the children in singing, holding his guitar out to him to play until he reluctantly accepts it. They exchange frequent glances, which are observed by the Baronness. By the time they share the dance that marks the moment that the romance becomes a point in the script, the movie has already made them a couple visually, leaving the script to catch up.
Maria ends up being a support to Georg in the final Act in a way that the Baronness simply couldn't have been. She supports Georg's dangerous resistance to the Nazis, telling Max: "I can't ask him to be less than he is." During the performance near the end, Georg sings Edelweiss to the crowd, sharing his own Austrian patriotism with them even as his country loses its independence. Midway through the song, he is overcome with emotion - and Maria steps forward to help him finish.
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| Georg angrily tears a Nazi flag. |
A CHANGE IN TONE:
The movie seamlessly handles the switch in tone in the final Act. That the Anschluss is coming is established earlier, when Nazi sympathizers approach Georg at a dinner party. He responds with perfectly polite and pleasant acid, the perfect host even as he insults them to their faces. Moments like these allow us to sense the storm clouds before they finally roll in.
The final Act doesn't introduce any new musical numbers. Instead, it offers altered reprises of earlier songs. "Nothing in Austria has changed," the Nazis insist, practically as a catchphrase, but everything is different. The nice boy the eldest daughter had a crush on? He's now a strutting, Swastika-wearing martinet. Earlier in the film, Sixteen Going on Seventeen established Liesl's attraction to him; a much sadder version is sung between Maria and Liesl to show the death of that crush. Edelweiss goes from whimsy performed by Georg for his family to a gesture of defiance, sung to stir the Austrian patriotism of the crowd. Even the silly So Long, Farewell gets a reprise in a more dramatic context. All of this keeps it feeling like the same movie, but the changed context shows that the previous sense of joy has been replaced with sadness and fear.
The story culminates in the family's dramatic escape... which is entirely fictional. In reality, when Georg realized that he and his family would not be safe under the Nazis, he purchased tickets and they got on a train out of the country (in reality, unlike in the film, the border was still open). But that would make for a dull story.
The movie's escape gives the hint of jeopardy that this needs as a work of drama. The scene of them hiding from their pursuers in a crypt, ducking behind gravestones to avoid the beams of the Nazis' flashlights, is a moment of tension that wouldn't be out of place in a Hitchcock thriller, while their final journey over the mountains makes for a wonderful final visual that ties right back to the introductory shots.
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| The family escapes over the Alps. In reality, they just boarded a train. |
REMAKES AND RETELLINGS:
The Trapp Family (1956): This West German film was the first one made about the family. Its script directly influenced the story and structure of the stage musical, though it spends considerably more time focusing on the family's many performances for charity, which The Sound of Music almost entirely omits. It was extremely successful in its home country, leading to...
The Trapp Family in America (1958): A direct sequel, adapted from the back half of Maria von Trapp's book, this follows the family as they establish themselves as singers in America, eventually settling in Vermont.
Trapp Family Story (1991): This Japanese animated series retells the story across forty episodes. This was part of Japan's long-running World Masterpiece Theater, which was behind such series as Isaio Takahata's Heidi, Girl of the Alps and Yoshio Kuroda's Swiss Family Robinson, among many other titles.
The Sound of Music Live! (2013): A television special that aired live on NBC, with country singer Carrie Underwood as Maria. This drew mixed reviews; Underwood's singing was generally praised, but her acting left reviewers underwhelmed. Still, it proved a significant ratings success for the network.
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| The family performs. |
OVERALL:
Until the release of Grease more than a decade later, The Sound of Music was the most financially successful movie musical of all time. Beyond that - as with Gone with the Wind for movies in general, it remains the musical box office champion if you adjust for inflation.
It's easy enough to see why it's such an enduring success. The movie is wonderfully cinematic entertainment that doesn't put a foot wrong, its three-hour running time passes in an eyeblink, while the tonal shift of the final Act makes it substantial enough to stick in the memory.
This was released during a period in which musicals were regularly winning Best Picture. Of the musicals that I've reviewed to date (and I think Oliver! is the only one now left), this is easily my favorite.
I can't imagine it having been particularly better than it is. As such...
Rating: 10/10.
Best Picture - 1964: My Fair Lady
Best Picture - 1966: A Man for All Seasons
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