Why The Sound Of Music is still one of my favourite things . . .
AS SHINY as a bright copper kettle, as comforting as warm woollen mittens, The Sound Of Music is back.
A new 70mm print, made from the original camera negative, is being unveiled at the British Film Institute in London tonight. And another version, digitally restored, will soon tour nationwide.
Of course, it could be that you can’t think of anything worse. Ever since the movie was released in March 1965, there have been millions who loved its charm — and many who loathed its schmaltz. But whether or not it’s one of your favourite things, I’ll bet you have an opinion. Most of us do.
Back in 1965, the venerable critic Dilys Powell found it ‘all a bit smothering’, quoting W.C. Fields, who was once asked how he liked children and replied, ‘toasted’. She felt the same about child-choirs, she said, but wished the film well, as long ‘as I don’t have to see it again’.
Imagine that, only seeing The Sound Of Music once! Little did Powell anticipate that an intimate knowledge of its every tune, speech and scene would practically become part of what it means to be British, like apologising when someone bumps into you. This intimacy has been nourished every Christmas by yet another showing on TV back in the days when we had nothing to do except watch the telly.
And in due course, those of us who grew up then have passed an appreciation of it on to our children. My three, now aged 24, 23 and 19, might be part of the YouTube generation, but by heavens they know how to solve a problem like Maria. They know every word of every song like a catechism.
When they were small, every long car journey resounded at least once to us all singing Do Re
Mi, My Favourite Things and Edelweiss. It might be unfashionable to say so, embarrassing even, but there hasn’t been a phase of my life untouched by this film.
As a small child myself, hugely exhilarated by The Lonely Goatherd, I yearned to be able to a) yodel properly, and b) own a puppet theatre.
So Long, Farewell gave me my first smattering of foreign words. Brigitta, the third youngest Von Trapp child, was my first screen crush. And as a slightly older boy, it was largely thanks to Captain Von Trapp tearing down the swastika that I learned Nazism was sinister.
I do not, incidentally, count myself as one of the film’s most lovestruck fans. I think I’m just averagely steadfast, probably no more and no less than you are. True, when my family and I spent a day in Salzburg some years ago, we did go dancing through one of the film’s best-known backdrops, the Mirabell Gardens, singing ‘Doe, a deer, a female deer...’ But honestly, which British family with young children wouldn’t?
So, as we prepare for yet another revival, let only the cynics and the grumps harrumph about its sickly sweetness. And let the rest of us, whatever we might truly feel about doorbells and sleighbells and schnitzel with noodles, cherish it anew.
THE Sound Of Music will screen at the BFI tonight, followed by a wider release nationwide.