It’s hard to convince people gripped by today’s mood of secular gloom that The Sound of Music is a work of abiding artistic genius.
The cynic will recall a saccharine musical stretched over almost three hours, involving singing nuns, an impromptu pyjama party, puppet shows and the mawkish strains of Edelweiss.
All this soppy madness culminates in a family of nine fleeing from a pack of Nazis, but not before pausing to sing at a music festival. Why would anyone take it seriously?
One rather prosaic reason is that the film, which celebrates its 50th birthday this month, is the fifth most lucrative movie in cinema history.
When it was first released in 1965 it knocked Gone with the Wind off the top money-making spot.
A better reason is that The Sound of Music is a strongly Catholic film that exudes an innocence you’ll never find in films today. Yet this brilliant work of art has yet to gain the following it deserves among the faithful.
For instance in 2008 Bishop Richard Williamson, then a member of the traditionalist Society of St Pius X, described the movie as “soul-rotting slush”.
The eccentric prelate asked: “Can you imagine this Julie Andrews staying with the Captain if the romance went out of their marriage? Would she not divorce him and grab his children from him to be her toys? Such romance is not actually pornographic but it is virtually so, in other words, all the elements of pornography are there, just waiting to break out.”
It’s true that The Sound of Music emerged in a decade that bore some pretty rotten fruit. The sexual revolution of the 1960s was bad news for the Church and for the world.
But that just makes The Sound of Music shine even brighter as a cinematic jewel for which the Church should be grateful. For every Bishop Williamson there should be a dozen clerics urging Catholics to embrace this epic story of faith, family and vocation. Continue reading
- Madeleine Teahan is Associate Editor at the Catholic Herald.