A woman posing in front of the gazebo used in the filming of The Sound of Music scene where the song I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen is sung.
By Gretel Johnston/Washington/ DPA
It’s hard for us 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 round the world literally in every country except Germany and Austria,” says 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 says.
“That’s undisputable.”
Austrians felt it was a very Americanised version of a story they owned, Santopietro told DPA. 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 Academy Awards, there had been two movies in German about Maria von Trapp, and Austrians and Germans “felt proprietary about those films”, Santopietro says.
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”.
“When 20th Century (the studio) and Robert Wise heard about that, he was fired immediately,” says Santopietro.
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, says 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, Riviere points out.
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,” he says.
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 currently playing at Salzburg’s Landestheater after first being performed there on stage in October 2011. The film, after all, was originally a Broadway musical that opened in 1959.
Salzburg’s tourism industry has had a long relationship with the movie. For decades it has offered Sound of Music tours that take tourists to many of the places featured in the film. According to Austria.info, a tourism website, 70% of foreign visitors to Salzburg say The Sound of Music is the primary reason for going there.
In the US, the fanfare surrounding the golden anniversary has largely focused on Julie Andrews, a singer who most critics agree was born to play the role of Maria. But she didn’t win the Academy Award for her portrayal. She had just won the Best Actress Oscar the year before for Mary Poppins.
Andrews, whose singing has been reduced through vocal chord problems, was the talk of Hollywood after making a surprise appearance in February at this year’s Oscar ceremony when Lady Gaga sang a medley of songs from The Sound of Music.
The warm reception was a reminder how she found a place in the hearts of moviegoers worldwide singing songs about lonely goat herds wandering in the Alps, whiskers on kittens and edelweiss.
Today and on Wednesday, more than 700 cinemas in the US will participate in a digital broadcast with a simultaneous sing-a-long through the three-hour movie.
The unforgettable Rodgers & Hammerstein score has made the movie a favourite on US television: 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, a Hollywood actor before entering politics, whether 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.”
