The Sound of Music

It’s Christmas and the hills are alive with the sound of me talking about a film from 1965 that literally the whole world has seen.

In fact it dawned on me that I’ve also seen this, albeit split up in various chunks over the years as is the way with massively long films that go on TV over Christmas. There are still people out there trying to finish Ben Hur but Channel 5 keeps putting more ads on - the current run time is 16 hours and that’s without having to break for the news at 10.

It’s one of those musicals where you know every song even if you haven’t seen it, it’s just wall to wall hits. What I hadn’t remembered was how well directed it was, how good it all looks, and how hot Christopher Plummer was.

The real star of course is Julie Andrews, and you might think you know what to expect from her but it occurred to me this time that she pretty much carries the whole film - when she’s not in the frame it’s completely dead on its arse.

The opening sequence where she’s singing in the hills is so famous but that’s because it is just completely astonishing. The helicopter shot that comes in towards her is exhilarating and when she bursts into song it’s joy incarnate.

It doesn’t have all of my favourite things though. It’s too long. The Captain should have ended up with the hot witty and rich Baroness instead of goody two shoes Maria. The whole film is 90% made-up bollocks ‘based on a true story’. No one eats schnitzel with noodles. In fact all of Austrian culture here is fiction. If they ‘walked over the border’ from Salzburg they would have ended up in Nazi Germany which isn’t ideal if you are trying to escape the Nazis.

The list could go on but it’s hard to give as shit because the one thing Hollywood was good at back then was this sort of wildly over-ambitious musical, and The Sound of Music is a perfect example of the genre.