The Sound of Music was not one in every of my dad and mom’ favorite issues so, consequently, I do not need any fond childhood recollections of it as I’ve for the Wizard of Oz or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which had been at all times Christmas perennials in our home. As a teen I can keep in mind every time the movie got here on tv the channel being modified quickly earlier than Julie Andrews belted out the primary line of the title music. It is simple to know why as a result of The Sound of Music didn’t look good in pan and scan on a 24 inch display and it actually did not sound good by way of small Mono audio system.
It is secure to say that the movie is commonly readily dismissed as being too schmaltzy and terribly outdated even for the time it was made in 1965, after all of the stage present had first been a success in 1959 and it could be Rodgers & Hammerstein’s final collectively. After I lastly received round to seeing it throughout in my early 20s I had the benefit of seeing it on DVD on a 32 inch widescreen TV and I used to be completely enthralled by it. Director Robert Smart, who edited Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, managed to inform the story of the Von Trapps with the entire songs however not one of the saccharine. He additionally captured the fact of The Anschluß with out preaching or oversimplifying the politics of Nazi Germany and its occupation of Austria in 1938.
Now we come to the forty fifth Anniversary Blu-ray version and I’m completely shocked by the film once more and this time I benefit from watching it with my son who’s 5 and I’m amazed that he sits enraptured by the whistle-stop tour of Salzburg that’s Do-Re-Mi, the gorgeous 70mm digitally restored print filling the 50 inch Plasma display with a wonderful 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 switch which has to rank amongst the very best I’ve ever seen. Every word resonating clear as crystal in immaculate 7.1 DTS-HD high quality and also you realise that what you noticed squeezed onto previous TV units rising up within the Eighties may by no means do the 1965 Finest Image Oscar winner justice and have to be partially answerable for the dangerous fame the movie had for thus a few years.
The bundle comes with a second Blu-ray full to the brim with extras the very best of which, for my style, is Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Sound of Motion pictures a characteristic size retrospective charting your entire historical past of their profitable inventive collaboration hosted by the unique stage Maria Von Trapp, Mary Martin. There’s additionally a protracted interview with screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who additionally wrote Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, during which he recounts the method of bringing his imaginative and prescient of The Sound of Music to cinema audiences, he’s largely to thank for eradicating a variety of the sentimentality from the libretto and injecting it with authenticity and real wit.
I hope that now it has been restored to its former glory future audiences may have the fortuity of rising up with this glorious story of 1 household’s wrestle by way of music to journey over the Alps and much past the clutches of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich that includes a number of the greatest widespread songs written within the twentieth century; not solely the title music and Do-Re-Mi but additionally My Favorite Issues, Lonely Goatherd and Edelweiss replete with standout performances from the indefatigable Julie Andrews and dryly humorous flip as the strict patriarch from the redoubtable Christopher Plummer. The Sound of Music seems to be as sharp and vivid as a brand new pin on Blu-ray and as a testomony to its lasting enchantment, my son has requested me to place Do-Re-Mi on daily this month!