Film / The Sound of Music

"The hills are alive..."

"I've always longed for adventure, to do the things I never dared!
Now here I'm facing adventure... Then why am I so scared?
A captain with seven children... What's so fearsome about that?"

— Maria, "I Have Confidence"

The Sound of Music is the 1965 film adaptation of the 1959 musical of the same name, in turn adapted from the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. The film was directed by Robert Wise and stars Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

Like the musical, it is set in Salzburg, Austria in 1938. It is about the spirited young postulant Maria who is sent to become governess to the von Trapp family, comprised of the widowed Captain Georg and his seven children. Despite their mischief, the children grow to respect Maria, and she teaches them how to sing. This newfound hobby not only brings the Captain closer to his children, but also to Maria, despite his prior engagement to the wealthy Baroness Schrader. However, the Anschluss is also at their doorsteps and the Captain is strongly opposed, necessitating an escape into the Alps.

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Tropes:

• '60s Hair: In the 1965 film, Maria dons a bowl cut, which would be considered out of place in late 1930s Austria. Somewhat justified in that Maria would've had her hair cut short upon entering the convent as a postulant, but still....
• Actually Pretty Funny: Captain Von Trapp's reaction to the children's lies about going to see Maria. He's clearly trying not to burst into laughter.
• Adaptation Expansion: The film takes advantage of the fact that it doesn't take place on a single stage in order to expand the story, with events such as Maria taking longer to gain the children's trust, an extended trip through Salzburg and up into the mountains, and the kids trying to go and see Maria when she returns to the abbey.
• Adaptational Context Change:
  • In the play, Maria and the Mother Abbess sing "My Favorite Things", after Maria recalls that hearing the nuns at Nonnberg sing made her want to join them. In the movie, Maria sings it to the Von Trapp children during a thunderstorm, leading to a confrontation with the Captain when he catches everyone staying up past bedtime.
  • In the play, Maria and the children sing "Do-Re-Mi" during her first day as the kids' governess. In the movie, Maria takes longer to earn the children's respect, so "Do-Re-Mi" doesn't begin until at least her second day as governess. The movie also has the song performed in a montage, indicating that the children took several weeks to learn how to sing, as opposed to the one day shown on stage.
  • In the play, Maria and the children sing "The Lonely Goatherd" during the aforementioned thunderstorm. In the movie, they perform it as a puppet show for the Captain, the Baroness, and Uncle Max. The Captain and Liesl follow this up with "Edelweiss", which the play saved until the Salzburg Festival. (The movie also the Von Trapps sing "Edelweiss" at that festival, as a reprise.)
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • In the show, Rolfe finds the family and calls for his Lieutenant, but decides not to turn them in after seeing Liesl. In the movie, Rolfe almost lets them get away after the Captain takes his gun but ends up calling for the Nazis anyway.
  • Zig-Zigged by the Baroness's character. She's cattier to Maria in the film adaptation, and even that is fairly downplayed, but once she realizes she's lost the Captain to her, she exits much more gracefully and amicably than in the original stage musical, where she hardly interacts with Maria at all, and she and the captain split messily after it becomes clear they can't agree on whether to oppose or passively tolerate the Nazis. The film also portrays the Baroness and the children as seeming to barely know each other, while the stage version gives dialogue explaining that the children certainly like her fine but simply prefer Maria by far.
• And Starring:
  • "And Eleanor Parker as The Baroness"
  • The trailer also had "Introducing Charmian Carr," but the actual movie's main titles instead place her on top of a list of all the children's actors.
• Artistic License – Geography: Heading over the beautiful Alps the way they show in the movie would lead them straight into Germany, not Switzerland. Worse, it takes them straight south from Salzberg to Hitler's Berghof residence, with his seasonal home of Obersalzburg and the Kelhsteinhaus located near Berchtesgaden in southeast Bavaria.
• Book Ends: The film opens with panoramic views of the mountains, then zooms onto Maria ^note Somewhat ironically, this iconic scene which establishes Maria's deep love for the essentially Austrian countryside was actually shot on the German side of the border since the filmmakers considered the scenery there much more photogenic.. The movie ends with Maria and her new family hiking through the same mountains towards the safety of the border. The camera pulls back to give us another panorama of those mountains.
