The Sound of Music 45th Anniversary Edition (DVD + Blu-ray) [1965]

I must admit I'm not a huge Sound of Music fan, but my wife and children absolutely love it. She got this as a Christmas present and despite having watched it quite a few times on DVD, they couldn't believe quite how much extra the bluray added to the experience.

There is very little to be said about the film - a great feel-good love triumphs all romp, with the Nazis as the bad guys and Maria's angst between her calling as a nun and her love for the Von Trapp children and their father. One of the best loved and most watched films ever.

Picture Quality - this is right up there with anything else that bluray can offer. The scenery is stunning, the colours are vibrant, you can almost smell the alpine air! One part of the film centres on Maria wearing a dowdy dress - that even the poor people didn't want. We really appreciated that much more because of the detail shown up in High Definition. The film is presented in 2.20:1 format, so you still get some black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, but that is how it should be, and certainly didn't detract from the experience for us.

Audio Quality - well a film about music, with such a well recognised sound track, absolutely has to get the sound right - and it does. Again there were things audible here that never were on DVD, watch out particularly for the nuns singing in the Abbey. The dialogue is a big issue for me. I don't like muffled speech and having to change the volume, but there were no worries here because we didn't have to. The top track is a 7:1 DTS soundtrack that has really treated the source material with respect.

Extras - This film comes with a feast of extras, as befits its iconic status. We haven't looked at all of them - in fact it would take quite a while to do them justice, but the ones we have looked at were all very well done and very well presented. You could quite easily lose yourself for several hours here.

So in summary a very easy decision - no doubt at all that it deserves 5 stars.

Totally unbelievable. The sound is brilliant. I don't think that it can be better. This is perfect, bouth sound and vision. It's like the movie was made yesterday. You can almost touch Maria signing on the hills. The landscapes are fantastic. I really enjoyed it. Will watch it over and over again.

As for value for money this DVD set cannot be faulted with an incredible 3 discs with two of them in the Blu ray transfer.

The second disc reproduced in Blu Ray is a short but sweet travel guide in and around Salzberb showing the main sites where the film was made.
It was a real shame that such little information or detail was provided but interestingly those familiar with the Alistair Mclean film "Where Eagles Dare" will recognise the very same castle of the Eagles being used in the background to the opening shot where Julie is enjoying the solitude of the Alpine meadowland.

The castle is right on the Austrian German border around 22miles outside Salzberg.
The Von Trapp family home as seen in the film is now an accademy of music donated by the Von Trapp family back in the 1950s.

One other aspect i found entertaining was that in the finishing credits where the family can be seen traversing the high Alpine pass to so called safety in Switzerland was actually a traverse into extreme danger.

They are not actually walking into Switzerland but Nazi Germany and according to the background information if they had continued for a while longer they would have been ever so close to Hitlers private residence "The Wolfslair" in Bergesgarden.

Now to the main reason of this review the film itself.

Compared to other well known Blu Ray transfers Zulu especially i was slightly disappointed in the overall picture quality.

Do not get me wrong it is still far superior to any Dvd offering of the film we have been used to but strangely enough something happens during the sequence where Baronesse Shrader meets Maria and the children for the first time ( where they overturn the boat etc).

Up until then the picture quality was superb but not remarkable, but suddenly the picture quality reveals the background detail that before was missing our subdued.

The scene where the Mother Abess sees Maria after she has run away from Gaiorg and the children and informs her she must return to face her problems is quite stunning full of incredible detail and crystal clear sound.

Remember both Zulu and The Sound of Music were made roughly at the same time in 1964-65 but the Blu Ray transfer of Zulu is amongst the finest ive seen with incredible detail from start to finish with prabably the last half hour of this Blu ray version of The Sound of Music of equal merit.

For a Blu Ray disc to be memorable the entire background of the film must be in vivid clarity (as in Zulu) which in the Sound of Music its not.

The Blu Ray transfer has certainly improved the overall picture to something special far better than what we have been used to but it is not stunningly perfect which is a shame when you consider the superior cinematography used to produce the original film.

Due to significant budget restraints in the early 1960s Cy Enfield and Stanley Baker had to make do with far from ideal film material but the Blu Ray transfer using the original film transcripts of Zulu are simply remarkable.

Rogers and Hammerstein were under no constraints so why then is the Blu Ray transfer of the Sound of Music a slight disappointment.

Now if the entire film was as crystal clear as from when Maria meets the Baronesse for the first time then this disc would be perfection.From that scene onwards for some reason the film quality goes off the scale with the background detail so precise that you almost want to pause the film to see what is going on in the backgound.

For the picture quality i give the film 8 out of 10 but where the film really impresses is its sound quality.

To really appreciate the magnificent sound that we have been offered here you need a decent Theatre Surround system that can utilise the DTS transfer to its maximum capabilities.

Its not the usual 5-1 surround we are given but an incredible 7-1.

The clarity of sound is simply remarkable with the birdsong and thunderstorm in the "You are 16 Going on 17" sequence quite vivid.It is so good that my current Surround Sound system which is around five years old cannot do the sound real justice and after all the with the film being a musical it really excells in this department.

The sound is so good that currently i do not think that current audio technology will better it.

If the ovearll film quality could have been nudged up a spec or two further then this 45th Anniversary Sound of Music Tripple DVd set would have been vertually perfect.

The final disc in the trilogy is the standard Dvd version of the film we have been used to before this Blu Ray became available so you can play both films and see the remarkable difference.

Now if i had not seen the almost faultless Blu Ray transfer of Zulu which is of equal age to the Sound of Music but shot on a slightly inferior film due to budget restraints then i would consider this Sound of Music Blu ray transfer to be the best ive seen.

The film quality is superb as it is to be expected but maybe i am being too critical.

Those mountains and lake in the boat scene felt slightly subdued lacking the background clarity that is on offer with Zulu but overall this Blu Ray version especially the sound will remain for some time to come the finest rendition of this film.

That price of three discs for under £10 makes it a must have purchase but unlike Zulu i was expecting better picture quality OR WAS I EXPECTING TOO MUCH?.