Line #5 Headscratchers/TheSoundOfMusic


1	!!Car Ride
2	* How did 10 people (Captain, Maria, the children and Uncle Max) fit into the 5-seater car? The Captain obviously drives while the youngest sits on Maria's lap on the seat beside his...that's 3 out of 10. Did they pile two people on top of someone on the back? Or stuff someone in the trunk?
3	** Unless you consider that Maria could've been holding Marta and Gretl (one arm around/across each. That's 4 out of 10.) Liesl could've had Brigitta, who's 10, on her lap also. Or Louisa takes Brigitta, Marta goes with Liesl. At any rate, nobody said escaping a soon-to-be-fascist country in a 5-seater was a picnic.
4	*** Could Maria even handle having two kids on her lap without going numb? I saw Gretl on Maria's lap at one point, and nobody on the Captain's. Maybe four people (Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Max) squished into the three-seat space at the back, and the remaining three took three out of the four laps? Would Kurt sit on Max's lap?
5	!!How did he know?
6	* Why should Captain von Trapp be outraged that Herr Zeller, the local Nazi official who is obviously in close contact with Berlin should know that he has been ordered to sign up with the German Navy? The telegram ordering him to report was an official order, not a private telegram.
7	** Perhaps the outrage was just something he thought up on the spot to distract Herr Zeller? In case any of the children gave him away by looking too suspicious at being busted.
8	** It may have been more so that Herr Zeller disclosed in front of several people what the contents of the telegram were. The order may have been Herr Zeller's business, but it certainly wasn't his subordinates' business, or the von Trapp children's business, and the telegram itself was still private, so he had no business disclosing its contents in front of them.
9	** Just because Herr Zeller is "obviously in close contact with Berlin" doesn't mean he's part of the navy chain of command. If he ''was'' in the navy, wouldn't he have some sort of title? ("Captain", for instance?) The fact that he knows the contents of the telegram is yet another sign that Germany is in charge now and they're doing things differently. Captain Von Trap, for obvious reasons, is not fond of the changes.
10	*** Zeller is a civilian, in charge of local civil administration and Nazi party organization (he was referred to as a gauleiter at the ball scene), so yes, a military person (even if he were a German and not an Austrian) would have been angry that civilians empowered by the Nazi party should be butting in the military's business, and indeed, this was a common cause for conflict between the military and the Nazis in Germany itself. Having said that, this would be a quite different situation from the message that the movie is trying to impart.
11	!!"Austrian Folk Dance"
12	* Maria calls The Laendler "an Austrian folk dance." What? They're all Austrians in Austria! Shouldn't that be "an old folk dance", "one of our folk dances", or similar?
13	** Probably just an application of AsYouKnow for the benefit of the audience.
14	** Wasn't Austria already being taken over by the Germans at this point? Georg obviously knows what's about to happen, judging from what he says to the Baroness about "a world that's disappearing". So the adults are educating the children on Austrian traditions while carefully not provoking any Germans who might be listening - as the Nazis have begun imposing their way of life already.
15	!!Teaching the kids how to sing
16	* How is it that none of the children know how to sing or know any songs before "Do Re Mi"? Music vanished from the house after the chidren's mother died, but that was only five years ago at most based on Gretel's age. I can understand Gretel, Marta, Brigitta, and Kurt not knowing, because they would have been six and younger when it happened, but Louisa was eight already and Liesl would have been about 11 -- surely their mother sang to them, and surely the older children would remember, even if they were a bit rusty. Liesl even says she remembers her father singing and playing the guitar.
17	** Well Liesl is the only one who remembers because she would have been ten or eleven when their mother died. The others would have just forgotten out of necessity. Georg is said to run the house like a ship - no music and no laughing allowed. So the older children would have intentionally forgotten so as not to make their father angry. Five years is a long time in the life of a child.
18	!!How can love survive?
19	* The central thesis of "How Can Love Survive?" is that Captain Von Trapp and Elsa Schrader are an inversion of the universal trope that the protagonists in famous love stories are always destitute. But plenty of classic romances - maybe even the majority - feature the wealthy social elite. The only supporting example the lyric bothers to offer is Camille; maybe there is a "garret room away upstairs," and maybe Marguerite dies leaving an insolvent estate, but obscene amounts of luxury material possessions abound for her to enjoy. Where did Elsa and Max get the notion that financially secure romance is so unheard of as to be "quaint and bizarre"?

Context Headscratchers / TheSoundOfMusic