An analysis of The Sound of Music seems almost impossible to do without examining the content within the context of its history. For a quarter of a century, Gone with the Wind had held the title of Hollywood’s biggest-grossing film. Consider just a very, very brief and partial list of commercially successful films released during that time: Casablanca, Meet Me in St. Louis, From Here to Eternity, Some Like It Hot. West Side Story and The Ten Commandments. Of them all—of all the movies made during that time—only The Ten Commandments came anywhere close to toppling Gone with the Wind off the pedestal. When that event finally happened, however, it was not a Biblical epic or a war flick or a thriller or wacky comedy or even a rip-roaring musical comedy about the early days of Hollywood itself. It was a musical about escaping Nazi terror.
Noted film scholar Andrew Bazin wrote that reality is representational and therefore cannot be measured quantitatively. The very same series of events can be portrayed from a number of perspectives in a variety of different tonal modes and still all attain the same relative level of reality. The final product—regardless of the perspective and tone—winds up being an illusion of reality. When enough people are exposed to this illusion of reality, the result is inevitably that this illusion of reality subjugates the actual reality to one degree or another to the point that “it is a necessary illusion [that] induces a loss of awareness of the reality itself, which becomes identified in the mind of the spectator with its cinematographic representation.”
When it comes to a perspective and tonal mood, the one cinematic genre which seems least suitable to recreating reality of a desperate attempt to keep a large family of children from eventual imprisonment or worse by the Nazis is almost certainly the music. Even a fantasy film in which the dreams of escaping or the nightmare of being caught are the subject of scenes carries a greater likelihood of replicating the real story. Almost one thing can be guaranteed regarding The Sound of Music and the true story upon which it is based: had it been made a straightforward dramatic film with no music and dancing, Gone with the Wind’s ride as the number one box office hit would have continued for a few more years.
One could certainly make a straight dramatic film about the Von Trapp family escaping the Nazis to various degrees of realism. After all, there is Hollywood realism and there is Italian neo-realism and the chasm between offers plenty of room for variation. Making a film based anywhere upon that spectrum and presenting it to an American audience hardly seems likely to produce the astounding popularity enjoyed by the musical.
Which brings things back to Bazin and the precise use of the phrase “necessary illusion.” In most cases, the illusion of reality is not really necessary, but preferred. The necessity of creating a reality with a perspective that is merely an illusion rather than one of documentary representation applies with great ferocity in the case of The Sound of Music. From the image of Maria enthusiastically twirling about on a mountaintop all the way through to the final image confirming that successful escape of all Von Trapp family members from the horrors of fascism is absolutely grounded in reality, but presented through an illusion that is not just necessary for the sake of getting through the tension of that drama, but of keeping the reality out afterwards.
A more realistic account might well have been a better movie. It would almost without question have been a movie enjoyed by a far less robust audience. The story is hardly the worst life during the Third Reich ever presented on film and many of those deeply dramatic films have been quite popular. None have ever come close to putting up the box office figures of The Sound of Music, however. This is a music that captured the hearts of Americans at the cinema, but then stayed with them. Back in the days of three-network television, every airing of the film drew huge ratings. With the arrival of cable and VHS and DVD and streaming, it is a film that millions watch over and over. This only exists because of what Bazin was suggesting. In watching a sweet, wholesome song-filled movie about escape from the Nazis, the audience is induced into “a loss of awareness of the reality itself, which becomes identified in the mind of the spectator with its cinematographic representation.” When fans of the film think of the reality of the Von Trapps narrowly escaping a potentially horrific end, they aren’t really thinking about the Maria Von Trapp, but rather that pretty Julie Andrews and those adorable moppets she sings with. It is the only way one can think of them and still go back another viewing. To allow one to ponder the actual circumstances being portrayed would be a terrible reminder that a musical is no place to tell that story.
