movie review sound of music

The Sound of Music (1965)

The golden age of popular, pious, genial Hollywood Catholicism is more or less bookended by two hugely successful Best Picture winners: one about a singing priest, the other about a singing postulant nun turned wife and stepmother.

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/spiritual value, age appropriateness, mpaa rating, caveat spectator.

Going My Way , starring Bing Crosby as a crooning cleric who embodied a new image of cool Catholicism, was the #1 film of 1944, confirming Catholicism’s mainstream acceptance in American popular culture. And in 1965 Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music , for a time surpassing Gone With the Wind to become the #1 film in Hollywood history, came at end of an era, not just for Hollywood Catholicism but for classical Hollywood cinema. The next Hollywood blockbuster with a comparable Catholic presence would be The Exorcist in 1973.

Ironically, the coolness of Crosby’s Father O’Malley, so groundbreaking at the time, hasn’t aged as well as the nostalgic charm of The Sound of Music , which was already square and old-fashioned when it debuted. In fact, it may be partly precisely because Father O’Malley was hip and Julie Andrews’ Fraulein Maria wasn’t that Going My Way feels much more dated than The Sound of Music . Perhaps nostalgia ages better than coolness.

Half a century later, The Sound of Music is probably still the world’s favorite big-screen stage musical adaptation. Joyous, gorgeous, comforting, full of (almost) uniformly spectacular songs, the film’s emotional power is irresistible, even for the many critics, such as Pauline Kael, who hated its shallowness and emotional manipulation.

What makes it work, above all, is Andrews’ sweet sincerity and commitment. Any flicker of condescension or pretense on her part and the whole thing would collapse into treacle and camp. But cynics will search her face in vain: Her sincerity is absolute, and she sells the role and the film.

Adapted from the last of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s collaborations, and one of their best, the film loosely reflects the real-life story of the Trapp Family Singers as related in the memoirs of Maria Augusta von Trapp . The three-hour story is divided into two acts, each comprising two movements or parts.

In part 1, ordered to take a leave of absence from her postulancy at the abbey, headstrong Maria tames the unruly von Trapp children and their grieving, aloof disciplinarian father, Christopher Plummer’s Captain Georg von Trapp, bringing music and laughter back to the von Trapp household. In part 2, Maria unwittingly competes for Georg’s affections with Baroness Elsa von Schraeder (Eleanor Parker), who manipulates her rival to flee back to the convent.

After the entr’acte or intermezzo, in part 3 Maria returns from the convent, claims Georg’s love and marries him. Finally in part 4 the von Trapps’ happiness is threatened by the rising Nazi shadow.

The real story is arguably more interesting, certainly more Catholic and in some ways less dramatic. The real Trapp Family Singers began singing publicly in the 1930s after the family was ruined in the Great Depression (an expedient the real Georg hated as much as the fictional version would have).

During this time the von Trapps rented rooms in their house to students at a nearby Catholic university. A priest, Fr. Franz Wasner, served both as the family’s chaplain and also as their director and conductor. (Richard Haydn’s fictional, cheerfully degenerate Max Detweiler, though an invaluable source of wry amusement and great lines, displaces what could have been a great clerical character.)

Captain von Trapp did flee Austria with his family to escape a Nazi commission, but there was no impossible hike over the mountains into Switzerland; they simply took a train to Italy and went on to London and finally the United States.

The screen adaptation by Ernest Lehman ( The King and I , West Side Story ) improves on its musical source material in shrewd ways. Songs are shifted to apter settings (“The Lonely Goatherd” was originally set during the thunderstorm, and “My Favorite Things” in the abbey!). “Edelweiss” is introduced early to give added heft to its reprise at the climax.

Lehman wisely cut Elsa’s duets with Georg and Max, reflecting her nonmusical nature which becomes an obstacle between her and Georg as he recovers his musicalheritage. (“I should have brought my harmonica,” Elsa acidly murmurs to Max, revealing how out of place she feels in the musically renewed von Trapp household. It’s a key indication that Maria, not Elsa, is the right woman for Georg, whose first wife was a music lover and who is one himself, though he forgot it in his grief.)

Two new songs by Rodgers were added. One, “Confidence,” was Andrews’ least favorite, but her gonzo physical performance (watch the way she swings her guitar and suitcase) and mercurial emotions make it a standout. The other, “Something Good,” is, for me, the adaptation’s lone misstep, an emotional epiphany accompanied by sweet music and wretched lyrics.

