More than three-dozen films have been made of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, and many of them are memorable (The King and I, South Pacific, Oklahoma!, and Show Boat among many others). But none is better loved than the last musical produced by this team and completed shortly before Oscar Hammerstein’s death: The Sound of Music. Inspired by Maria von Trapp’s 1949 book, “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway musical opened in 1959, won eight Tony Awards and ran for more than 1,400 performances with Mary Martin in the lead role.
For the Hollywood version of this fact-based story, a young Julie Andrews, fresh off her big-screen debut in Mary Poppins, was signed to play Maria. Maria is a would-be nun who becomes governess for the seven children of Captain Georg von Trapp, a nationalist Austrian naval officer who opposes the Nazis in the lead-up to the Second World War. The movie shows how Maria brightened the lives of the children – and the captain as well, with the two eventually falling in love, marrying and then escaping Austria as the Nazis took control of the country.
This is a sentimental movie that’s remembered more for its music than for its schmaltzy storyline. The actual story was liberally altered to achieve this. For example, the captain was apparently not nearly as sweet as Christopher Plummer portrays him in the film, and the family’s thrilling escape through the Alps at the end of the movie never really happened. Instead, the family simply took the train to Italy.
It’s sentimental and unreal, but still a heart-warming story. Even after the better part of three hours, it’s difficult to watch the family’s escape from the Nazis without a lump in your throat. And the music is wonderful from start to finish – more than enough reason on its own to sit through the lengthy film. There’s the memorable title song, Do-Re-Mi, Sixteen Going on Seventeen, So Long, Farewell, and many more. Three songs from the stage version were cut from the film, and Rodgers wrote two new songs. Most of these appear in the first half of the film, as the second half mainly involves plot development and reprises of the songs that have already been heard.
The acting is decent, as Andrews is well suited to her part and Plummer and the child actors all are capable in playing their rather simplistic characters. And the setting of the film is beautiful, with excellent use made of Salzburg and the countryside, including the spectacular Alps. This was a big-league production, using 4,500 extras and filming on location for almost three months. Director Robert Wise (West Side Story, Star Trek: The Motion Picture) stitched the resulting film together competently, using the film’s many assets wisely and avoiding the potential for this to become unbearably sickly-sweet.
The strongest endorsement of The Sound of Music—and the only one it really needs – is its continuing popularity more than 35 years after its release.
