Increases in relevance with passing years...

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2001)

...due to the way the songs are framed. This, I formerly thought, was the last musical of its kind (post-1920's Hollywood standard) but later realized it's a transitional point in the change from past standards to a more stark and spare approach, be it the stylized method of "Yentl" to the MTV-oid manner of the di Caprio Romeo/Juliet redo. In "Sound Of Music", the story is a frame for the songs in higher relief than previous film, but in lesser relief than in Streisand's work, where the character lines meld with the songs. The film, of course, has value above technique, showing an earlier, less crass approach to dating than today's, and in a modern, accessible language. It manages as well to note the potential terrors of wars past, along with the almost nineteenth-century lack of moroseness and pessimism that probably explains Europe's survival through that period.