by Chris Marshall:
As was the case with West Side Story, I watched The Sound of
Music several years ago in a high school music class, so I didn’t exactly
relish the idea of watching it again. It’s a good movie, but I don’t love it to
the degree that many others do. Fortunately, I found that it was still
enjoyable upon a second viewing.
It’s hard to imagine a movie star more likeable than Julie
Andrews. At the time this movie was released, she was in the middle of a
spectacular run. She won Best Actress for being Mary Poppins, won a Golden
Globe for The Sound of Music, and was
nominated for another Golden Globe for Thoroughly
Modern Millie. Add the box office receipts for these films to her critical
acclaim, and you have a pretty successful four year period.
If you’re the type of person to read The Oscar Project, you
almost certainly know the plot already. Andrews, a nun, becomes governess for
the Von Trapp family (she specializes in child rearing, apparently), falls in
love with the man of the house, and then helps the family escape the Nazis. Oh,
and everybody still knows all the musical numbers today, 47 years later.
And I mean everybody. If you were to ask an adult to fill in
the blanks of “The hills are alive with ________” and they weren’t able to tell
you “the sound of music,” wouldn’t you automatically be suspicious of that person?
I’d immediately assume he was an alien or maybe a Soviet spy[1].
After its release, it became the highest grossing film of all time in absolute
terms, making $286 million in 1965
dollars. In other words, a 3500% profit on its $8.2 million budget.
Say what you will about its quality, which is fairly high in
my opinion, but it has unquestionably become part of the film pantheon, up
there with Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, The Godfather,
and so on in terms of name recognition. Everybody in America knows it, even if
they haven’t seen it.
I’m worried that this will come across as gushing, though it’s
not meant to be. I think The Sound of
Music is a very good movie, but not a great one. My point is simply that I
was amazed by how pervasive the film is into pop culture, even all these years
later. Some of them, such as “My Favorite Things,” I had forgotten originated
in this movie (well, really in the stage production, but you get the point).
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| There's no way these kids are that good at puppeteering. |
As a fearless and intrepid reporter of facts, I also feel
compelled to point out that while Liesl, the oldest of the Von Trapp children,
sang about being “16 going on 17,” the actress who played her, Charmian Carr,
was actually 22 going on 23 at the time. I hope this revelation doesn’t ruin
your enjoyment of the film. Charmian Carr Fun Fact #2 is that she became an
interior designer after she gave up acting, and Michael Jackson was such a fan
of the movie that he hired her to work on his house. The more you know.
As I’ve watched these last few musicals, there’s been a lingering
question on my mind. I’ve never felt like there’s been an appropriate point of
transition into the topic in previous posts, so I’m just going to force it in
here. When talking about sound in film, there’s diegetic sound (which can be
heard by everyone, even the characters on screen) and non-diegetic sound (which
can only be heard by the audience, such as narration and the film’s score).
In musicals, is the musical accompaniment to the songs
considered to be diegetic or non-diegetic? Often there doesn’t seem to be any source
for the music, but there’s also no logical explanation for how everybody knows
all the words to the songs, either. If the characters can hear the music, then
where is it coming from? If they can’t, then are we to assume that everybody
just sings a cappella all the time? These are the kinds of questions that keep
me up at night.
That has nothing to do with the quality of the movie, of
course, but you already know what the quality of this film is. This kind of
movie is both easier and harder to write about because I can assume that almost
everybody is familiar with the basic story, but at the same time, it’s
difficult to find anything new to say. Next year’s movie is A Man for All Seasons. I’m willing to
bet slightly fewer people have seen that one. I assume it’s because Orson
Welles never breaks out into song. Which is too bad, really.
And by "several years ago," you mean over a decade, right?
ReplyDeleteI will say that Earth has occulted itself around the sun at least 11 times since I last watched it.
ReplyDelete