My songs, my dreams

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Movie
German title My songs, my dreams
Original title The Sound of Music
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1965
length 174 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Robert Wise
script Ernest Lehman
production Robert Wise
music Richard Rodgers ,
editing: Irwin Kostal
camera Ted D. McCord
cut William H. Reynolds
occupation
synchronization

My songs - my dreams (Original title: The Sound of Music ) is based on the musical The Sound of Music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein , an American film directed by Robert Wise from 1965. The world premiere in the United States took place on March 2, 1965 at the Rivoli Theater in Manhattan, New York. It was released in cinemas in the Federal Republic of Germany on December 25, 1965. The film is one of the four most successful Hollywood music films of all, is one of the most watched films in history worldwide and has shaped the image of Austria to this day, especially in the United States , Canada , Latin America and Japan , while it is only on in German-speaking countries met with moderate success and is largely unknown there to this day.

action

Salzburg in 1938: The novice Maria is an enthusiastic singer and dancer, but struggles with the disciplined life in the monastery. After a consultation with a few other sisters, the mother superior decides that Maria should be sent to the widowed captain von Trapp to take care of his group of children. During her time with the captain, Maria should find out for herself whether the monastery is really right for her. The arrival at Captain von Trapp's is rather cool: he has not yet come to terms with the death of his wife a few years ago, and so he applies strict military discipline to his children, which Maria displeases.

Although the children play a few pranks on her at first, a close bond soon develops between the children and her. While the captain is staying with the Baroness Schrader in Vienna , whom he might want to marry soon, Maria encourages the children to play and sing with her uncomplicated manner. The captain had previously forbidden any singing in the house as it reminded him too much of his late wife. The strict captain doesn't like to see this on his return and wants to release Maria first. However, when he hears the wonderful singing of his children, he thaws, joins the song and from then on becomes a loving family man again. Maria is allowed to stay and the captain is increasingly fascinated by the educator - much to the displeasure of Baroness Schrader, who had actually promised a wedding with Captain von Trapp soon.

The captain von Trapp organizes a big ball at the request of the baroness. When Maria shows the children various dances on the terrace during the ball, the captain asks them to dance the country . The dance ends with a tight hug, which confuses the novice Maria and is also observed by the jealous baroness. The baroness is able to convince Maria, who is overwhelmed by the situation, to return to her monastery on the night of the ball. The children and their father are unhappy with Maria's departure, while the baroness tries to play the role of mother with the children, but she does not succeed. Maria is also unhappy in the monastery and cannot forget the captain. The mother superior advises Maria to return to the captain and face life. Maria returns to the Trapps. The captain has now become clear about his feelings, breaks the connection with the baroness and proposes to Maria.

During their honeymoon, Max Detweiler, the captain's friend and an unsuccessful music producer, registered the seven Trapp children for a singing competition at the Salzburg Festival - the captain had always rejected his children's public singing because of his position, even though Max had already given him that had suggested several times. The captain and Maria break off their honeymoon when Austria is annexed by the German Reich. The National Socialists call on Captain von Trapp to serve in the Wehrmacht with immediate effect. In contrast to many of his friends, the captain does not want to come to terms with the new rulers and plans to leave Austria with his family. During an attempt to escape in the evening, they are discovered by Gauleiter Zeller and his men. The captain can save himself with the white lie that he and his family want to go to the singing competition that will take place in the Felsenreitschule that evening .

Despite strict security by the National Socialists, the Trapp family were able to flee to the nearby monastery towards the end of the competition, where Maria was a novice before. The Mother Superior hides them behind gravestones in the cemetery and in fact they almost go unnoticed. Only Rolfe, the former friend of the eldest daughter Liesl, who turned from a postman to a staunch Nazi, discovers her. However, the sight of Liesl hesitates long enough to sound the alarm so that the Trapps can escape from Salzburg and finally across the Swiss border.

Historical background

The plot is partly based on real events about the Trapp family, but some fictional characters and stories have been added. The real Maria , who previously worked as an educator at Nonnberg Abbey , married the captain in 1927 and lived with him and his children in Salzburg until 1938. The family then by no means fled over the mountains to Switzerland. From Salzburg to the south-west you can get over the Untersberg into the Berchtesgadener Land, so close to Hitler's residence on the Obersalzberg , while the Swiss national territory is hundreds of kilometers away from Salzburg. After renting their Salzburg property to a religious order, the family took the train to Italy, from where they continued to the United States.

