Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:24, 14 June 2006

The Sound of Music is a 1965 film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews in the lead role. The film is based on the broadway musical The Sound of Music.

The musical originated with the book The Von Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp. It contains many hit songs, including "Edelweiss", "My Favorite Things", "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", "Do-Re-Mi", "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" and "The Lonely Goatherd", as well as the title song.

The film version was filmed on location in Salzburg as well as Hollywood studios.

Plot

Template:Spoiler

Part I: In Salzburg, Austria, Maria, a woman studying to become a nun, is sent from her convent to be the governess to seven children of a widower naval commander, Captain Georg Ritter von Trapp. The children, initially hostile and mischievous when given care and made aware of the fun of life come to like her, and Maria finds herself falling in love with the captain. He was soon to be married to a baroness but marries Maria instead.

Part II: The Nazis take power in Austria as part of the Anschluss, and attempt to force Captain von Trapp back in service. Unwilling to do so, during a singing performance in a guarded theater, the whole family flees and hikes over the mountains to Switzerland.

Production

The film, which was released in 1965, was named Best Picture of the Year. Robert Wise won an Academy Award for Directing for the film, which stars Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp. Hammerstein died before the film was made, and two of the numbers added to the score were written solely by Rodgers: "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good", while three secondary songs were cut from the score and others were shifted to different scenes. The film grossed over $158 million at the North American box office. Adjusted for ticket price inflation this is the equivalent of $911 million at 2006 prices, putting it third on the list of all time inflation adjusted box office hits according to boxofficemojo.com. The soundtrack album on the RCA Victor label has sold over 11 million copies worldwide.

The film has since been seen on television and (re-)released on VHS and DVD for its 40th anniversary. When Plummer did not re-join the rest of the cast for a 40th anniversary re-union in New York, reports said Plummer was distancing himself from the movie. The reports were fuelled by a comment from the President of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Society who said " used to refer to it as the 'Sound of Mucus'". As Plummer took part in interviews and commentaries for the DVD version of the 40th anniversary, and is overwhelmingly positive about the experience in those recordings, it is difficult to know where his feelings truly lie.

Cast

Trivia

• Many people believe "Edelweiss" to be a traditional Austrian song, or even the national anthem. In fact the song was written for the musical and is little known in Austria.
• The musical itself is virtually unknown in Austria, except in backpacker's hostels in Salzburg, where it is screened daily on DVD . The Ländler dance that Maria and the Captain shared was not performed the traditional way it is done in Austria.

• "I Have Confidence" is a song that Rodgers wrote as a "bridge", needed in the movie to get Maria from the convent to the Von Trapp manor (as he explained). During that segment, at one point Julie Andrews passes under an archway. As pointed out in one of the DVD's extras, the real Maria, one of her daughters, and one of her daughters (Maria's granddaughter) can be seen starting to cross the road at that point. The von Trapps arrived on set that day and director Wise offered them this walk-on role. It has also been reported that Andrews tripped at one point during the filming, a moment the editors left in because it seemed to fit the character.
• The order of several of the songs is markedly different between the stage play and the film, thanks to the screenwriting of Ernest Lehman. One example is that in the play, "My Favorite Things" is sung at the convent, whereas in the movie it is sung to the children. A couple of the songs were altered. "How Can Love Survive?" (which did not fit the flow of the movie very well) was reduced to an instrumental, one of several waltz numbers played at the party occurring just before intermission. The title song's four-line prelude ("My day in the hills has come to an end, I know..."), sung by Mary Martin in the stage play, is reduced to an instrumental hint during the overture and dramatic zoom-in shot to Julie Andrews on the mountaintop at the start of the movie.
• Despite the enormous popularity of the movie, which at the time became the largest grossing picture of all time, noted film critic Pauline Kael blasted the film in a review in which she called the movie "The Sound Of Money." This review allegedly led to Kael's dismissal from McCall's magazine.
• The Sound of Music became the highest grossing film of all time in December 1965, when it beat Gone With the Wind by slightly less than one million dollars. The Sound of Music remained the highest grossing film of all time, until 1970 when Gone With the Wind was rereleased and it became #1 again. After that, several films (The Godfather, Jaws, etc) have pushed The Sound of Music further down on the list.
• In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
• According to boxofficemojo, the film ranks third in both all-time number of tickets sold (142,415,400) and in gross adjusted for inflation ($911,458,400) in North America (behind Gone with the Wind and Star Wars) Combine this with its success around the world in sales of tickets, videocassettes, laserdiscs, DVDs and its frequent airings on television, it is called "the most widely seen movie produced by a Hollywood studio" by Amazon.uk

According to the British tabloid The Sun, the movie was selected by BBC executives as one to be broadcast after a nuclear strike, to improve the morale of survivors. The BBC did not confirm or deny the story, saying "This is a security issue so we cannot comment" . Legend has it that South Koreans were even more taken by the movie. A theatre owner in South Korea, wanting to show the movie more times per day to take the money of more customers, allegedly cut out the musical pieces .

References

1. The Sun 7th October 2004
2. This apochrypal tale is recounted, for instance, at the IMDb

External links

• Details of the touring singalong version of the movie
• The Sound Of Music Kids - Where are they now
• The Real Story of the Von Trapp Family (from the US National Archives)
• Robert von Dassanowsky, "An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music." Bright Lights Film Journal. Issue 41, August 2003, .

• 1965 films
• Best Actress Oscar Nominee (film)
• Best Picture Oscar
• Best Supporting Actress Oscar Nominee (film)
• Biographical films
• Family films
• Films about music and musicians
• Films based on biographies
• Musical films
• Trapp
• United States National Film Registry