Product Description Classic 1960s musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. Former nun Maria (Andrews) becomes the governess for a family of seven children who live in the shadow of their domineering and repressed widower father Captain Von Trapp (Plummer). Along with the required discipline Maria brings love, music and excitement into the children's lives and also eventually begins to have an effect on their father. But just when things are looking up, the rise of Nazism and the threat of the coming war darkens all their futures. The cast also includes Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond and Eleanor Parker. .co.uk Review The most widely seen movie produced by a Hollywood studio, The Sound of Music grows fresher with each viewing. Though it was planned meticulously in pre-production (save for the scene where Maria and the children take a dipping in an Austrian lake that nearly cost a life), on each viewing one is struck anew by the spontaneous almost improvisatory air of the acting, notably of Julie Andrews under Robert Wise's direction. There are also the little human touches he brings to, for instance, the scene where Maria leads the children to the hills, over bridges and along tow paths where the smallest boy trips up and momentarily gets left behind: it creates a feeling that most of us have encountered. From the opening pre-credit sequence of muted excitement as the camera roves over the Austrian Alps (photographed in magnificent colour), where little phrases from the wind instruments on the soundtrack are flung as if on the breeze, foreshadowing the title song to follow, the production never puts a foot wrong.
M**N
Classic musical
Always loved this film from seeing it at the cinema as a young girl when it was first released. Now, my young granddaughter is enjoying it, especially singing along to the songs
M**D
Film purchase.
Bought for my mum.
A**R
Worth watching
Believe it or not I've never seen the film before but its a good film to watch on a wet Sunday afternoon with a pot of tea and some crumpets
A**R
Perfect resolution!
Watched it with my 9 year old son. Perfect movie night for the family
A**X
Onr of the best classic films ever made
Btilliannt
V**T
A classic
One of the best films ever made. Fab purchase
R**Y
The sound of life
A round of applause for Robert Wise. What a career this guy had, starting out with RKO in the 1930s and finishing in the year 2000. Along the way he directed this landmark musical, another landmark musical (West Side Story), one of the great mid-century horror movies (Scorsese favourite The Haunting), allegorical sci-fi (The Day the Earth Stood Still), hard sci-fi (The Andromeda Strain), and epic sci-fi (Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Oh yeah, and he edited Citizen Kane to boot.The year is 1938. Maria (Julie Andrews) is sent from the abbey to become the governess at the Von Trapp mansion. The Captain (Christopher Plummer, full of the charm and menace that Michael Fassbender might these days display) is struggling to cope with his seven kids, following the death of their mother. The Captain commands the children with military precision. Maria, however, immediately puts aside adult things and reminds the family of the joy of play. Meanwhile, the shadow of Nazism is crawling across the land, its vile purity threatening to destroy their... well, nice purity.You know all the songs from Rogers’ & Hammerstein’s musical, even if you’ve avoided the film for the past six decades. It’s as comfortingly dated and surprisingly dark as ever. By “dark” I’m not talking about anything gothic or brooding – but nor is Maria a mere manic pixie girl. She is life, she is love, but as the nuns point out early on, she’s a complex character, full of contradictions. She wishes to love but also she seeks love. Andrews’ performance is very external but also very subtle: when she’s pushed out of the household by the cruel Baroness (Eleanor Parker), the sense of bereftness isn’t in a song, it’s in Maria’s eyes.The Sound of Music is a film about, amongst other things, light and darkness and the power of positivity. And it dares to make a grey area of what positive forces actually are. Love, for example, isn’t presented as some divine power that transcends all boundaries: indeed, it is love that almost forces Maria away for good; and it is Liesl’s (Charmian Carr) love that almost destroys her family. Faith, too, is not enough – indeed, the one time we see her praying Maria is irreverent.But what is never in doubt is the power of goodness; of good intentions. This is the compact between the Von Trapps and their new mother, and regardless of the machinations of state, they’ll always have each other. The Captain makes an impassioned appeal to the people of Austria to feel that togetherness – but, as the Von Trapps march lonely over the mountains, we’re left with a slightly sad feeling that what’s being annihilated through the Holocaust is the possibility of a love universal.A perfect musical? As close as. The sinisterly saintly children will at times test even the cutest of viewers. Edelweiss, for all its repeated relevance, is a bit of a dud. And the tempestuous Climb Ev’ry Mountain is inertly staged. But I’m nitpicking. This is pure cinema: vast, dramatic, humorous, complex, and beautifully staged and choreographed. And it sounds just swell. You can glimpse the highlights in the trailer but there’s no substitute for watching Andrews stride into the hills and blast the clouds away. It’s enough to make you feel alive.
S**R
A great classic musical film well worth having in your DVD collection.
A simple classical musical fim on DVD, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, very great and legendary actors. There isn't any extra features here but does not matter if you just want to see the film. An interesting story on drama and romance based on a real life event involving an Austrian family living in the alps going through challenges as well as escaping prosecution from the nazis. Wonderful film worth watching.
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