The rest of the score, though, is one delight after another, from the exaltation of the opening title song (punctured in the end by abbey bells, a mad dash and a forgotten wimple) and the playful nun-sense of “Maria” to the spontaneous patriotic defiance of the “Edelweiss” sing-along (not an actual Austrian song!) at the Salzburg Music Festival and the closing reprise of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” Andrews adds extra charm to all her numbers: the dizzy, slightly overwhelmed stage exuberance in “The Lonely Goatherd,” with its vocal acrobatics; the maternal tenderness in the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” reprise.

Even the original “Sixteen,” which I recall from childhood being a slog, gets more interesting once you notice that callow Rolfe (Daniel Truhitte) is intimidated by amorous Leisl and trying to hide it with a pretense of worldliness and sophistication, while Leisl intuitively flatters his ego by feigning naivete and dependence. (“Silly, only grownup men are scared of women,” Kurt tells Louisa at the ball.) Of course the movie’s gender roles are dated; if you want a period picture with sexual revolution attitudes, watch Titanic .

Salzburg, with its dramatic Alpine setting and blend of Romanesque, Renaissance and baroque architecture, provides a splendid backdrop that Wise exploits with lingering takes (starting with that majestic three-minute opening montage) and frequent use of symmetrical or formal composition (as in “So Long, Farewell” and Maria and Georg silhouetted in the gazebo).

Maria’s opening song was actually filmed in the Bavarian Alps, but “Do-Re-Mi” is set near Salzburg. The nuns sing “Maria” at the real Nonnberg Abbey where Maria was a postulant, though the wedding was shot at the Church of Saint Michael in Mondsee, a gothic former monastery elevated to a papal basilica by Pope John Paul II shortly before his death in 2005. The Salzburg Music Festival was shot at the real Felsenreitschule theater, a 17th-century amphitheater built into the Mönchsberg, one of the five mountains around Salzburg.

One of the movie’s amusing curiosities is that the von Trapps, despite their billing as holy terrors, turn out to be pussycats. Granted, the introductory scene, with the Captain blowing that “silly whistle” and the kids all smartly marching and belting out their introductions, is intimidating.

But it’s hard to imagine these kids having driven off eleven prior governesses with horrid tricks involving jars full of spiders and snakes and so forth. After nothing worse than a frog and a pinecone, Maria disarms them with unexpected kindness and soon everyone is crying at the dinner table.

As for the Captain, his dissatisfaction with Maria is largely confined to drily ironic remarks, at least until the climax of the first act. That’s the fateful day the children, clad in playclothes made of drapes, topple into the Salzach River in front of Georg and Elsa—and then, instead of being abashed, Maria laces into the Captain’s paternal failings. At last he loses his temper and shouts at her, yet he’s so discombobulated that he calls her “Captain”!

Plummer cordially detested the material (“The Sound of Mucous,” he called it), an attitude that ironically serves his performance for the most part. The image of Plummer tearing the Nazi flag off his house and ripping the swastika in half is one of my earliest memories of the actor; it’s always a little odd to see him with a swastika on his arm in the excellent 1983 TV movie The Scarlet and the Black , where he plays SS officer Herbert Kappler — and has a daughter named Leisel!

Although the story centers on a postulant nun who turns from the convent to embrace marriage, the film is nothing but reverent toward religious life. One vocation isn’t pitted against another; the key question, as Maria says in an early scene, is simply “to find out the will of God and to do it wholeheartedly.”

Significantly, the scene in which the Mother Superior (Peggy Wood) sends Maria back to the von Trapps (“Climb Ev’ry Mountain”) begins with the reception of another postulant to the abbey. Religious life is a positive good, but “the love of a man and a woman is holy too,” and “our abbey is not to be used as an escape.” (Well, except from Nazis!)

The list of critical charges against The Sound of Music is endless: It’s simplistic, sentimental, saccharine and lacking in dramatic conflict. Kael complained that it was too insipid to offend anyone. Yet the film is essentially critic-proof, not in a cynical sense, but in the best sense: For half a century it has brought joy to viewers of all ages. That’s all the justification any movie needs.

Now available in a 40th anniversary edition with an improved transfer and loads of extras, including numerous documentaries and a pair of commentary tracks, one by director Wise and the other by stars Andrews, Plummer, and Charmian Carr (Liesl), as well as choreographer Dee Dee Wood Johannes von Trapp, youngest son of Maria.

