As surprising as it is I’ve never seen The Sound of Music before so I was looking forward to making myself finally sit down and watch the entire thing. The plot is quite simple for the time I think and fit well into the historical context. The main character of this film starts off in a convent and she's known as the “bad girl” of the group. Because of this scenario Maria, the main character, got sent away from the convent to be a maid to 7 children. The kids were children to a former captain and their mother just recently passed away. The kids don’t like Maria in the beginning but learn to like her a lot because she brings fun into their lives (singing). The further the plot goes on the dad brings home a potential wife who gives off a suspicious vibe. Maria and the captain begin to fall in love but the potential wife sends her away and there becomes an immediate difference when Maria is gone. Maria returns and the kids are so happy and the caption is conflicted on marrying the women but eventually him and Maria get married. Nearing the end the captain was offered a new position so the family has to leave Austria but in order to do so the family sings together at a festival competition and they run away and escape together in the mountains.

 

From beginning to end I noticed a lot of specifics about the film. Starting from the beginning I noticed the super fake wind noise try to match the really beautiful mountains which I didn’t like very much. They did a good job at depicting that we are in Switzerland even though we wouldn't have to have previously known that to figure it out. The rule of thirds wasn’t used very much as putting things in the middle of the screen was pretty common. There was a lot of enter and exiting the shot constantly and then flipping to a different shot completely, and as small as it is the credits were in the beginning like many of the films made at this time. I could tell that the writers, and directors heavily relied on scenes of nature and architecture. The usage of symmetry was very prominent as we saw from the start with the nuns and the female characters in this movie definitely outweigh the male characters. Something interesting I noticed was that the color scheme was quite dark and that the children specifically were always lined up in height order.

 

After finally getting to watch this movie I can say for myself that it definitely lives up to the hype that it has been given. With that said I would recommend this movie to anyone. The plot of the story is easy to follow which makes it enjoyable to watch and the energy is extremely lively. Something I think people would like about this movie more so than other classic musicals is that the songs are ones that everyone knows whether or not they have seen the movie so it’s fun to be able to sing along but also there is always something going on to keep the viewer occupied. I think the historical context this movie provides is also a really important one for the time because it brought in such a happy concept, singing, into a really horrible culture, Nazi Germany. I think people would be able to relate to characters in this movie because there are so many ages, and personalities that there is almost a part for everyone. Overall I loved the movie and I hope many other take the time to watch it.