Incidentally, Heinrich Himmler moved into the house of the Trapp family and had a tap-proof room set up there.

reception

Worldwide

In memory of Charmian Carr on the location of The Sound of Music in Hellbrunn Palace , Salzburg (2016).

The film reached around 1.2 billion viewers around the world. In the United States and other English-speaking countries, The Sound of Music became one of the most popular musicals thanks to its filming. The film itself was awarded five Academy Awards for ten nominations (apart from the score for film, direction, sound and editing), Julie Andrews received the Golden Globe Award for best actress . In the mid-1970s, it came back to cinemas after a series of worldwide hits, and when it was first available on video cassette in the 1980s, it was a huge hit.

Numerous tourists, who have often seen this film many times, have since been visiting Salzburg and the Mondsee (where the wedding was filmed), want to hear the supposed Austrian national anthem Edelweiss and eat " Schnitzels with noodles" and "crisp applestrudels " (because this is so popular occurs on the song My Favorite Things ). The Landler shown in the film is also not a traditional Austrian folk dance , but a compilation of various Landler elements . The sound-of-music tours, during which international visitors to Salzburg are driven to the former filming locations, are part of the permanent establishment .

In German-speaking countries

In Germany, the film was initially shown in a heavily shortened version, in which all references to National Socialism were missing and the film ends with Mary's wedding and not - as in the original version - with the escape of the Trapp family from Austria. In the end, however, the American production studio managed to have this third act of the film shown in the German version.

Despite its international success, the film became an economic failure in German-speaking countries. The number of visitors was poor and the reviews were bad. It competed here with the successful Heimat films The Trapp Family from 1956 and The Trapp Family in America from 1958. Also because the film put the repressed Nazi past in such a glaring light, it did not find approval among German viewers at the time. In Austria, the film, which is so important for tourism, is only known to the majority of the population through hearsay. Some Salzburg hotels offer an in-house television channel on which the film can be seen in an endless loop. The musical itself also remained largely unknown. It was only when the Vienna Volksoper took up the subject in 2005 that the culturally interested audience became aware of it again. In the same year the film was released on DVD for the German-speaking market.

Tributes and allusions

The end-of-time film Postman from 1997 uses My Songs - My Dreams to describe people's longing for a peaceful idyll in a post-apocalyptic world. The film is regularly shown to a paramilitary gang there; When the martial Universal Soldier is shown instead , the presenter is booed and pelted with stones until he performs My songs - my dreams again .

Lars von Trier's musical film Dancer in the Dark from 2000 refers to The Sound of Music : Its main character Selma is rehearsing for the role of Maria. Gwen Stefani , front woman of the US band No Doubt and successful solo artist, integrated an excerpt from a film music piece (The Lonely Goatherd) and a sample of the wind fanfare in her song Wind It Up from the album The Sweet Escape (2007) - which begins with the lines: " High on the hills with the lonely goatherd - lay-od-lay-od-lay-he-hoo - Yodell back with the girl and goatherd - lay-od-lay-od-low ". She is alluding to a well-known scene in the film in which Julie Andrews as governess Maria performs a puppet play with the Trapp children. In a key scene of her novel The God of Little Things, Arundhati Roy interweaves a screening of the musical film with the plot of the novel .

In Buz Lurman's film Moulin Rouge, the "colorful ensemble of various artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec " rehearses my songs - my dreams as a play and the song The Sound of Music is one of the first important musical milestones of the main character Christian.

The song The Sound of Music was voted number 10 by the American Film Institute in their list AFI's 100 Years… 100 Songs of the 100 Best American Film Songs .

Lady Gaga sang a tribute to The Sound of Music at the 2015 Academy Awards . Julie Andrews appeared after the performance and thanked them for the musical performance, which was highly praised in the media.

