The Sound Of Music (2 Disc 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition) [1965] [DVD]

Second, if the first reason is not strong enough, they have loaded up on extras for this DVD. You have a commentary track by the late director Robert Wise and another with Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Charmian Carr, choreographer Dee Dee Wood, and Johannes Von Trapp (the 10th and last of the Von Trapp kinder). If you think listening to songs on the DVD is better than listening on the CD (I often find that to be the case), then you can play only the songs or play the songs with sing-a-long subtitles in three languages. I especially liked the retrospective documentary "A Few of My Favorite Things" because it talks about the way the Broadway musical was turned into a Hollywood film by shifting songs and setting them up differently (see below). The reminiscence by Andrews and Plummer is worthwhile as well and the "Biography" episode "The Von Trapp Family: Harmony and Discord" will certainly open your eyes to the "true" story behind it all.

Watching the film again and learning about how the film was created from all of the DVD extras got me thinking about why this is the most popular movie musical of all time. The first thing that works is that Robert Wise frontloads this movie big time. We begin with the wonderful descent of the camera from the clouds until it finds Maria on top of the mountain, where she bursts into the title song and makes it clear that the beautiful vistas of Austria are integral to this film (it did for Salzburg, Austria what "The Lord of the Rings" did for New Zealand). After the overture during the title credits we have the "Preludium (Dixit Dominus)," during which Wise presents us with some stunningly beautiful shots of nuns at prayer, establishing weight to the religious elements of the film. Then when we get to "Maria" the Mother Superior and the rest of the nuns strike absolutely the right tone for singing a cute song while dressed in habits. There is not a moment in this film where Peggy Wood's Mother Superior does not seem like an absolutely real person. By the time Maria runs past them and does the big double take at having been caught, the film's first big joke, Wise has already established an extremely serious tone for a movie musical.

What impresses me about this film is that if you take out the songs I think it still works as a drama and the only reason Julie Andrews did not win an Oscar for the best thing she ever did on film was that she had won the year before for playing the title role in the Dick Van Dyke film "Mary Poppins" (you have to be Katharine Hepburn not to overcome this sort of liability). The only musical number that is in danger of going too far is the new "I Have Confidence," but that is because Andrews plays it as bluster on Maria's part (e.g., the stumble on the last run). Once we get past the opening of the movie where Wise so beautifully sets the stage for the film, the person who deserves a lot of the credit is screenwriter Ernest Lehman. Pay attention to how he sets up the songs so that the seque from dialogue to singing is more naturalistic ("My Favorite Things" is a prime example of this in the film). Lehman's script also turned the Captain into a more of a fully developed human being than the martinet of the Broadway version.

Of course, if you have seen the show performed on stage you know that some of the songs have been put in different contexts. For example, "My Favorite Things" was originally sung by Maria and the Mother Superior on stage and now becomes the song Maria sings with the kids to establish a report with them instead of "Do Re Mi." That, of course, becomes the show piece of the film as Maria and the children tour Salzburg and the countryside singing, which gets us back to the wonderful scenery that Wise highlights from the opening moment of the film. There are few Broadway musicals that have been transformed rather than ending up being merely translated when they are brought to the screen. Some take advantage of more locations (e.g., "Camelot," "Evita"), but all things considered no musical has been upgraded on the big screen as much as "The Sound of Music," which is why it remains on the top of the mountain forty years down the road.