The Sound of Music

The winner of the Best Picture Oscar fifty years ago was The Sound of Music, which was a smash hit--so much so that it became the highest box office earner of all time, knocking off the venerable Gone With the Wind. An adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical, which in turn was based on the story of the Von Trapp Family Singers, it had a fantastic score, with several songs that are now part of our psyche. But over the course of fifty years something perverse happened to the film--it has now become kitsch.

I'm not sure how many times I've seen it. I do remember a time during a re-release that my grandmother took me and I got bored and wanted to go home. I've seen the stage play a couple of times--my high school did it and then I saw it a few years in a community theater. But before yesterday I know I saw it at least once, because I distinctly remember the ending, when that bastard Rolfe gives the family away and the nuns steal parts of the Nazis' cars.

Here's the interesting thing about The Sound of Music. Yes, it's far too saccharine, and if you have any cynicism at all in your veins you will start to curse humanity. Gene Siskel said of the film that he rooted for the Nazis. But upon looking at it yesterday I realized it is immaculately made. Robert Wise may well have deserved the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The photography is great--the opening shot of the Austrian mountains, and then the zoom in on Julie Andrews is stunning. The editing is terrific, too, especially during the musical numbers. I was struck by the otherwise silly "The Lonely Goatherd" puppet show how well cut the scene is.

For all that, though, I wouldn't call the film a classic. It may be for those who don't watch a lot of movies. It is pleasant and inoffensive. Even the Nazi stuff, which intrudes in the film's third hour, is introduced almost politely (I also would like to know how the Von Trapp's escaped the theater when it was so well guarded). Anyone who likes cutting-edge cinema will be bombarded with banality which pleases the lowest common denominator.

Julie Andrews is terrific, and after her previous year's work in Mary Poppins was sitting on top of the world. Christopher Plummer, who turned down the role repeatedly before accepting it, is okay, but his transformation from authoritarian to mushy pushover happens awfully fast. The children are cute without being obnoxious (the only one I recognized was Angela Cartwright, who went on to be Penny in Lost in Space).

And those songs! Rodgers and Hammerstein were the most successful Broadway composers of all time, and if this show wasn't their best (that would probably be Oklahoma!) it had a trunkful of hits. The title song, "Do-Re-Mi," "My Favorite Things," "Edelweiss," all are indelible songs. Would they like the idea that people now dress up in costume and attend sing-alongs? Maybe, maybe not.