I just had to Google to remind myself who the Max character was in the movie, and I ran across this comment that the stage version made the politics more visible:
"There is a point (in the stage version, not the movie) where Max and the Baroness try to convince Georg to just go along with the Nazis. It's a funny song called "No way to stop it" and in fact introduces why Georg dumps the Baroness and goes with Maria, over political differences. By dropping that song, the movie had to introduce another reason for the breakup.
But with that song in, maybe Max could convince the authorities "Well, I did try to talk him out of it."
(In RL, the Max-sort-of-character was a Catholic priest and much less colorful.)"
I think she represents the aristocracy — the group of people who get swept up in it all (in this case will, at a later date) while thinking they’re above it all
The sense of the world that is about to be lost: yes, that's something important. There are two books I think of as particularly conveying that loss of marvellous, complicated and above all multicultural societies of high culture: the Patrick Leigh-Fermor walk books (A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water), a love letter to the old Central Europe, gone for ever with the war, and then the short novel Ali and Nino, by Kurban Said (a pseudonym: there's a long discussion abut who he actually was), which is a love story set in the Caucasus, in Baku on the Caspian: again, an old, rich and complex society of high culture, destroyed and utterly swept away by the arrival of the Russian revolution. Have you read Ali and Nino, Henry?
I think it’s small and perfect. It & he are controversial. There’s a Wiki entry for the novel which makes out that bits of it are plagiarised. I think there’s an agenda at work there, because I can’t believe that’s right: the novel is exquisite.
And a slightly similar feeling, though more about a personal lost world, in Beer in the Snooker Club, by Waguih Ghali. Which also is exquisite, & full of longing.
There. But you got me thinking about novels of aching loss.
I can't wait for the comments... The film clearly wants us to see that the Captain is surrounded by Nazi sympathizers (like Franz butler who answers the door when Rolf rings with the telegram and later gives a Nazi salute) but unclear how it thinks young viewers will absorb this.
We had to explain that the butler was a sympathiser, yes. Notable how cold the butler is to Maria when she arrives. What are we to make of the Captain's response to this? Is he blind to Franz?
“She never says anything approving of the Captain’s views, even though she is supposed to be otherwise submitting herself to his approval for marriage.” That is funny because it’s a very real possibility that she is richer than he is and he is equally having to submit for approval! Ok some of this post is good (yes it’s a fairy tale).
The film’s target audience is and was the middle to low-brow masses. This film was released 10 plus years after 6 million white, married, middle class women joined the already 14 million poor, from every background, working women to build airplanes, tanks and other necessities during World War II. Women got a taste of independence and like the black male veterans who took to civil unrest to protest racist norms after having defended the nation during the war, the women were looking for their equal rights. And what do the women get? A fairy tale that signals go back to your true vocation as mother and wife — that’s the self-subjugating religion Maria brought.
Let’s be clear the question is not whether the Baroness is a Nazi. The question is why did the Captain dump a beautiful, independently wealthy and minded woman for the nanny? Baroness Schraeder’s silence and decision to remain are too thin to convict her of being a Nazi. The Nazi drama is secondary to the showdown between Baroness Schraeder and Maria. Most in the target audience are not aware of the ways of the aristocracy—that’s what they do, they send their children away to boarding school as their biological mother would have most certainly also done had she been alive. Not to mention they are also unaware of how preposterous it is to think that a man with the captain’s status would marry a nanny (odds then and now are slim to none) — for certain she would have been his lover on the side instead.
It’s just a fact that it happens very rarely in real life (slim to never). In real life Maria and the Captain were not so unequal in money after his losses. As you wrote, it’s a fairly tale. The film’s message is as I describe above, but if one wants to live in a fairy tale, then who am I to object?
Yes I know it’s based on a true story and the real Von Trapps were horrified by what was made out of their life story. The irony here is in the real lives of the Von Trapps, the captain lost most of his money in the depression in the 1930s and so a Baroness Schraeder in real life wouldn’t have so much as looked his way!
I just had to Google to remind myself who the Max character was in the movie, and I ran across this comment that the stage version made the politics more visible:
"There is a point (in the stage version, not the movie) where Max and the Baroness try to convince Georg to just go along with the Nazis. It's a funny song called "No way to stop it" and in fact introduces why Georg dumps the Baroness and goes with Maria, over political differences. By dropping that song, the movie had to introduce another reason for the breakup.
But with that song in, maybe Max could convince the authorities "Well, I did try to talk him out of it."
