One of Our Favorite Things

Rating: 10/10 (20 November 2005)

I was fortunate enough to see The Sound of Music on Broadway with the original cast minus Mary Martin, her part had been taken over by Martha Wright at that point. The production was good, but the thing I like best about The Sound of Music was how well Robert Wise transferred it to the screen. I defy anyone to show any trace of stage origin in this magnificently photographed film from that aerial opening with Julie Andrews singing the title song to the end with the Von Trapp family climbing every mountain.
The main difference between the stage production and the screen version is that the role of the Baroness Elsa Schrader played by Eleanor Parker is a singing role. With the casting of Ms. Parker, a talented player but no singer, certain songs out of necessity had to be eliminated. Eleanor is fine in her role, but I do wonder if Robert Wise meant to cast a singer in her part originally. On Broadway the Baroness was played by Marion Marlowe.
Julie Andrews who became a Broadway star in My Fair Lady and Camelot and didn't do either role for the screen, gives her greatest screen performance in a Broadway role originally written for someone else. There was some criticism that Mary Martin was too old to be playing Maria in the original play, but she certainly was guaranteed box office on Broadway. Julie Andrews was just right for the part and she's in great voice. I always marvelled listening to her at the perfect diction she was able to maintain hitting those high notes.
Christopher Plummer took over the role that Theodore Bikel on Broadway and he too gained a signature role for his screen career. I've always felt that the talented Mr. Plummer has never been given the credit due him. He was a perfect Duke of Wellington in Waterloo and his portrayal of Commodus in The Fall of the Roman Empire is the highlight of that film. I like Christopher Plummer because he's also never taken himself seriously though he takes his art very seriously. I don't think too many other actors today could have played that comic villain in the Tom Hanks/Dan Ackroyd Dragnet movie and done it with such obvious zest and enjoyment.
A real old timer got into this film with Peggy Wood playing the Mother Abbess at the Convent where Maria is a postulant. Ms. Wood's Broadway career dates back to 1911 and on stage she introduced songs by such people as Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, and Noel Coward. You've got to be real good to get folks like that to write for you. And now her art is preserved in one of the most popular films of all time.
The charm of the music and the leads and the kids sometimes obscures the anti-Nazi message that The Sound of Music conveys. The story takes place in Austria before and during the Anschluss. Christopher Plummer makes no secret of disgust for the Nazis and all they stand for. The Sound of Music makes it clear he is very much in a minority in terms of Austria uniting with Germany. Of course the irony is that Anschluss did not quite turn out for the Austrians as they hoped it would.
The Sound of Music, it's story, it's music, it's lyrics and it's charm will stay with you and never leave after a hundred viewings.