I’ve seen two musicals I’ve enjoyed, *Pink Floyd’s The Wall *and Romance & Cigarettes.
I guess TSOM was the Grand Funk Railroad of movie musicals - - mediocre if critically evaluated, but extremely popular nonetheless.
The only lovable Nazis I ever saw on TV were those on Hogan’s Heros. They were played by actors who, in real life, were Jews. Kind of ironical, aint it?
Note to all, if being beat up by a 90+ year old woman is on your bucket list, go to one of these sing-alongs and make up your own words to the songs.
I never watched the movie; even as a kid, the bits and pieces I acquired by osmosis screamed “sentimental glurge”. Of course, to me “a good, clean family movie” is a pejorative.
But even without seeing the movie, I loved the MAD parody and still remember witty, snarky elements: “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Religion?”, and the line “♪ Brothers and sisters who love one another/You know that’s nonsense if you have a brother ♪”
Thanks for the memories!
In high school I did tech stuff for some local community theater groups. I started out in the one at our local JCC (Jewish Community Center). After I graduated HS I stopped. Some years later, mom was in the chorus in a JCC production of TSoM and I worked sound from the sound/light booth. A couple thoughts on that:
- There’s nothing like working a community theater production of a play to make you never want to see any other production of it again.
B) Never have the bench where nazi boy is courting Miss 16 on top of the cover for the unused orchestra pit. Especially if he dances. It sounds like he’s dancing on a bass drum
III - Smoke breaks during dress rehearsals and performances struck me as off somehow. Then I realized it was all the brownshirts in armbands and nuns crowded around a firedoor of the Jewish Community Center.
Thank goodness she left the convent. Otherwise we wouldn’t have YOU.
You got a laugh from me.
And I like the film well enough, for whatever that is worth.
I know several women (and no men) who love the movie with a passion. My friend Betsy told me that throughout her childhood, when the movie was on TV once a year, her mom would turn it off right after the wedding scene, because it was bedtime. She didn’t know until she was in college that there was more after that.
Here’s a nice where-are-they-now article from the 2010 cast reunion on Oprah: Sound Of Music reunion: Liesl tells Oprah, 'I had a crush on Captain von Trapp' | Daily Mail Online
My wife and I went to a singalong a few years ago and had a great time. There was even a costume contest ahead of time! One guy was dressed all in yellow and said he was “Ray, a drop of golden sun.” People shouted out all sorts of silly things during the movie. When the Von Trapp mansion was being shown off, one guy kept saying “You should see the *back *yard!” “You should see the *second *parlour!” etc. When the nuns let Maria through the monastery gate for her wedding and locked it behind her, someone else shouted, “Dead nun walkin’!”
Bin Laden?
BUTLER: Are you **impressed **with the **magnificence of the Von Tripe home?
**
MARIA: Yes, but how does he afford all this on a captain’s salary?
**BUTLER: ** I **wondered **about that myself!
Doesn’t the “von” answer that one, though? He’s descended of nobility, and presumably has inherited wealth (both of which doubtless made it easier for him to get an officer’s commission).
This movie, and of course its attendant songs, used to be a ubiquitous fixture of my childhood (it was 80’s Hawaii; our idea of a radical song was American Pie), but other than that Carrie Underwood special it hasn’t really been on my radar lately. Is it good? Huh. I never loved it all that much, but it a fun time during a time of my life were very little qualified as such. It’s a completely harmless, mostly fun family movie you can show to kids and sing along with together. That’s its purpose. It’s not supposed to be some grand epic or special effects-driven extravaganza.
The best thing I can say about it is that unlike nearly all the other movie musicals I’ve been exposed to, I can actually still tolerate this one. I wouldn’t sit down to watch it, but I don’t mind having it on in the background. South Pacific has way, way too much baggage for me, especially that stupid shampoo commercial, there’s no way I could sit through Flower Drum Song again without retching, and that song in Annie has reached Whitney Houston levels of grating for me. (Haven’t seen West Side Story or Cats yet, but I’m not holding out hope.) It’s strange…I mean, you’d think Climb Every Mountain would send me sprinting for the hills, but it’s such a genuinely clean, powerful operatic voice that I don’t mind at all. I do think the “jam and bread” part the second time they did that note song was overdone, but not to the point of unbearable.
Hey, you want compelling plot and strong characters, there’s…um…Glengarry Glen Ross? Robocop? I’m not really the expert on this…
“She’s in the conservatory!”
Bleech. You think SoM is weak? MP has (mostly) weaker songs, weaker plot, and Dick Van Dyke as Bert (you thought Apu’s accent was insulting?). I’ll watch part of SoM when it’s on TV, but MP only lasts a couple of minutes.
SoM was based on the popular stage musical, which was based on the successful (in America) singing troupe “The Trapp Family Singers”. It’s like saying 'A Hard Days Night" (1964) is based on a real story: it’s sort of true, but that’s not the main point.
I remember seeing an article about The Sound of Music. The real Maria von Trapp was asked her opinion after seeing the movie (or it may have been the stage musical), “It’s a very nice story, but it’s not my story.”
Hey, I didn’t write the satire! I just find it hilarious.
There was an inteview with Maria von Trapp in TV Guide when ***TSoM ***was first aired on television. She said she liked the movie very much, but she couldn’t understand where that big mountain right in the middle of Salzburg came from. “But you have to allow Hollywood some Hollywooding.”
I never like this movie very much. But I must agree that a great many people do seem to love, love, love it.
The only reason I can fathom is that there are two main components to this film. The first is the music and singing and the second is the dramatic story. IMHO, it’s very difficult to find much fault with the music and singing. But the dramatic acting is a very different story.
So, while I can understand why so many people love this film, I would have to give the opinion the film may be able to be described as “schizoid” because it seems to be split into two different parts - one of which is very much better than the other.
I take it you don’t know very many gay men.
Nor are opinions on it purely dichotymous. I certainly don’t love the movie with a passion, but I do enjoy it.
I had heard the music ad nauseam, but enver saw the movie until r4ecently, when I happened to catch it on TV, and already at about the halfway mark. A good number o of Sixties films are *very *dated, and I don’t like musicals in general, but I was very surprised to find SoM tolerable and not as over the top as I had expected. Of course, the story is holey and reality got improved a bit, but that’s Hollywood.
A mountain in Salzburg? I was there many moons ago, and it is in the hills, but the hills are not in Salzburg itself. Anyway, it’s a lovely town, apart from the ubiquitous tourists.