Hulu offers The Sound of Music now. I watched it earlier this evening for the first time in about 50 years.
“The Hills are alive, Max.”
Gonna re-watch in 2074, or are you good?
mmm
An actual conversation:
“This is a stupid movie.”
“”What’s so stupid about it?”
(Considers a thorough, cogent analysis, but instead says): “Rogers & Hammerstein Nazis.”
Every time I watch it I am reminded how good a comic actress Julie Andrews is.
I saw it for the first time at a cinema in Tbilisi, in the summer of 1975. It was a very old print that had been dubbed into Russian (the songs had subtitled translations) and repaired (spliced back together) many times. In the scene at the fountain, the kids were jumping up and down out of synch with the music.
Not long after I’d returned to the US, I was at the house of a friend who happened to have a copy of MAD Magazine with the satire of the movie. I was laughing so hard as I read it that I literally fell out of the easy chair I was sitting in.
There’s a wonderful This American Life podcast episode of a woman who’d watched the VHS of The Sound of Music as a kid, but hadn’t realized it was a 2-VHS movie. So she never saw the entire second videotape with the Nazis, etc. She finally sat down to watch it for the podcast and saw what she’d been missing. It’s hilarious.
I’m just the opposite, all I ever saw was the ending. Whenever it was on network TV I’d turn on the news at 10 and have to sit through the last 15-20 minutes where they’re escaping the Nazis. That’s the only part I ever saw!
(I eventually did sit down and watch the whole movie one year. My wife shamed me into it.)
I’ve never seen the movie. All I know is “The Hills are Alive!”. Nice, joyful tune sung by a smiling Julie Andrews. Later I found out about the Nazis and was genuinely perplexed.
While promoted as a “true story,” Maria von Trapp herself said “It’s a very nice story, but it’s not my story.”
I once sang some of the songs in the MAD satire at the Anglican church in Moscow while I was helping clean out some of the junk in the belfry. The Vicar was not amused when I belted out “How Do You Solve the Problem of Religion?”
One of the ironies of the movie is that in the end the family is actually moving deeper into Germany, not escaping:
Lots of good trivia from Rick Steves:
Several debunks there.
Yeah. Not what that person is known for, really–but well-done nonetheless.
I liked the movie when I was a kid, but skeptic that I am, I assumed it was wildly exaggerated/simplified/made up as opposed to being more or less a true story.
Then, while in high school, I found a book that purported to tell the real story - I think it was “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers” by Maria Augusta Von Trapp, but there are several books about the family, so I’m not completely sure. I thought, “hah, now I will learn what really happened.”
I was surprised to find that a lot of the book echoed the movie, thematically if not in precise detail. Namely, a courageous escape from the Nazis by a musically talented family. Now, of course, I realize that the book may have also glossed over/exaggerated for effect as well.
Still, it’s a great feel-good movie, and about the only movie musical I like. I forgive its silliness; musicals are by nature rather light.
I haven’t seen it in 26 years (in room 512 of the Polana Hotel in Maputo, Mozambique, to be precise; I know the exact location because my son was conceived there, quite possibly on the same day I watched the movie).
First DVD I ever bought my Mom. She had seen it over and over in the theater when it was new.