Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - The Sound of Music

Yay! The Film Experience's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series is back! In order to play, just select your favorite shot from the week's film, share it, and write a bit about it. It's fun, I promise!

There are two things that immediately pop into my head whenever I think of Robert Wise's Best Picture winner The Sound of Music. It seems odd that there are only two, when you consider how iconic the film has become, but I am what I am, and whenever I think of the film, I always think of that opening shot of Julie Andrews spinning on the mountaintop (a vision of pure joy matched only by Gene Kelly on the lamppost singing Singin' in the Rain) and the gazebo.

Yes, the gazebo. Not the sailor uniforms, not the clothes made from drapes. Not the marionettes, not the nuns. Not the gorgeous location shots of Vienna, not the stained glass windows of the abbey. The gazebo.

The gazebo on the von Trapp family property is where declarations of love are made. And coming out of the coldest February in memory in NYC (thanks, Mother Nature, for making my first winter living here such a delight!), and my first Valentine's Day as a singleton in eight years, I find myself needing the warmth of movie romance right now. Thankfully, The Sound of Music delivers on that front spectacularly.


Early in the film, the gazebo is the site of our first real glimpse into the character of anyone in the von Trapp family, as eldest child Liesl excuses herself from dinner to meet her paramour, letter-delivery boy Rolf. They have a lovely duet, "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" to declare their love as it starts to rain, and Liesl gets a lovely moment of joy in the rain to herself.

In keeping with the film's two halves (or acts, as it were, this being an adaptation of a stage show), the next time we see the gazebo is for a meeting between adults, postulate-nun-turned-nanny-to-seven-children Maria and Captain Georg von Trapp. They've been slowly needling their way into each other's hearts, almost without knowing it, but they finally confront each other (at the urging, it must be said, of poor Baroness Schrader, and the fact that you can even say that about the woman who callously tossed off a line about sending those adorable children to boarding school just so she could have the Captain all to herself is a testament to Eleanor Parker's great, great performance). As joyous as Liesl and Rolf's first kiss is, that of Maria and the Captain is muted, thoughtful, and mature. And beautifully, defiantly soft focus.
BEST SHOT
I'm sure this isn't the first time kissing lovers have been filmed like this, but it's one of the defining images of The Sound of Music for me, mostly for just how old-fashioned romantic it is. It's as though cinematographer Ted D. McCord applied a whole jar of Vaseline to the camera lens while filming this entire scene (is this where RuPaul's Drag Race got the idea for its first season?) - everything bleeds into each other, the colors are a gorgeous palette of pastels, and we see our two lovers in complete silhouette, their bodies very nearly creating a heart shape. It's the silhouette that does it for me. These people could be anyone. They were your parents, or grandparents. They could be you. It's a classic vision of cinematic romance. Everything else melts into the background and all you care about is this person standing in front of you loving you. Whether or not they should.

It's also interesting in how it mirrors the earlier, younger kiss. The women in flowy, almost sheer dresses, the men buttoned up; the men on the right side, the women on the left... but in this case, Maria and the Captain are equals. No games, no shyness. They come to each other openly and honestly and sing their love for each other in as beautiful a song as Richard Rodgers ever wrote.

It's shots like this one that lead people to deride The Sound of Music. "It's too sickeningly sweet!" they say. "It's dull and boring!" they cry. "The Sound of Mucus" they call it. But I think that shots like this are exactly why the film not only works, but has become an enduring classic. Yes, the image is a cliché, but it is also deployed thoughtfully, meaningfully. This is a sweet film, no doubt about it, but it rises above any stage version (despite the lessening of the show's two liveliest characters, the Baroness and "Uncle" Max and the removal of their duet "How Can Love Survive", one of the show's best songs) because it brings out an intimacy and maturity the stage show so often lacks.

The other reason the film works so well, of course, is Julie Andrews. I always think she won an Oscar for this, and frankly, she should have. Point blank, the film does not work without her. It's not just her golden singing voice, but her presence, and the thoughtfulness behind her acting. She works with the (seven!) children astonishingly well, and also paints an always-vivid picture of Maria's inner life. Her eyes and body language tell you absolutely everything you need to know about how Maria is feeling and just how much she cannot bring herself to say. It's a remarkably full performance from a character who can read extremely simple on the page, and far better than most people realize, because Andrews makes it all look so effortless. Which is a perfect word for the whole film, really. The Sound of Music breezes through its 174 minutes with effortless scene after effortless scene. It takes real skill to make a film look as effortless as this one feels. And oh, what a feeling!

10 comments:

  1. Beautiful!

    She really should have won the Oscar for this. Christie was great, but Julie is just on another level here, and rewatching this the other night reconfirmed that. Beautiful post.

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    1. Thanks, man. And I TOTALLY agree. Julie's working on a whole different level in this. She gets at these deep, pure emotions so quickly in a way I think I've only seen Judy Garland do. Really incredible.

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  2. Terrific post. That's a super observation about them forming a heart shape and how they could be anyone at that moment. My favorite shot is in the gazebo also but it's the earlier dance between Liesl and Rolfe because of the extra element of the rain on the windows and the diffuse lighting and images that creates.

    Julie is better here than she was in Mary Poppins, she was terrific as that magical nanny but this character obviously offers more opportunities, but I can't countenance taking away my favorite living actress Julie Christie's Oscar. I would however happily rip Shelley Winters award, for one of her worst performances, right out of her mitts and hand it to Eleanor Parker who was far more deserving as the Baroness.

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    1. Thanks, Joel! I LOVE the little dance in Sixteen Going On Seventeen. Might post about it later. It's shot so perfectly.

      I can understand, sort of, why Eleanor Parker wouldn't get an Oscar nom for this: It's a small part, and mostly thankless... but, like Andrews, she brings SO much more than there is on the page. She makes every second of her screentime count. It's just great "actressing at the edges".

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    2. I can see that the size of the part hurt her but Peggy Wood's role to me is even more colorless. She has her big song and some wise words and that's pretty much it. I don't fault her but the role is so meh. The funny thing is that if it were now with all factors taken into consideration Eleanor being a star would probably have cinched the nomination over Miss Wood since the academy have become even bigger star lovers since then handing supporting nominations to leads because of name recognition.

      It's a pity she wasn't in the running since it was a rather thin year. The Othello women were strong but Oscar has never been over fond of rewarding Shakespeare, Ruth Gordon was doing a retread of her Rosemary's Baby role in Inside Daisy Clover and the braying, scenery chewing sideshow that Shelley Winters put on in A Patch of Blue is her at her least disciplined and as I said Peggy Wood has virtually nothing to work with. Eleanor trumps them all, what a shame she never even received an Honorary Oscar.

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    3. I have done absolutely no research to back this up, but I think my memory is right: If you don't sing in a musical, you don't get nominated for an Oscar (Rex Harrison notwithstanding). Wood got the nomination because she sang THAT song beautifully.

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    4. HA! I don't know if that is 100% true but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be so. Oh wait James Mason in A Star is Born, but he is probably the exception to the rule.

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  3. Great post Daniel. Glad to see so many people chose the same scene I did. It's really gorgeous shot. I watched The Sound of Music for the first time and I have to say, it was absolute pleasure. Loved everything about it.

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    1. Thanks, Nika! It really is so gorgeous, isn't it? The colors almost make it look like a painting. This film is really pure joy.

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  4. Love this writeup. That gazebo is magical.

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