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Robert Wise, 1965, Fox
What is it about the story of the singing and dancing, Alp-sprinting, eternally perky von Trapps that has movie audiences continually naming The Sound of Music among their favorite cinematic things no fewer than 40 years after its first release in 1965? Who could have guessed that this undeniably schmaltzy tale of a singing nun, a grumpy captain, and his seven curtain-wearing tykes would become nothing less than the most beloved movie musical in the history of film?
You'd have to of lived under a rock for most of the last century not to know the story of The Sound of Music. Maria (Julie Andrews in the role that cemented her image as film's eternal virgin) is a good-natured but undisciplined nun who returns to her abbey — after a particularly delicious day of bolting over the Alps while singing her lungs out — only to have the Reverend Mother (Peggy Wood) command that she pack her bags. Seems the recently widowed and autocratic Captain von Trapp (a young and devastatingly handsome Christopher Plummer) needs a governess for his neglected septets — a brood so sheltered that they don't even know how to sing!
Good thing Maria is in tow with a guitar and a host of Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes. Inevitably, Maria's presence in the von Trapp household leads to much warbling (once those von Trapps learn to sing, you can't shut them up!), well-mannered lunacy, and, inevitably, love between the novice and the captain. Throw in a backdrop that includes Catholicism and the Nazis, and you've got a one-of-a-kind musical that walked away with the Best Picture Oscar at a time when most Americans (disillusioned by the recent assassination of JFK) desperately craved a little optimism.
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