It’s hard for movie fans from the rest of the world to believe, but people in Austria and Germany completely rejected The Sound of Music when it came out in 1965.
“It was a smash-hit around the world in every country except Germany and Austria,” said Thomas Santopietro, author The Sound of Music Story, a new book published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the film’s release.
In those two countries “it was a complete and utter flop,” he said.
Austrians felt it was a very Americanised version of a story they owned, Santopietro said. The children’s clothes were not authentic, and the music was nothing like the folksy madrigals sung by the real Von Trapps, so the criticism went.
Long before director Robert Wise’s version, which won five Oscars, there had been two movies in German about Maria von Trapp, and Austrians and Germans “felt proprietary about those films”, Santopietro said.
And then there was the political history that by 1965 they wanted to put in their past.
Santopietro writes, for example, about the manager of a Munich cinema who cut the movie off after the wedding of Maria and Captain von Trapp to avoid the “whole Nazi element”, he said.
Maria von Trapp and many of her fellow Austrians also were annoyed with the way the movie took liberties with geography. Von Trapp quibbled with the escape route, telling Wise that Salzburg doesn’t border on Switzerland.
“Didn’t people in Hollywood realise that route the family took in the movie would have taken them to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest?” she asked.
Wise retorted: “In Hollywood you make your own geography.”
Jessica Riviere, who teaches German literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, said the Hollywood version appeals to Americans because it is a Cinderella story about a plucky former nun who rejects the cloister for a traditional role as wife and mother. And it’s about a family of political exiles who travel to America to be free.
Santopietro believes the family element is the main reason the movie became so popular worldwide: “It’s about family as your refuge, your sanctuary and your protection and every country responds to that.”
Audiences in Austria and Germany in recent years have embraced those same elements and forgotten many of the things they originally disliked. The Sound of Music is playing at Salzburg’s Landestheater after first being performed there on stage in 2011. The film, after all, was originally a 1959 Broadway musical.
In the US the fanfare surrounding the golden anniversary has largely focused on Julie Andrews, a singer whom most critics agree was born to play the role of Maria. But she didn’t win the Oscar for her portrayal. She had just won the Best Actress Oscar the year before for Mary Poppins.
On Sunday and April 22, more than 700 cinemas will participate in a digital broadcast with a simultaneous sing-a-long through the three-hour movie.
The Rodgers & Hammerstein score has made the movie a favourite on US TV: Maria swirling in the mountain grass singing, The hills are alive, with the sound of music; and Maria and the children singing Do Re Mi Fa as they dance their way around Salzburg.
Santopietro writes an amusing story about one broadcast the night before the opening of the US-hosted G7 summit in 1983. The next day aides asked president Ronald Reagan if he had read the briefing book to prepare for the meeting.
“How could I have read that?” he answered. “The Sound of Music was on TV last night.” – DPA