Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner, Kym Karath, Christopher Plummer
As extraordinarily well-made as it is, this film is unthinkable without Julie Andrews. From that ecstatic spin at the beginning all the way to the hope of a final mountain being climbed, she dominates every frame. Not even Mary Martin, in the original show, was the force and presence that Andrews is here. She had just showed the world, in Mary Poppins, that she knew how to take care of children and, like Poppins, Maria mixes common sense with wonder. Then there is the voice, so radiant and welcoming that it would take a really sour Von Trapp to not want to sing along with her.
Although Christopher Plummer is billed alongside Andrews, her true costars are Austria and Robert Wise. Make that “Austria as filmed by Robert Wise,” with some of the most spectacular location shooting this side of Lawrence of Arabia. In contrast to musicals that seem hermetic and studio-bound, an audience at this one can all but breathe the fresh air. Every step of the way, from the convent to the Von Trapp estate to escaping the Nazis, Wise charts the course of Andrews and her cohorts with a professionalism that few musicals can equal. The Rodgers and Hammerstein songs, the kids, the puppets, the silken villainy of Eleanor Parker as the Baroness, the nuns, even the curtains made into clothes—all have a place in this staggeringly well-executed production. Nothing is attempted that does not succeed, with every effect and moment crafted for maximum impact. Imagine how unbearably cloying it might have been in less confident hands, how pious and relentless. Instead, it’s all been assembled with such skill that audiences continue to capitulate blissfully, just as they have for over half a century.
If judged by a court of its peers, The Sound of Music might not be voted “The Greatest Musical Ever Made.” There’s too much brilliant competition for that slot, after all. Here, then, is a big “However”: for more people than possibly any other movie, it’s this one—not the play, not the live TV version but this film—that defines what musicals are, and what they can give an audience. The devotion it has inspired is without parallel, and Lord knows this is one problem that doesn’t need solving.
Julie Andrews and Peggy Wood
WHAT’S MORE
In its first release, The Sound of Music was the first film to go over the $100 million mark for its world gross. Its success pulled Twentieth Century-Fox out of its post-Cleopatra doldrums (although the profits were then lost on Doctor Dolittle, Star!, and Hello, Dolly!). Adjusted for inflation, The Sound of Music remains one of the most profitable films of all time, and the most successful musical, ever. When it became known inside the industry as The Sound of Money, no one meant it disrespectfully.
Between the glories of its Austrian scenery and the rabid devotion the film inspired, it was inevitable that there would be Sound of Music–inspired tours of Salzburg and its environs. These actually started as early as 1965 but took off in earnest in the 1970s. Visitors can sometimes be nonplussed to find how many of the locales, following standard movie practice, had been quite reconfigured for film. Without the tour, a casual viewer might never know, for example, that the front and rear of the Von Trapp estate were actually two completely separate places.
Angela Cartwright, Duane Chase, Debbie Turner, Julie Andrews, Nicholas Hammond, Kym Karath, Heather Menzies, Charmian Carr
Julie Andrews, Debbie Turner, Angela Cartwright, Heather Menzies, Christopher Plummer, Kym Karath, Nicholas Hammond, Charmian Carr, Eleanor Parker
MUSICALLY SPEAKING
“Do-Re-Mi” is one of this film’s undoubted highlights, both for the song’s catchy simplicity and for its exuberant, wide-ranging staging. Plus, naturally, the way Andrews and the children perform it. All praise, then, to Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, who scoured the Salzburg region in search of the locations, and to editor William Reynolds, whose work in this sequence alone likely earned him his Academy Award.