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The Sound of Music

Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Charmian Carr, Angela Cartwright, Duane Chase, Nicholas Hammond, Kym Karath, Heather Menzies-Urich, and Debbie Turner in The Sound of Music (1965)

A young novice is sent by her convent in 1930s Austria to become a governess to the seven children of a widowed naval officer. A young novice is sent by her convent in 1930s Austria to become a governess to the seven children of a widowed naval officer. A young novice is sent by her convent in 1930s Austria to become a governess to the seven children of a widowed naval officer.

Robert Wise
Georg Hurdalek
Howard Lindsay
Russel Crouse
Julie Andrews
Christopher Plummer
Eleanor Parker
583 User reviews
101 Critic reviews
63 Metascore
18 wins & 13 nominations total

The Sound of Music: 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collectors Edition

Top cast 47

Captain Georg von Trapp

The Baroness

Max Detweiler

Mother Abbess

Liesl von Trapp

Louisa von Trapp
(as Heather Menzies)

Friedrich von Trapp

Kurt von Trapp

Brigitta von Trapp

Marta von Trapp

Gretl von Trapp

Sister Margaretta

Sister Berthe

Herr Zeller

Frau Schmidt
(as Gil Stuart)
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Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia Christopher Plummer accidentally said the word "Captain" to Julie Andrews during the argument scene. Despite the error, producer and director Robert Wise thought it was that amusing, and liked it so much, he kept it in the movie.
Goofs Georg von Trapp was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Navy in World War I, commanding ships based from ports on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, an Imperial province. In 1918, the Empire was dissolved, leaving Austria a landlocked country, and Von Trapp out of a job in the process. "Austrian Navy" sounds like an oxymoron to viewers unaware of the historical context.

Maria : When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.

Crazy credits The 20th Century Fox logo is played in complete silence.
Alternate versions The 1996 video fits the movie onto one VHS cassette by removing the Intermission screen as well as the Entr'acte.
Connections Featured in Film Review: Julie Andrews (1967)
Soundtracks Prelude (1959) (uncredited) Music by Richard Rodgers Played during the opening aerial shots

User reviews 583

davispittman
Oct 25, 2017
Mary Martin originated the role on Broadway; was she considered for the movie?
April 1, 1965 (United States)
United States
Official Site
La novicia rebelde
Felsenreitschule, Salzburg, Austria (music festival scenes)
Robert Wise Productions
Argyle Enterprises
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$8,200,000 (estimated)
$159,287,539
Sep 9, 2018
$159,479,416

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Runtime 2 hours 52 minutes

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The Sound of Music (1965)

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The Sound of Music (1965)

Directed by robert wise.

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Description by Wikipedia

The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise from a screenplay written by Ernest Lehman, and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, with Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, and Eleanor Parker. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 stage musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Lindsay and Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp and is set in Salzburg, Austria. It is a fictional retelling of her experiences as governess to seven children, her eventual marriage with their father Captain Georg von Trapp, and their escape during the Anschluss in 1938.

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The Sound of the Music (1965) Review

The Sound of Music (1965) Director: Robert Wise

“The hills are alive with the sound of music…”

While I am generally not a devotee of musicals, The Sound of Music is the Hollywood cinematic musical masterpiece par excellence. It is an undeniable, towering film; one of my favorites of all time. Sentimental, gripping, sunny, hopeful, visually stunning, and rife with catchy, beautiful music The Sound of Music is a wonderful picture. The story is based on the 1949 memoir by Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers , which was then turned into a stage production by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1959 (Richard Rodgers composed the music and Oscar Hammerstein II created the lyrics). In fact this was the last Rodgers and Hammerstein musical as Hammerstein died of stomach cancer in 1960 (the last song he wrote was “Edelweiss”). While initial reviews were mixed, it quickly became a massive success as The Sound of Music unseated Gone With The Wind in 1966 as the highest grossing film up to that point. It won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best director (Wise’s second win after 1961’s West Side Story ). The Sound of Music effectively saved 20th Century Fox after its near financial flop with Cleopatra in 1963.

