The Sound of Music : A film Which Restores Faith In Humanity
Since March 2020, all human beings are going through a strange situation. Even Today, there is not much change in this pandemic situation. Our mind becomes restless due to Bad news and we are not able to find out the exact way. To come out of this pandemic situation, we have to do such activities through which our mind will remain busy. For that purpose, one has to read books or to listen to music or to watch any films or to do the paintings. While doing this, you will come across with new good poems or wonderful writings or you can find someone is singing beautiful songs. This will help you to come out of such a pandemic situation to see the new world. During this lockdown period, I used to continuously watch one musical English movie which is all time hit. Whenever I watch this film, it brings happiness to me and restores faith in humanity. This film does not have bad language, any sex, any nudity or violence. It does with simple and realistic spirituality, but it has drama, suspense, humour and strong moral values. This film was released on 2nd March 1965 and name of this film is “The Sound of Music” which had been adapted from the stage show directed by Robert Wise and casted by beautiful Julie Andrews as Maria and Handsome Christopher Plumber as a Captain Von Trapp.
From Yogesh Gogwekar
This film is based on the real story of Maria Von Trapp’s memoir named as The Story of The Trapp Family Singers which was published in 1949. It is a story of Maria, the baron and their singing children. It is a romantic story of Maria with the baron and their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria and their life in America. In the beginning Maria Von Trapp was not ready to write about her life. Her friend insisted on writing her story which had full romance, tragedies, victories and kindness of strangers who became very good friends of the family. At last, she decided to write her interesting story to promote the family’s singing group. Maria Augusta came as a governess for George Von Trapp’s children and felt initially in love with the children, but subsequently fell in love with father and married with him. In the beginning, Producers from Hollywood wanted to purchase the title of the book which was rejected by Maria Von Trapp. She was insisting them to take the entire story of her. In 1956, German producers first purchased the right for making the film Die Trapp Familie in German and the film became more popular in Germany. Later on in 1959, a stage show was organised by Richard Rodgers. Its lyrics were written by Oscar Hammerstein II under the Broadway Production starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel. This stage show won five Tony awards including awards for music. In 1961, this stage show was opened under London Production at Palace Theatre.
After seeing the stage show, The President of 20th Century Fox Richard D Zanuck decided to make the film on this stage show of The Sound of Music and appointed Ernest Lehman to write the screenplay for film adaptation. Ernest Lehman has gone through the stage script and made changes in the sequence of songs. At the time of writing the script, he started designing the situation for the film in such a way which will bring the action and mood in the film. Therefore, he visited Salzburg and Austrian Alps. Richard D Zanuck wanted to have proper direction for this film and had a conversation with Ernest Lehman regarding the same. For that they decided to give the responsibility of direction to Robert Wise, Stanley Donen, Vincent Donehue, George Roy hill and Gene Kelly. But their first choice was Robert Wise who has directed the musical film West side story and won an Academic award for best direction and best Picture of that year 1961. In the beginning Robert Wise was reluctant to do the direction as he was busy in the direction of another film The Sand Pebbles. Due to some reasons, shooting of The Sand Pebbles had been postponed and Robert Wise decided to go through the script which was provided to him by Earnest Lehman. After going through the same, Robert Wise decided to direct the film.
After finalizing the script and director, Richard D Zanuck and Earnest Lehman started looking for talented actresses to do the role of Maria Von Trap. They had shortlisted three names for this role. These names were Grace Kelly, Shirley Jones and Julie Andrews. Earnest Lehman was insisting for Julie Andrews who has played the role of governess in the film Mary Poppins. But this film was not released that time. Therefore, Richard D Zanuck, Earnest Lehman and Robert wise decided to visit Disney Studio to see the film. After seeing half the film, they decided to go with Julie Andrews for the sound of music. For playing the role of Captain Von Trapp, they faced a lot of difficulty. They considered Bing Crosby, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery and Richard Burton. But Robert Wise wanted to have some different person to play this role. He saw Christopher Plummer acting in the drama “Stage Struck” and wanted him to play the role of Captain Von Trapp. Christopher Plummer was not interested to do this film and turned down the offer. Therefore, Robert wise went to England and explained the concept of the film to Plummer. After some assurances to improve the character, Christopher Plummer accepted the offer. Robert Wise selected other actors like Victor Borge, Noel Coward and Hall Holbrook. They were having a tough time selecting the child actors. They conducted more than two hundred interviews and auditions. At last, they selected those who had knowledge of some acting, dancing and singing. The seven Children had been considered for this film. The role of eldest daughter was played by Charmian Carr (16 years old) who also sung one song in the film (I am sixteen, going on seventeen) along with Nicholas Hammond (14 years old), Duane Chase (11 years old), Heather Menzies (13 years old), Angela Cartwright (10 years old), Debbie Turner (7 years old) and small cute girl Kym Karath (5 years old).
