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Rating: G
Director: Robert Wise
Writers: Georg Hurdalek, Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse, Ernest Lehman, Maria von Trapp
Stars: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood
Release Date: April 1, 1965 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 52 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
In 1938 in Salzburg, at the end of the Federal State of Austria regime, Maria is a free-spirited young Austrian woman studying to become a nun at Nonnberg Abbey. However, her youthful enthusiasm and lack of discipline cause some concern. Mother Abbess sends Maria to the villa of retired naval officer Captain Georg von Trapp to be the new governess to his seven children: Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl. The Captain has been raising his children using strict military discipline following the death of his wife; they have scared away several governesses by playing tricks. Although the children misbehave at first, Maria responds with kindness and patience, and soon the children come to trust and respect her.
While the Captain is away in Vienna, Maria makes playclothes for the children out of drapes that are to be changed. She takes them around Salzburg and the mountains while teaching them how to sing. When the Captain returns to the villa with Baroness Elsa Schraeder, a wealthy socialite, and their mutual friend Max Detweiler, they are greeted by Maria and the children returning from a boat ride on the lake, which ends abruptly when their boat overturns. Displeased by his children’s clothes and activities and Maria’s impassioned appeal that he get closer to his children, the Captain attempts to fire Maria. However, he hears singing from inside the house and is astonished to see his children singing for the Baroness. Filled with emotion, the Captain joins his children, singing for the first time in years. The Captain apologizes to Maria and asks her to stay.
Impressed by the children’s singing, Max proposes that he enter them in the upcoming Salzburg Festival, but the Captain disapproves of letting his children sing in public. During a grand party at the villa, where guests in formal attire waltz in the ballroom, Maria and the children look on from the garden terrace. When the Captain notices Maria teaching Kurt the traditional Ländler folk dance, he steps in and partners Maria in a graceful performance, culminating in a close embrace. Confused about her feelings, Maria blushes and breaks away. Later, the Baroness, who noticed the Captain’s attraction to Maria, hides her jealousy by indirectly convincing Maria that she must return to the abbey.
Mother Abbess learns that Maria has stayed in seclusion to avoid her growing romantic feelings for the Captain, so she encourages her to return to the villa to look for her purpose in life. When Maria returns to the villa, she learns about the Captain’s engagement to the Baroness and agrees to stay until they find a replacement governess. However, the Baroness learns that the Captain’s feelings for Maria have not changed, so she peacefully calls off the engagement and returns to Vienna while encouraging the Captain to express his feelings for Maria, who marries him.
While the couple is on their honeymoon, Max enters the children into the Salzburg Festival against their father’s wishes. Having learned that Austria has been annexed by the Third Reich, the couple return to their home, where the Captain receives a telegram, ordering him to report to the German Naval base at Bremerhaven to accept a commission in the Kriegsmarine. Strongly opposed to the Nazis and their ideology, the Captain tells his family they must leave Austria immediately.
That night, the von Trapp family attempt to flee to Switzerland, but they are stopped by a group of Brownshirts, led by the Gauleiter Hans Zeller, waiting outside the villa. To cover his family’s tracks, the Captain maintains they are headed to the Salzburg Festival to perform. Zeller insists on escorting them to the festival, after which his men will accompany the Captain to Bremerhaven.
Later that night at the festival, during their final number, the von Trapp family slips away and seeks shelter at the abbey, where Mother Abbess hides them in the cemetery crypt. Zeller and his men soon arrive and search the abbey, but the family is able to escape using the caretaker’s car. When Zeller’s men attempt to pursue, they discover their cars will not start, as two of the nuns have sabotaged their engines. The next morning—after driving to the Swiss border—the von Trapp family make their way on foot across the frontier into Switzerland to safety and freedom.
My Review:
Before I watched this for the review, I had not seen The Sound of Music since the 1980s. The closest I’ve come to this musical, since, was that brief interlude in the Moulin Rouge film wherein Ewan McGregor sings “The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music.” Nevertheless, a lot of the music has found ways of popping up in my life, throughout my life, such that it was familiar anyway. Or maybe the things that imprint upon our brains, as children, never entirely leave us. With all of that prelude aside, I am happy to have rewatched this as I enjoyed it.
