The Sound of Music
- Awards And Honors:
- Academy Award (1966)
The Sound of Music, American musical film, released in 1965, that reigned for five years as the highest-grossing film in history. Its breathtaking photography and its many memorable songs, among them “My Favorite Things” and the title song, helped it to become an enduring classic. The nearly three-hour-long movie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won five, including those for best picture and best director.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
The Sound of Music, which takes place during the late 1930s, opens on a sweeping view of the Austrian Alps and a young woman, Maria (played by Julie Andrews), singing. When she hears church bells, she hurries back to the abbey, where she is a postulant, but she arrives too late for the church service. She tries to explain herself to the Mother Abbess (Peggy Wood), who tells her that she is to take up a position as governess to the seven children of the widowed former naval officer Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). When she arrives to take up her post, she learns that the captain requires military discipline from his children (ranging in age from 5 to 16) and expects the same from Maria. After dinner the eldest, Liesl (Charmian Carr), sneaks out to meet with Rolfe (Daniel Truhitte), a telegraph messenger. Maria’s warmth and kindness quickly win the children’s affection.
The following day the captain leaves on a trip to Vienna. Upon learning that he will return with Baroness Elsa Schraeder (Eleanor Parker), whom he intends to marry, Maria determines to teach the children a song with which to greet the baroness. The captain and baroness return with their friend Max Detweiler (Richard Haydn), catching Maria and the children in a rowboat on the lake behind the house, which they overturn when they see the captain. The captain, displeased, fires Maria, but, when he hears the children singing for the baroness, he changes his mind. Max suggests that he enter the children in the upcoming Salzburg Festival, but the captain refuses. He does agree to host a ball, however. At the ball the baroness sees the captain dancing with Maria and realizes that they have feelings for each other. She tells Maria that she thinks that Maria is in love with the captain. Horrified, Maria packs and returns to the abbey.
The children are miserable without Maria, and the captain tells them that he and the baroness are to be married. At the abbey, the Mother Abbess tells Maria that she cannot hide from her feelings and must return to the von Trapps. After her return, the baroness and the captain break off their engagement, and the captain and Maria admit their love for each other. They marry in the abbey church.
Austria is annexed by Nazi Germany (the Anschluss) while they are on their honeymoon. While Max is rehearsing the children for the Salzburg Festival, Rolfe gives Liesl a telegram to give to her father upon his return. The telegram informs the captain that he is to report for duty in the German navy the following day. The captain and Maria decide that the family must leave Austria that night. However, Nazi troops led by Herr Zeller (Ben Wright) catch them pushing their car away from the house. The captain tells them that they are on their way to perform in the Salzburg Festival, and the Nazis escort them there. After the family performs, they escape to the abbey. The Nazis follow them there, and they hide among the catacombs. Rolfe, who is with the Nazi troops, spots them. He allows them to escape but then calls out that he has seen them. The von Trapps flee in the caretaker’s car, which the Nazis are unable to follow because two nuns have sabotaged their cars.
Although The Sound of Music met with mixed reviews, it was an immediate and lasting hit with audiences, largely on the strength of the performance of Andrews, who had won the Academy Award for best actress for her role as the title character of Mary Poppins (1964). The movie had its genesis in the memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (1949), by Maria Augusta Trapp. The book’s first film treatment was the West German movie Die Trapp-Familie (1956; The Trapp Family). It was reworked as a stage musical, The Sound of Music, with songs by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, which opened on Broadway in 1959 and won six Tony Awards. Director Robert Wise won praise for his lush adaptation of the musical to the screen. Noted “ghost singer” Marni Nixon made her on-camera debut in the movie as Sister Sophia.
Production notes and credits
- Studios: Robert Wise Productions and Argyle Enterprises
- Director: Robert Wise
- Writers: Ernest Lehman (screenplay), from the stage musical book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse
- Music: Irwin Kostal (score); Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (songs)
Cast
- Julie Andrews (Maria)
- Christopher Plummer (Captain Georg von Trapp)
- Eleanor Parker (Baroness Elsa Schraeder)
- Richard Haydn (Max Detweiler)
- Peggy Wood (Mother Abbess)
- Charmian Carr (Liesl)
- Daniel Truhitte (Rolfe)
- Ben Wright (Herr Zeller)
Academy Award nominations (* denotes win)
- Picture*
- Lead actress (Julie Andrews)
- Supporting actress (Peggy Wood)
- Art direction (color)
- Cinematography (color)
- Costume design (color)
- Direction*
- Editing*
- Music*
- Sound*