Advertisement

Culture Stage

How Hollywood wrecked The Sound Of Music

Christopher Plummer, who starred as Captain Von Trapp in the film version of The Sound Of Music, famously referred to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical as The Sound Of Mucus.

That always gets people snickering. They think of the film – this year celebrating its 50th anniversary – as so sweet it makes your teeth ache. There’s Mary Poppins, er, Julie Andrews, as the aspiring nun leading the seven Von Trapp children through a series of tunes that seem like the musical equivalent of nursery rhymes while their stick-in-the-mud dad (Plummer) watches in perpetual scowl mode.

But a recent visit to Stratford to see a production based on the original stage version reminded me that Hollywood director Robert Wise and the usually reliable screenwriter Ernest Lehman messed with a very good thing. The Sound Of Music is actually a play with complex politics and relationships.

Von Trapp’s lover Baroness Schraeder and stage agent Max playfully ask the question How Can Love Survive, in a song that worries whether an über-wealthy couple’s romance can last without the hardship that’s been immortalized throughout history. It’s clever and catchy – why cut it?

Another song the film axes from the original, No Way To Stop It, is even more essential. The Baroness and Max are trying to convince Von Trapp to look out for number one and bow to the Germans since the Nazi annexation of Austria is inevitable. Von Trapp is appalled and says so, which prompts the Baroness to give him back his engagement ring.

Her breaking up with the Captain has nothing to do with her growing awareness that he’s falling in love with Maria. There’s none of that stupid girl-on-girl aggression that Hollywood can never resist, no manipulation on the Baroness’s part. She breaks up with him over politics, not sex.

I’m reminded of how Barbra Streisand fought with director Sydney Pollack over the key plot point in The Way We Were. Pollack loved the idea that Hubbell and Katie break up because he’s sleeping around. Streisand went to the barricades to make sure it’s clear that the couple part ways over profound political differences and insisted on adding a scene that makes their disagreement explicit and passionate enough to cause the rupture.

But no one fought for the politics in the film adaptation of The Sound Of Music, so the Baroness’s story is reduced to a scorned woman giving up.

The film leaves out the liturgical choir pieces – a creative departure for Rodgers and Hammerstein – that open the stage version, which is a shame. For one thing, they’re simply beautiful. More important, they set a tone, emphasizing the abbey atmosphere so unsuitable for Maria.

At Stratford, director Donna Feore does wonders with the opening, creating the devotional mood and then following with Maria, having thrown away her robes, lying in the grass on the mountain.

Robert Wise never could resist an aerial shot – he used it brilliantly in the opening to West Side Story – and so The Sound Of Music’s first scene features Maria twirling around on the hills. Technically it’s wonderful, but it’s not quite right for the narrative.

I dislike the sentimental song Something Good, written especially for the film to replace An Ordinary Couple, which served in the play as a contrast to How Can Love Survive. And I have no idea why stage versions – including Stratford’s – have adopted it. But I admit that I Have Confidence, also written for the film and used at Stratford, does tell us a lot about Maria.

For the record, I don’t blame Wise for snapping up Andrews for the role of Maria. She had just won an Oscar for her performance as Mary Poppins, and there were still millions of admirers who thought she’d been badly burned when Audrey Hepburn was cast as Eliza in My Fair Lady, a role Andrews originated on Broadway.

Her image of sweetness – later beautifully dismantled by edgy film collaborations with Blake Edwards – is not the issue. 

The problem is Hollywood’s insistence in the early 60s on dumbing down anything that takes a serious look at political issues.

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.