The most striking thing about the movie is how beautiful it is. The mountains, the abbey, the home, the music, and the people are all right out of a fairy tale. I don’t have many reasons ever to use the word “enchanting” but it fits here. You could watch the movie on mute and derive some enjoyment from it, just as much as you could listen to it and do the same.
The plot of the story is based on a book by Maria Von Trapp, thus the whole story is loosely based on a true history. That connection adds to the appeal of the film because it makes the story accessible despite its fairy tale qualities. You could have beeen Maria Von Trapp! Or you could be one of the Von Trapp child singers! It’s as simple as learning your do-re-mes. I admit though that despite what I just wrote, watching the people from this film – a story that took place during the life of my grandparents – feels so disconnected from my present day cultural reality that it could as easily be set in Medieval times (excepting the cars, obviously.) I’ve said before that the world I grew up in no longer exists, but this setting feels like a world that stopped existing long before I was born. Something about that rapid disconnect feels vaguely wrong. Julie Andrews herself – still alive as I write this – was also alive during the late 1930s. Should the world of her youth be so unrecognizable today?
Should so much have changed so quickly? The Allies won WW2 but little of the good parts of their pre-war culture survived, except as memories or museum tours. That’s a tragedy, in my opinion.
Julie Andrews was phenomenal as Maria. She is warm, engaging, funny, and she sets a standard for comparison musically that everyone since has been chasing in these types of roles. It occurred to me while watching that her Maria was probably also one of the early examples of a “manic pixie dream girl.”
Film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term in 2007 in his review of the 2005 film Elizabethtown for The A.V. Club. In discussing Kirsten Dunst‘s character, he said “Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl”, a character who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”
Captain Von Trapp is certainly a brooding man when we meet him, running his home and his children like a military unit, with a whistle in hand and no fun for anyone. We learn later that he is also soulful and a talented singer, once Maria coaxes that side of him back out. Is a would-be nun, who is also beautiful, and a *perfect* substitute mother figure to seven children the product of fevered imagination? Perhaps. However, as this story is somewhat true, perhaps the terminology is unfair. At least in one case, the dream girl was a real girl. If Maria Von Trapp fails to meet the MPDG test, it’s in that she gets something in return, namely a place where she belongs. That was one of the more satisfying elements of the story.
Christopher Plummer was great as Georg Von Trapp. He balances a tough, military-persona well within the same man who also leads a troupe of child singers. Further, for as impressive as Julie Andrews’ vocals are throughout the film, my favorite song from the movie was Edelweiss, performed by Plummer.
The strength of the movie – more specifically than just saying it is pervasively beautiful – is the depth of its really strong musical numbers. For a nearly three hour long musical to work, and particularly one with a title like this one has, it needs to have several really good songs. The Sound of Music delivers. Do-Re-Me, My Favorite Things, the title track, and the aforementioned Edelweiss are among my favorites.
One of the criticisms of the story, sometimes, is that it’s about an older man leaving his fiancé for a young-ish nun governess – as though someone somewhere broke vows or did something dishonest. I would answer that criticism by encouraging the viewer to pay closer attention to the plot. Georg Von Trapp does not break off his engagement – the Baroness does. Maria does not break any vows she made in the abbey. They were set to chuck her out, regardless, and in this case she was told to leave the abbey and was given encouragement by her Mother Superior to explore her romantic feelings. She broke no vows, either. Maria Von Trapp is young, but despite the fact Georg calls her fraulein, she is clearly an adult woman.
You can enjoy this relationship and not feel bad about it.
If I were going to provide a criticism of the film, it would be that we don’t get many specifics as to why Georg Von Trapp does not like his fellow Austrian’s rule in Germany. He was in a small minority of Austrians who do not, but we never really hear him expound much upon why he feels as he does. Keep in mind that the story is set in 1938, a year before the war begins. Perhaps the reasons are supposed to seem so obvious that they need not be spoken. Maybe the studios just didn’t want to risk the G rating.
Overall, I really enjoyed this and I’m glad I watched it. I find that it is healthy to absorb beauty and look for good in the world, and this movie delivers both. I highly recommend giving this a viewing, if you haven’t seen it recently or ever.
Have you seen The Sound of Music? What did you think?