• The Butler Did It: Somebody must have told the local Nazis the family were sneaking out of the house. In this version, Franz the butler (whom the von Trapps never told about their impending escape) collaborates with Rolfe, and later is shown watching the family's escape attempt and subsequent apprehension.
• Confessional: In the last lines of the film, Sisters Margaretta and Berthe tell the Reverend Mother that they have sinned. When the Reverend Mother asks the sisters what sin they have committed, they reveal that they have swiped the distributors and coils from the Nazis' cars, preventing them from pursuing the Von Trapps.
• Distressed Dude: Technically, Captain von Trapp. It's his life and freedom that's at risk in the final act, first by the Third Reich wanting to recruit his naval skills for their cause, and then when Rolfe points a gun at him. Maria and the children are significant only insofar that they're important to Georg.
• Decoy Protagonist: Maria. She is a major focus for the first two acts before quickly fading to the background in the last hour immediately after the wedding. The final hour makes it clear that the real protagonist is the Captain. Notably this is the second major film in which this happened to Julie Andrews, despite being the most memorable character.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Minor example. The first two-thirds of the movie takes place over several weeks or even months, but everything after the wedding scene is all set on a single day (and that night).
• Fake Shemp: During the final scene of the film, Captain Von Trapp is carrying Gretl on his back as the family cross the alps. Kym Karath, who played Gretl for the rest of the film, turned out to be too heavy for Christopher Plummer to carry so she was replaced by a double whose face is not shown clearly.
• Foreshadowing: Maria and the Captain meet when he catches her pantomiming in the ballroom. The Dance of Romance where they realize they're in love happens in the garden outside that very ballroom.
• Flyaway Shot: How the movie ends, in which the camera pans up over the family crossing the Alps to the clouds above.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Despite his dislike for the Nazi regime, Georg strongly considered taking up the offered commission in the Kriegsmarine. Since the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian after World War I, he had been a submarine captain in a country without a navy. The commission offered him the opportunity to revisit what had made him a hero. In either way, Georg couldn't have been conscripted because he was technically an Italian citizen.^note His birthplace of Zara/Zadar in modern Croatia was annexed by Italy after World War I.
• Hollywood Atlas: Switzerland is not "just over the mountains" from Salzburg. To make it worse, Germany is. A southeastern bit of Germany in Bavaria that was home to the Berghof, which was Hitler's seasonal home, or the closest thing an itinerant dictator had to one, serving as his main base of operations. The resort is called Obersalzberg, meaning "Mountain Above Salz(burg)", and the Anschluss had multiple SS units stationed there at all times, with the nearby Kehlsteinhaus ("Eagle's Nest") used as a meeting house for Nazi summit meetings. Ironically enough, that shot in the movie was actually filmed on the Obersalzberg.
• Hollywood Old: Christopher Plummer was 35 years old at the time the movie was made, whereas the real Captain Von Trapp was 47 when he married Maria. In addition, he was actually 57 in 1938, when the story is set.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: As with other Rodgers and Hammerstein live-action movies, the opening credits and some advertising place "Rodgers and Hammerstein's" either before or above the title; even though in this case, Hammerstein didn't write the libretto.
• Intermission: The film has its intermission in a different place than the stage version. The play ended its first act on the Mother Abbess singing "Climb Every Mountain", while the movie relocates the break to follow Maria returning to the Abbey.
• Job Mindset Inertia: Von Trapp summons his children via whistle as if he were still in the Navy and accidentally refers to Maria as "Captain".
• Letterbox: From 1995-2000, NBC showed the musical numbers in widescreen during their telecasts of this movie. Everything else appeared in Pan and Scan, though.
