The Sound of Music (1965)
Marisa Carpico: The Sound of Music and I have a long history, all of it good. As a kid, I watched it repeatedly on a VHS set that required switching tapes halfway through because the film is so long. I later purchased it on DVD only to purchase it again a few years later when I finally understood the difference between fullscreen and widescreen editions. It was part of one of my favorite memories after I attended the Sing-A-Long Sound of Music at the Hollywood Bowl, where one drunk audience member summed up everyone’s feelings about Christopher Plummer when he declared, “ugh, do me,” as Captain Von Trapp and Julie Andrews’s Maria argued.
I loved the movie first as a piece of pure entertainment, uncritically. I knew every word to the classic song, though I almost always fast-forwarded through “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” because I wanted to get to the romance already. I laughed at every one of Julie Andrews’s brilliant acting choices—her reactions to the children’s pranks are reason enough to love the performance. Rolf’s (Daniel Truhitte) explanation that he was vastly more mature than Liesl (Charmain Carr) because he was a year older seemed totally logical. I still love it for all those reasons (except now I think Rolf is a smug bastard), but watching it now, there’s so much to appreciate.
Directed by Robert Wise (who also made the equally great West Side Story), the film is a joy to watch. Despite a nearly three hour runtime, it never drags, bouncing from one musical number to the next as glorious views of Salzburg, Austria roll by in the background. Sure there are problems–”Sixteen Going on Seventeen” has a terrible message and the whole movie is admittedly a little saccharine considering the villains are Nazis–but why spoil the fun by focusing on the bad? That’s kind of the point of “My Favorite Things.”
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