Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum - I'll be back when its finished!
Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum - I'll be back when its finished!
Member since:24.08.2003
Reviews:93
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We all know the songs, we all know the story and barely a Christmas or Easter goes by without it making prime time viewing so why is it that the Sound of Music is still gaining audiences, even though it is a bygone era the events are still historically very important and lets face it’s a fantastic romance story.
The opening credits of the Sound of Music is one of the most famous scenes in cinema history with the camera panning across the majestic Austrian alps and eventually (eventually being the operative word as it seems to take forever) down onto Maria singing her heart out to ‘the hills are alive’ in an Austrian meadow.
The sound of music is based on the true story of a would be nun, who becomes the governess to the 7 children of Captain Von Trapp a retired naval captain they then fall in love and get married. That’s the shortened classic romance bit, but the reality is very different.
Maria had never considered anything in her life before this other than to join the church so she takes a long time coming to terms with the idea that not only does she have feelings for the captain but they are reciprocated. The reaction of the children to a new governess (in a long line of governesses) is not initially good and they are deliberately problematic to try and gain their fathers attention, which
had been lacking since the death of his first wife. The existence of his fiancé the Baroness exasperates the situation, causing Maria to leave in a fit of embarrassment and return to the Abbey. She later returns as the abbess insists that she can not use the abbey to escape her troubles she has to face them.
The main spanner in the works in the whole film and indeed for the real life Captain Von Trapp and Maria is the onset of the second world war, Hitler invaded Austria with no resistance in 1938 when the majority of the film is set, at this point the Von Trapps made the decision to leave Austria, in the film this gives rise to the climax with the family escaping from the Nazis. This section of the film for me has had strange implications, my daughter loves the film and we had to watch it constantly for six months. Now my daughters are not easily scared, the basilisk scene in Harry Potter caused no problems but this is largely because we have taught them from a very early age to separate fantasy from reality and they both watch these films with the ‘its not real’ mantra if they get scared. You can not do this with the Sound of Music as the Nazis were very real and there is something about even their limited presence in the film which really affected my children. There was an attempt in Austria at the time to pretend that the occupation wasn’t really happening, nothing had changed and this is portrayed excellently in the film.
The film is held together by a series of very well known songs from Doh a dear (based on solfage a method of music teaching used very heavily by Zoltan Kodaly a Hungarian music teacher) My favourite things, to the incredible performance of Peggy Wood singing ‘Climb every Mountain’ to Maria. This gives a very happy, optimistic feel to the whole film and is the main historical difference between fact and fiction. Maria and the Captain actually married in 1927, 11 years before they left Austria because of the Nazi occupation. The film portrays Maria to be the guiding force behind children singing, in reality it was a necessity as the Captains fortune was lost in the collapse of the Austrian national bank. They then had to forge their own existence and regularly sang as they needed the money. This was frowned upon to a certain extent because of the Captains position in Society but invariably helped to forge their careers as musicians.
The film has become a classic not just because it follows an amazing true story but because of the actors in it, Julie Andrews’ whole image has been forged around her performance as the governess nun, Maria in this and a governess in Mary Poppins despite attempts to get away from the squeaky clean image with films like Victor, Victoria. Christopher Plummer is exactly what you would expect a naval captain to be, brooding and gorgeous (in a 1930s sort of way) although apparently when they climbed the mountain at the end and he carries Gretl up the mountain, he insisted on a double for the child as she was too heavy.
But there have been many amazing films based on true life from this period – it was war there was a lot going on so why has the Sound of Music climbed above them all to such a cult status – with live showings ‘Rocky Horror’ style to sing along a Sound of Music, where everyone dresses up as nuns and sing along to the film, and the film still showing regularly to huge audiences? It is because there is a certain element of innocence, we would all like to dance innocently around a gazebo singing ‘I am sixteen’ (incidentally if you look closely at Liesls foot in this scene it is strapped up because she fell off and sprained her ankle, that takes some of the romance out doesn’t it) and we would all like to dance around Salzburg singing Doh a Deer and not be arrested as having escaped from the insane asylum (although with all the tours I’m sure the locals are used to it) We all love a romance rags (or wimple) to riches story . And I know my husband hates it when we do walks in the alps when I start singing Climb Every Mountain (especially now the kids join in too) Its such a great feel good film from start to finish despite the rather dark undertones of the war.
So what happened to the real Von Trapp family? Well once they had escaped Austria they left for America where they toured as a singing family. The captain died in 1947 and the family continued touring until 1956. Maria spent 30 years as a missionary in New Guinea until her death in 1987. One interesting snippit for any Harry Potter fans is one of the real children was called Hedwig!!
Well my dear ciaoers, the sun, has gone to bed and so must I, so long, fairwell, auf wiedersehen, good night. Good Night………. Good Night………., Good Night!! (well it is the Sound of music after all)
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your comments.
Historical information from www.foxhome.com
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