TSOM, the butt of ridicule, but VICTORIOUS in the end!

Rating: 10/10 (23 July 2005)

There are dozens of excellent reviews written about this film that to add another one filled with gushing praise would be redundant, albeit accurate. But what I would like to comment upon is a kind of nasty, mocking cult that has grown up around this classic film.
I was just a teenager when this film was released, and even though back then we were avid rock & roll fans and certainly were keenly aware of how terrible it was to be thought of as "square" (we worked as much at being "cool" as we did at anything else), our peers didn't point and laugh if we ventured to say that we thought TSOM was a spectacular film. There was not the almost insidious maligning of TSOM as a joke, as a totally uncool, corny film as had developed some years later. The need to mock TSOM as sport was at a peak I would say, however unscientifically, around the late 70s, early 80s. Recently it seems to have abated somewhat since those peak years, but remnants of it still doggedly persists, even to this day. It's irrational, it's peer-driven and it's sophomoric.
My take on it, again, wholly unscientific, is that after the Watergate era, anything that had a happy ending was suspect. People wanted hard reality; the musical genre itself was totally out of favor. A format in which the characters burst into song was a suspension of disbelief that audiences could no longer sustain. Musicals, unless they were WOODSTOCK or LADIES AND GENTELMEN THE ROLLING STONES, were disdained by the young. THE SOUND OF MUSIC, MY FAIR LADY, THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN were a dying breed. I surmise that because THE SOUND OF MUSIC was *so* incredibly popular, it turned out to be the biggest target. The undeniable fact it had certifiably "cute" moments was a major detriment. We had become much to jaded to respond to it with anything but cynicism. Yet anyone who actually watches this film sans this prejudice, will easily see that there are dark undertones that grow louder as the film progresses. The Nazi threat is real and it isn't exactly the stuff that cute fluff is made of.
We are lucky enough to be running a new print of this title next week in our outdoor venue in Prospect Park, Brooklyn NY (Celebrate Brooklyn), and so tonight we began running the coming attraction for it. Wouldn't you know it, some of our staff, all in their early twenties (and most of whom I guarantee have never seen this film on a real movie screen), were making derogatory comments about the "The Puke of Music" as one smartass called it. Then much to the embarrassment and chagrin of these MTV generation upstarts and despite that lingering cult that says to be cool you need to loudly mock the Robert Wise triumph, an audience of 3500 who watched the coming attraction broke into spontaneous, thunderous applause as the "Climb Every Mountain" chorus crescendo ended the trailer.
So go ahead, all you oh-so-cool hiphop-sters, mock away -- but deep down, you and I both know that your protests are nothing but a great sham, and like 99.99% of the rest of the entire civilized world, you *love* THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Come out of the closet....we'll all welcome you with open arms.