The Sappiest Hound In All The World!

Rating: 4/10 (8 April 2006)

This movie is the kind that makes people jump up and shout at the screen. Me, too, things like: "Shut up, already!" and "Look behind the tombstone, you silly Nazis!"
I guess when it comes to "The Sound Of Music," you either have it, or you've had it. Count me in the latter camp. Oh, the film starts out strong, on one of the biggest shots in movies, and it has some beautiful camera work to go along with some nice if somewhat simplistic songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein. But if Julie Andrews' other best-known musical, from 1964, involved a spoonful of sugar, this 1965 release feels more like a truckful of treacle, especially in the second half when the story gets ropier, the songs dodgier, and the acting too staged by half.
Except for her singing where she shines, Andrews gives a distressingly one-note performance as a postulant nun, Maria, sent on sabbatical to look after the seven rambunctious children of a stern naval captain in Salzburg, Austria. In time, a remarkably condensed time, she has converted the children into a happy singing group and Captain von Trapp into a sappy velveteen Romeo. But will they find freedom as one big happy family, or else be crushed by the Nazi jackboot?
I guess that's supposed to be the drama in this piece, but it's pushed together so haphazardly and drawn out so over the course of three hours that it never feels the least real, with or without the fruity singing. Maria sings about bluebirds and sleigh bells and whiskers on kittens, the kids perform ornate puppet shows and sing their way to bed before a party of admiring guests, and even Capt. von Trapp joins in, singing "Edelweiss" to an audience of Nazis so solemnly he puts them all to sleep so his family can escape.
Even Ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplays for "North By Northwest" and "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?", pushes the trite meter past 11. The boys and girls all cry in unison when Maria guilts them over a frog trick or hide under her covers when thunder cracks overhead. I guess Lehman figured with a score that has them singing "So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight...I flit/I float/I fleetly flee and flyyyy..." these kids were on something stronger than schnitzel and noodles. The poor captain might have noticed this, except he's played by Christopher Plummer in such a tight-mouthed fog much of the time, you wonder if he's not hitting that wine cellar of his a bit too much.
There are good numbers, namely the opening one with Andrews performing the title song on a mountain top in a nicely low-key hands-in-pockets way, and the best song in the score which follows that, "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" well-staged in an abbey courtyard as a dialogue amongst several nuns. One, Sister Sophia, brings an Audrey Hepburn-like quality to her singing. With director Robert Wise's steady hand and cinematographer Ted McCord's nice attention to the stained-glass and groined-ceiling decor, the sequence really sticks with you and is enjoyable to see over again.
But Wise makes some odd decisions with other numbers that follow, especially the icky "Edelweiss" and "16 Going On 17," a nice song undone by campy staging. "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," a showstopper on stage, is performed by the Mother Abbess with a terribly trilly overdub and in such dark shadow you'd think she was a mob informant for the FBI. Actually, Wise says in his director's commentary that he was put off by the bombastic way he felt the song came off on stage, but his solution only makes things worse.
Finally, the movie needed to end with the wedding, which while saccharine, is at least a pretty high note in keeping with what came before. The Nazi chase that follows is just silly, an attempt to add some movie drama that comes off as sour bubble gum.
Two things to say in this movie's favor. One is lots and lots of people don't agree with me and have made "The Sound Of Music" a cultural touchstone. The other is the 40th anniversary of the film's release came with a DVD that is a very nice and generous package, chockful of generous add-ons like candid commentaries from Andrews and Wise, a delightful reminiscence by the now-grown actors who played the kids, and even a karaoke feature for those deluded souls who not only enjoy the movie, but sing along to it. If you like the movie, even a little, you probably owe it to yourself to get this DVD.