As mentioned earlier, this Film was adapted with the same name from the musical stage whose music was composed by Richard Rodgers and lyrics were written by Oscar Hammerstein II. At the time of making films, three songs namely ,”How Can Love Survive “, “ No Way To Stop It” and “An Ordinary Couple” had been removed and another two songs ,”I have Confidence In Me” sung by Julie Andrews and a duet song “Something Good” had been replaced. These two songs have been composed by Richard Rogers. Rest of the songs have been kept without any changes. All the songs were beautiful and very difficult to forget. The film starts with a marvelous title song,” The hills are alive with the sound of music, with songs they have sung for a thousand year….I go to the hills when my heart is lonely, I know I will hear what I have heard before, My heart will be blessed with the sound of music, And I will sing once more”.
Following are also some beautiful songs which cannot be forgotten forever. Most of the songs have been sung by Julie Andrews but the singing voice of Christopher Plummer was dubbed by Veteran Playback singer Bill Lee.
a. Romantic song between 16th year old girl and 17th year boy was nicely picturized in the bluish light of the evening where they sing to express their innocent love by saying,” You are sixteen going on seventeen, baby it is time to think”.
b. In the scary situation like heavy rain, peals of lightning and thunder. all children get frightened. Their governess tells them to think of nice things through song and that song is, “Bright Copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, Brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a few my favorite things' '.
c. Picnic song where all children are wearing matching clothes from heavy window drapes and sing along with their governess ,” Do Re MI, Doe, a deer, a female deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun” and song like “The Lonely Goatherd” make audiences laugh and give fun.
d. When Maria has been deputed as a governess to take care of seven children of Captain Von, she walks away with her duffel bag and guitar to get a bus and sings the song, “I have Confidence in me”. This is also my favorite song.
e. Other Songs like “How do you solve the problem of Maria”, “Edelweiss”, “Climb Every Mountain” and “Something is Good” are so nice which give tenderness and warmth to the film.
The Sound of Music is a story of Maria Augusta who always likes to sing and dance but she is staying in convent with the nuns in Salzburg, Austria. Nuns of the convent did not like her behavior and they feel that this is against their discipline. The head of the Nuns finds the solution and asks Maria to take the job of governess of seven children of Widowed Captain Von Trapp. Maria accepts the responsibility. Captain Von Trapp was in Austrian Navy and he runs the house in Military style. When Maria arrives in the Villa of Captain Von Trapp, she finds that children were cowed by their disciplinarian father’s rule. In the beginning, they were misbehaving with her, but Maria responds and achieved their trust and respect. She tries to bring happiness into their life. She teaches them music and also to live and love. At last, she wins the heart of captain and ends up governess and becomes wife of Captain. Meanwhile, Nazis of Germany took Austria and asked the Captain to report for military office with Nazis. Captain rejects the office and decides to leave Austria for America. Their music promoter friend Max Detweiler and also the nuns of convent help them to escape through Switzerland. Before escaping, the family performed their last singing performance with an adorable singing song. The Movie ends when they reach the Swiss Alps into Switzerland.
All the actors and actresses have given their best performances for this film, but the performance of Julie Andrew was difficult to measure. She performed excellently. Her eyes were magnificent and her hair style makes her beautiful. She immersed herself into the role with a powerful voice and dominated the entire film. She created character in such a way that every audience wanted to see the movie again and again. No doubt, she was brilliant as Maria. Even after her best performance, she did not get the Oscar for this movie but received the Best actress for her film Mary Poppins which was also released in 1965.
This film won many awards but won Oscar for Best film, best director, best film editing, best sound and best Scoring for music –adaption or treatment.
The Sound of Music is nothing but continuously musical in sound and it was done with unerring invention. It is effective and also affective for most of the viewers. It is the greatest movie of all time. Even after five decades, one can enjoy it again and again. There will not be any musical film like The Sound of Music.
Mumbai
06/12/2020
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