“Sound of Music” the film with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and Diane Sawyers hosted an affecting ABC remembrance of it last evening, interviewing both lead actors. The story of a pious but spiritually restless nun/nanny who falls in love and marries the war hero widower father of her young charges amid the Nazi takeover of Austria has been universalized in global popular culture. Even children in nightmarish North Korea sing songs from the musical, Sawyer incredulously reported.
Critics, as the Sawyer program noted, have dismissed the tale as a “sugar coated fantasy,” an escapist and feel-good love story set amid the glories of the Austrian Alps, in charming Salzburg, full of songs children can sing, with a dash of slapstick Nazi danger and nun comedy lathered in. Certainly it’s not a serious drama, supposedly.
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