Cinema 1965: THE SOUND OF MUSIC

R-H Positive

The Sound of Music, based on the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein musical comedy, satisfies nearly all the requirements for what moviemakers tout as wholesome family entertainment. It is tuneful, cheerful and colorful—exquisitely filmed in the Tyrolean Alps of Austria. It celebrates courage—the real-life daring of the Trapp Family Singers, who fled the Nazis in 1938. Though Director Robert Wise has made capital of the show’s virtues, he can do little to disguise its faults.’ In dialogue, song and story, Music still contains too much sugar, too little spice.

Asked why she has played hooky from the convent to go singing through mountain meadows, the bob-haired young novice Maria (Julie Andrews) explains: “The sky was so blue, and the day was so green and fragrant, I just had to be a part of it!”