(In RL, the Max-sort-of-character was a Catholic priest and much less colorful.)"
oh interesting!
I think she represents the aristocracy — the group of people who get swept up in it all (in this case will, at a later date) while thinking they’re above it all
definitely, but I think her silences are too damning
This recording of “Something Good” is worth a listen:
https://youtu.be/lcEvELwNc9I?si=lXVEdhZcx8fZ7nXU
thx
Seven singing kids?...I'm surprised they didn't break out into the Heigh-Ho chorus. Snow White rather than Cinderella surely?
In snow white she escapes from the queen who is threatened by her power; Cinderella is rags to riches.
The sense of the world that is about to be lost: yes, that's something important. There are two books I think of as particularly conveying that loss of marvellous, complicated and above all multicultural societies of high culture: the Patrick Leigh-Fermor walk books (A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water), a love letter to the old Central Europe, gone for ever with the war, and then the short novel Ali and Nino, by Kurban Said (a pseudonym: there's a long discussion abut who he actually was), which is a love story set in the Caucasus, in Baku on the Caspian: again, an old, rich and complex society of high culture, destroyed and utterly swept away by the arrival of the Russian revolution. Have you read Ali and Nino, Henry?
I have not…
I think it’s small and perfect. It & he are controversial. There’s a Wiki entry for the novel which makes out that bits of it are plagiarised. I think there’s an agenda at work there, because I can’t believe that’s right: the novel is exquisite.
And a slightly similar feeling, though more about a personal lost world, in Beer in the Snooker Club, by Waguih Ghali. Which also is exquisite, & full of longing.
There. But you got me thinking about novels of aching loss.
Surely the writers' pitch would have included THE NUNS?
I can't wait for the comments... The film clearly wants us to see that the Captain is surrounded by Nazi sympathizers (like Franz butler who answers the door when Rolf rings with the telegram and later gives a Nazi salute) but unclear how it thinks young viewers will absorb this.
We had to explain that the butler was a sympathiser, yes. Notable how cold the butler is to Maria when she arrives. What are we to make of the Captain's response to this? Is he blind to Franz?
defo, but the Nazi thing is more subtle somehow
My kids know a lot about the war (though not that bit yet) but I think 7/9yro need to see a Nazi salute to really get it maybe
“She never says anything approving of the Captain’s views, even though she is supposed to be otherwise submitting herself to his approval for marriage.” That is funny because it’s a very real possibility that she is richer than he is and he is equally having to submit for approval! Ok some of this post is good (yes it’s a fairy tale).
The film’s target audience is and was the middle to low-brow masses. This film was released 10 plus years after 6 million white, married, middle class women joined the already 14 million poor, from every background, working women to build airplanes, tanks and other necessities during World War II. Women got a taste of independence and like the black male veterans who took to civil unrest to protest racist norms after having defended the nation during the war, the women were looking for their equal rights. And what do the women get? A fairy tale that signals go back to your true vocation as mother and wife — that’s the self-subjugating religion Maria brought.
Let’s be clear the question is not whether the Baroness is a Nazi. The question is why did the Captain dump a beautiful, independently wealthy and minded woman for the nanny? Baroness Schraeder’s silence and decision to remain are too thin to convict her of being a Nazi. The Nazi drama is secondary to the showdown between Baroness Schraeder and Maria. Most in the target audience are not aware of the ways of the aristocracy—that’s what they do, they send their children away to boarding school as their biological mother would have most certainly also done had she been alive. Not to mention they are also unaware of how preposterous it is to think that a man with the captain’s status would marry a nanny (odds then and now are slim to none) — for certain she would have been his lover on the side instead.
for one thing, it's based on a true story, and for another she says she is submitting herself for his approval
It’s just a fact that it happens very rarely in real life (slim to never). In real life Maria and the Captain were not so unequal in money after his losses. As you wrote, it’s a fairly tale. The film’s message is as I describe above, but if one wants to live in a fairy tale, then who am I to object?
The film's message is not that snobbish!
Exactly — the film erases class lines because it’s a fairy tale
Yes I know it’s based on a true story and the real Von Trapps were horrified by what was made out of their life story. The irony here is in the real lives of the Von Trapps, the captain lost most of his money in the depression in the 1930s and so a Baroness Schraeder in real life wouldn’t have so much as looked his way!
they were horrified that he was made out to be strict, but your comment it is preposterous for him to marry the nanny is wrong
Just throw in the Knights Templar and you’ve got it made