The initial intent was for Audrey Hepburn to play the lead but thankfully we are the fortunate beneficiaries of Julie Andrews and her incredible vocals (back-up considerations for lead roles included Grace Kelly and Shirley Jones). Robert Wise visited Disney to view footage of the unreleased film Mary Poppins and immediately he knew he needed to sign Andrews to the part. Wise also had trouble casting the role of Captan von Trapp. Along with Christopher Plummer other lead Hollywood actors included Bing Crosby, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery, and Richard Burton. Many other famous Hollywood actors were considered for secondary roles as well, including Mia Farrow. Apparently Plummer and Andrews became lifelong friends after the movie but he despised the sappiness of the movie (he called it “the sound of mucus”). The two spent minimal time together on set because Andrews had a newborn and Plummer spent minimal time in Austria. During scenes of romance between the two they could not stop laughing -in particular Wise decided to simply to shoot Andrews and Plummer in silhouette due to their nonstop giggling.

The follow is a brief plot synopsis though it pales in comparison to the film: Maria (Julie Andrews) is a free-spirited Austrian nun-in-training but her carefree disposition earns her the ire of her fellow nuns. She is sent away to serve as the governess for the distinguished and recently widowed retired Naval Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) and his seven children: Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl. When she arrives Maria is met with a severe and austere man, but when he goes away to Vienna Maria opens the children to her playful and fun-loving ways. She invites them to explore the world around them, and she teaches them how to play and sing music. When Capt. von Trapp returns he brings with him a suspicious and stern socialite named Baroness Elsa Schraeder (Eleanor Parker). When the Captain sees how undisciplined his children have become he orders Maria to return to the abbey, but at the last moment he overhears his children singing to Baroness Schraeder. Overwhelmed with emotion and nostalgia, he sings with them and begs Maria to stay. The Captain throws a large gala at his villa and he and Maria are caught dancing intimately with one another. Confused about her feelings, Maria runs back to the abbey (at the urging of the Baroness) but she is ordered to return to her duties rather than escape into a vow of silence. When she returns, Captain von Trapp calls off his engagement to the Baroness and instead is married to Maria.

After an intermission, the von Trapp family singers are enlisted to play at a festival by their Uncle Max (Richard Haydn) despite Captain von Trapp’s protestations. He and Maria return home from their honeymoon when they discover that the Nazis are taking over Austria. When they try to escape the von Trapps are forcibly escorted to the festival by a group of Nazi brown shirts. They narrowly escape from Rolfe to Maria’s old abbey and in the morning they flee across the Austrio-Swiss border to freedom in Switzerland.

There are a number of glaring historical inaccuracies in the film. Unlike in the film and musical, Mr. von Trapp was actually a kind, warm-hearted man and it was Maria who was the disciplinarian (though the real Mr. von Trapp did summon his children with a whistle). The von Trapp family was disappointed in the portrayal of their father in the film. Another inaccuracy is that the family openly left Austria via train under the pretense of a vacation rather than fleeing in the dead of night. The real Maria von Trapp has a brief uncredited cameo as a passerby, alongside her children Rosemarie and Werner von Trapp during the “I Have Confidence” number. In her book, The Sound of Music: The Making of America’s Favorite Movie, Julia Antopol Hirsch says that Kostal used seven children and five adults to record the children’s voices; the only scene where the child-actors actually sing is when they sing “The Sound of Music” on their own after Maria leaves. Christopher Plummer also had a voice double. Indoor scenes for the film were shot in Los Angeles however outdoor scenes at the abbey were shot at Mondsee Abbey in Salzburg, Austria along with the surrounding region from chapels, to town squares, to the alps. The magnificent outdoor scenes of the waterfront von Trapp manor were shot at Schloss Leopoldskron, an early 18th century Austrian palace. After falling into disrepair, it was once owned by the great Austrian theatre director-turned Hollywood man, Max Reinhardt. He abandoned the palace when he fled the Nazi invasion, and the Nazis promptly confiscated it. Today it is a renovated luxury hotel. The front-facing scenes of the von Trapp manor were shot at the Mozarteum Salzburg, a music and dramatic arts university which was founded in 1841. The university is named after the city’s most renowned artist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Here are some bits of fascinating The Sound of Music behind the scenes trivia: In the scene where the children return home in a boat after playing around in Austria they fall into the water but there is a true look of terror on some of their faces -some did not know how to swim! During the fall the young actress Kym Karath swallowed so much water she grew ill. The actress who played Leisl (Charmian Carr) had a badly sprained ankle during her romantic scene in the gazebo. Years later, she admitted to having a crush on Christopher Plummer through the making of the film but she claims it was merely platonic and flirtatious. The youngest actress who played Gretl (Kym Karath) experienced a growth spurt and weight gain during production -so much so in fact that in the closing scenes of the von Trapp family hiking over the alps, Christopher Plummer requested for a lighter double to carry on his back. Plummer, himself, ate and drank copiously during production and had to have his costumes extended in the waste a bit. A nearby Austrian farmer apparently supplied the staff with Austrian Schnapps and both Plummer and Andrews happily accepted. Legend has it that Andrews used the Schnapps to help her play guitar and lip-sync at the same time (she was not a natural guitar player). Marni Nixon, better known as the woman who contributed the on-screen singing voice for Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady , made her on-screen debut in The Sound of Music . She played one of the singing nuns (Sister Sophia) at the Abby. Julie Andrews was apparently repeatedly knocked to the ground during the shooting of her famous “hills are alive” scene -a helicopter was flying overhead to capture the magnificent scenery but the high winds knocked poor Julie Andrews quite a bit! The scene was actually shot in Bavaria, Germany. During the later scenes in which the Nazis took over Austria, local government officials were uneasy with the film crew hanging Swastika flags along the streets, however the crew arose very early in the morning and quickly got their shots to avoid any crowds or attention. The Sound of Music was made a mere 20 years after World War II.