• Misplaced Vegetation: When Captain von Trapp asks the children where they had been (after they came back from their unsuccessful visit to the monastery to see Maria), they claim that they were picking wild berries. When asked to identify what kind of berries they were, they answer they it was blueberries. Granted that it was a fib to begin with, but, since blueberries are native to North America and were introduced in significant amount to Europe only in 1930s, it is highly improbable that any European child in 1930s would have thought to fib that they were out picking wild blueberries.
• Movie Bonus Song: "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good" (which replaced the stage version's "An Ordinary Couple"). Rodgers wrote his own lyrics for both, as Oscar Hammerstein had died in 1960.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The original trailer for the movie used a lot of alternate takes for scenes, utilizing different line deliveries and/or camera angles than the final film.
  • Some posters and DVD covers color Maria's picnic dress pink or blue, instead of brown.
• Never My Fault: When Maria asks what's wrong with the children after the Captain mentions that the last governess quit within two hours, he defensively declares that there's nothing wrong with them, only their caretakers, refusing to believe or acknowledge that his children are the problem.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever it was that made Maria's predecessor flee the house within two hours of being hired, though we do get snippets of it with referrals to how badly the children treated the other governesses—putting glue on one's toothbrush, a snake in another's pocket, etc.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The movie has almost everyone in British accents while other productions use American, British or none at all.
• Obsolete Occupation: Captain Georg von Trapp (as in real life) was a celebrated submarine captain of the Austro-Hungarian imperial navy, but at the time of the film Austria is a landlocked country, causing his retirement. When Nazi Germany annexes Austria they offer him a commission in the German navy but he refuses on principle.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The title song had its intro re-written for the movie version. Part of the melody of the original intro (the part accompanying the lyrics, "But deep in the dark green shadows/Are voices that urge me to stay/So I stop and I wait and I listen...") found use in "I Have Confidence" ("It could be so exciting/To be out in the world, to be free/My heart should be wildly rejoicing...").
• Scenery Porn: The film was largely shot on location in Austria and takes every opportunity to show off the sights of the city and countryside.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Done by the two nuns at the end of the movie who remove key components from the Nazis' cars to keep them from working; technically, sabotaging a vehicle is against both legal codes and their holy orders. They even admit to it by saying "Reverend Mother, I have sinned."
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Maria's predecessor fled the house within two hours of being hired, unable to tolerate the children's bad behavior.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Maria's dress following her marriage to Georg is visibly more stylish than before, as befitting the change in her status from governess to wife, or rather from being a postulant associated with a convent to being a married woman of means.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: None of the DVD covers show Georg on the front. When he does appear on theatrical posters and covers for other home video formats, he gets pushed to the side in favor of Maria and the kids.
• Sliding Scale of Adaptation Modification: Type 4. The only changes worth mentioning are that some of the songs occur in different parts of the film and Rolfe being stripped of his redeeming scene where he decided not to rat the Von Trapps out and does the exact opposite.
• Tagline: Trailers and ads for the movie called it, "The happiest sound in all the world!"
• Villainy-Free Villain: The Baroness is shown to genuinely love Von Trapp and her jealousy is mostly justified. Nevertheless, the children aren’t very enthusiastic of her after Maria leaves despite her efforts to be motherly towards them. Sure, she inspired Maria to leave, and planned to send the children to a boarding school,^note none of which the children knew about, they just are much closer to Maria but the alternative was to live with a woman that her husband and his seven children loved more than her.
• What You Are in the Dark: Max spends most of the story as a leech and an opportunist to Captain Von Trapp and the Nazis, claiming that it's better to bend to the Reich's will than to fight an inevitable defeat. Come the film's climax, he warns them via a Batman Gambit during a Music Festival that the Nazis are going to force Captain Von Trapp to work for them, and stalls during the awards to give them enough time to escape.

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