The Sound of Music's 60th anniversary: a masterpiece that celebrates civilization.

Lamenting the last golden years...

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of The Sound of Music. Released in 1964, The Sound of Music was the highest grossing film of all time, a record now several times surpassed. It has recently been re-released in cinemas and movie-theatres for the anniversary.

Although I have seen the films scores of times, mostly as a child, though more recently with my own children, I had never seen it on the big screen. The effect is astonishing. It is like watching a whole new movie at times. The magnificence of the mountains is incomparable.

This scale makes the film’s main message much more prominent. As the camera pans down into Salzburg, away from the hills, an interstitial title appears: “Salzburg, Austria, in the last golden days of the Thirties.” Spires, towers, and steeples rise up against the background of the hills.

Nature and art. Man and God. The film keeps showing us that civilization is the work of man, not God. Great art is derived from nature, discovered among her bounty, but it does not arise like the forests or appear in the morning like the clouds.

Maria sings: “The hills fill my heart/ With the sound of music/ My heart wants to sing every song/It hears.” She discovers this music in nature. The background music of the film is full of the songs of birds and breezes. But it is she who discovers it. Maria is a woman of God. Her heart wishes to sing the music of the world.

The last golden days are not entirely sustained by religion. The culture of Salzburg is essential to its civilizational accomplishments. The Captain is a man of honor, patriotism, and the old Austrian ways. The Salzburg music festival preserves folk traditions. In contrast, the wicked Baroness does nothing to preserve her dying world. Nazi encroachment into Austria signals the death of the old order.

Maria was a nun who struggled to fit in at the abbey. The Mother Superior sent her to the von Trapps, to be a governess to seven children living in regimented fashion with their widowed father, a former navy captain unable to live happily after his wife died.

Maria brings music to the house, and has the children marching not in military but in artistic fashion. They learn to sing, put on shows, and become carefree. At first the captain, intent on marrying the Baroness, takes against this. But Maria wins him round. The Baroness realises she has competition and scares Maria away. She flees, heartbroken, in the night.

But the Mother Superior sends her back. The abbey is not a refuge, she tells Maria. You must face your problems. The captain realises he cannot marry the Baroness (who was planning to send the children to boarding school—hiss!). Maria and the captain are married.

Alas. Anschluss is coming. The telegram boy gives the Nazi salute. The Baroness herself is a closet Nazi. But the Captain refuses to comply, making himself vulnerable. When he is summoned to join the German Navy, the only option is escape. Caught as they leave, they plan to get out after performing at the Salzburg Folk Festival.

As the songs Maria taught the children are re-sung, they take on an elegaic meaning. ‘Edelweiss’ becomes a song of resistance. ‘So Long, Farewell’ becomes more and mre tense as they leave the stage hoping not to be detained. Maria’s discovery of art in nature becomes a heroic defence of the old civilization against the destructive forces of the new regime.

The captain’s transformation began when he heard the children singing. “My heart will be blessed/ With the sound of music/ And and I’ll sing/ Once more.” Now his singing is part of a scene that makes a prayer out of song. As Maria sang at the beginning, their hearts want “To sing through the night/ Like a lark who is learning to pray.”

How tragic to watch this film today. The ending is heroic, as the von Trapps escape over the mountains, dressed in traditional Austrian clothes, the resistant unit of family secure against the over-mighty state. But so much will be lost. It is impossible not to think of all that was swept away in the heart of Europe, gathered up like the dust of the world.

The real Trapp family never did come back. They lived in America, working as a singing group. They kept the old songs alive, but not in the old place. If we catch a tear in our eye at the end, it is an ambivalent one: joy for their escape, lament for all that was to ensue.

The civilisation celebrated by The Sound of Music hardly feels secure today—and not just because children spend their time on iPads, rather than learning to sing. The world it came from is thoroughly lost. Although no-one seems to have any significant ideological objection this film, Maria is the sort of woman of whom our grandmothers would have unreservedly approved: her dresses, her singing, her love of children, her feminine poise, her religion, her waist size.

And it is based in a culture we that is constantly criticized in the media. The wedding scene is accompanied with the song “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria”, and Liesl, sixteen going on seventeen, stands by them at the altar, awaiting her turn. No-one now wishes to make a film suggesting that the “solution” for a young woman lacking direction is to get married.

The Sound of Music is a lament for a deep, mild, local conservative temperament. It may be out of fashion, as is the notion of defending high civilization and elitism—, but something keeps drawing people back to The Sound of Music. The movie theatre where I watched it has only a dozen people or so, a pathetic showing. But the film remains a monument. Who has not seen it? Who does not know the music? So many of you reading this will have it playing in your head right now.

So go, go in the spirit of excellence and see the re-release. Pause the world and return to a great civilization for a few hours. Then step outside and appreciate all that we have today. We still live in a world of blessings. We may not have the architecture of Salzburg, nor the dresses and large families.

But we have a mighty civilization that we can preserve and improve if we want to. Ask yourself what you can do to contribute to a new set of golden years in this new world. The blessings of our society are not given to us like the rocks and the wind. It was all discovered. It can all be lost again.