Review: The Sound of Music (1965)

Wesley Lovell

The Sound of Music

Robert Wise

Ernest Lehman (Musical: Richard Rodgers, composer; Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse, book)

Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Anna Lee, Portia Nelson, Ben Wright, Daniel Truhitte, Norma Varden, Marni Nixon, Gil Stuart, Evadne Baker, Doris Lloyd, Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner, Kym Karath, Eleanor Parker

MPAA Rating

Buy/rent movie, source material.

There are few motion pictures that can become so ingrained in the psyche of generations of people. The Sound of Music is an immensely popular musical that hasn’t dulled even after 40 years.

The story is that of an ex-nun (Julie Andrews) whose joie de vivre was a distraction to the other sisters of her cloister. She takes the position as governess to the large van Trapp family. Maria becomes such an integral part of the household that the family’s patriarch Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) begins to fall in love with her.

Maria teaches the children to sing songs, all of which are now classic tunes. From “Do Re Mi” to “My Favorite Things”, Sound of Music is a significant part of our cultural landscape. How many people do you know that have no idea that ‘Do’ is a ‘deer, a female deer’ or some of Maria’s favorite things are ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens’. The success of this musical is due entirely to the fantastic musical score of Richard Rodgers and the catchy lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II.

What The Sound of Music also has is a terrific cast, a celebrated screenwriter and a talented director. Robert Wise, who with Jerome Robbins, created the film version of West Side Story has created an indelible classic. He keeps the film light when it needs to be and creates the appropriate darkness at the necessary times. With the help of Ernest Lehman (the pen behind such classic film stories as The King and I , the aforementioned West Side Story , Hello, Dolly! , Sabrina , North by Northwest and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ), Wise crafts a joyous celebration of life.

Julie Andrews is one of the greatest gifts to musical theater. Her ability to convey the most complex emotional scenes alongside a powerful and moving voice have made her one of the most honored and sorely missed talents in film history. Christopher Plummer also performs admirably giving Captain von Trapp a soul hidden beneath the grim exterior of his professional mannerism.

A case could be made for the film’s sugar-coated vision of history. Everything leading up to the finale is bright, uncomplicated and fun. This happiness is interrupted when Captain von Trapp is forced to abandon his family to serve der Führer , he organizes an escape attempt that endangers the safety of Maria’s former convent and leads to one of the film’s more poignant scenes. To most viewers, the film is escapist entertainment. Though it glosses over significant historical events in order to soften their impact, it is nevertheless clear why this is done.

As human beings, we must believe that there is always a way out of the dark times of our lives. While we want to know the truth about the world around us, we still fear the unimaginable and hope for a peaceful solution to all conflicts. The Sound of Music gives these characters we’ve cared for and attached ourselves to a chance to live that life of freedom and happiness we can only wish for ourselves. It gives the human consciousness a much-needed respite from tragedy and engenders in us the strength to carry on though the situation may be dire.

Although I am grateful that filmmakers can show us how the human soul can become corrupted and not flinch from the nuances of true realism, I cannot begrudge The Sound of Music or any musical of its era from presenting this kind of hope-filled message. These characters may have gone through little compared with others less fortunate, but this type of narrative serves a noble purpose and for that I salute it.