The song "7 Rings" by Ariana Grande is a sample for the song "My Favorite Things".

synchronization

The dubbed version was created for the German cinema premiere.

role actor German Dubbing voice
Maria Augusta Trapp Julie Andrews Marion Degler (vocals: Ursula Schirrmacher )
Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp Christopher Plummer Michael Tellering (vocals: Camillo Felgen )
Baroness Elsa Schrader Eleanor Parker Edith Hieronimus
Max Detweiler Richard Haydn Michael Toost
Mother Superior Peggy Wood Vilma Degischer
Liesl Trapp Charmian Carr Herta Staal
Louisa Trapp Heather Menzies Eveline Felderer
Sister Margaretta Anna Lee Dolores Schmidinger
Sister Berthe Portia Nelson Lola Luigi
Mr. Zeller, National Socialist Ben Wright Curt Eilers
Rolfe, postman Daniel Truhitte Heinz honor friend
Servant Franz Gilchrist Stuart Herbert Kersten

Awards (selection)

Also nominated for Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Peggy Wood

Reviews

The reception of The Sound of Music was mostly positive, with some critics attesting the film to be too sweet. At Rotten Tomatoes it has a positive rating of 86% based on 58 reviews.

“An entertainment film produced with immense external effort, which captivates with impressively photographed and arranged wide-screen panoramas, (in the original) beautiful songs and a remarkable leading actress. On the verge of embarrassment, however, is the superficial treatment of the political background. The German distributor rigorously shortened the film after the first evaluation in order to eliminate all political elements, so that the film was more 'friendlier' and more consumable, although its conception was destroyed. "

- Lexicon of international film

“A friendly and happy film with nice shots and sometimes too much music. Despite some taste objections possible from 10 onwards. "

- Protestant film observer

The Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the production the title valuable .

In the documentary The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (the sequel to The Pervert's Guide to Cinema ) , published by the director Sophie Fiennes in 2012, about the postmodern philosopher Slavoj Žižek's criticism of western-capitalist ideology, illustrated with excerpts from famous films , the latter describes the scene and the text of the song Climb Every Mountain in My Songs - My Dreams as the key to Catholic and Western ideology in general: Only at first glance does the downright hedonistic advice of the Mother Superior contradict the Catholic commandment of renunciation, but this contains as a secret core the promise of Freudian sublimated higher, sometimes sadomasochistic pleasures, as well as the promise to be allowed to commit any sin as long as one believes in God and repents his sins towards him. With this reference to My Songs - My Dreams, Žižek sums up the core of Catholic and Western ideology in general, that whoever ostensibly renounces the world will secretly win it.

literature

  • Ulrike Kammerhofer-Aggermann, Alexander G. Keul: The Sound of Music between myth and marketing . In: Salzburger Landesinstitut für Volkskunde (Hrsg.): Salzburg contributions to folklore . tape 11 . Salzburger Landesinstitut für Volkskunde, Salzburg 2000, ISBN 3-901681-03-5 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Kubiak: The Oscar Films. The best films from 1927/28 to 2004. The best non-English language films from 1947 to 2004. The best animated films from 2001 to 2004 . Schüren, Marburg 2005, ISBN 3-89472-386-6 .

DVD

To mark the fortieth anniversary of the film version, a double DVD entitled The Sound of Music (subtitle: My songs - my dreams ) with extensive bonus material was released in December 2005 , through which Julie Andrews will guide. The book The Sound of Music for the film with lots of background information is available as a fan article .

Web links

Commons : Film locations of The Sound of Music (1965)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for my songs - my dreams . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2005 (PDF; test number: 34 990 V / DVD).
  2. ^ Max Wilk: The Making of The Sound of Music , Taylor & Francis; 2007, ISBN 978-0-415-97935-1 , p. 77
  3. ^ Uta Gruenberger: Salzburg: Edelweiss, Edelweiss . In: The time . No. 30/2010 ( zeit.de ).
  4. ↑ "The Sound of Music" in TV endless loop. In: ORF.at. July 17, 2007, accessed February 24, 2015 .
  5. ^ Mark R. Leeper: The Postman - A film review. In: IMDb . 1997, accessed August 4, 2016 .
  6. ↑ AFI's 100 Years… 100 songs. (PDF; 134 kB) In: afi.com. American Film Institute (AFI), June 22, 2005, accessed August 28, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Lady Gaga sings Sound of Music medley at Oscars 2015. In: The Daily Telegraph . February 23, 2015, accessed February 24, 2015 .
  8. ^ The Sound of Music. Retrieved May 26, 2018 (English).
  9. ^ Lexicon of international film (CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997
  10. ↑ Evangelischer Film-Beobachter , Review No. 211a / 1966