"The hills are alive...... With the Sound of Music............................"

Being an Indian & an avid movie watcher, I can lap up everything & anything related to it!!!

I have watched innumerable films in various different languages, yet my one favourite throughout the years has been , 'The Sound of Music', a movie released in the year 1965 was an exceptionally successful film in the mid-1960s - at the time of its release, it surpassed Gone with the wind (1939) as the number one box office hit of all time. 

This wholesome production from producer/director Robert Wise (of the previously popular West Side Story (1961)) and 20th Century Fox has become one of the most favorite, beloved films of moviegoers. It is a joyous, uplifting, three-hour adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1959 hit Broadway stage musical.

"The Sound of Music" is a mostly true story, of the Von Trapp Family Singers. Austrian Captain von Trapp, wife Maria and his children had sung in the Salzburg Music Festival in 1936, then scooted out of Europe in 1938 to get away from Hitler and his evil ways. Eventually they opened a music school, then an inn, in Vermont.

Maria wrote a book, "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers," which became a German film, "Die Trapp Familie," in 1956. By 1959, the story of the von Trapps had become a successful Broadway musical, with a little help from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. 

It is the story of the lively novitiate nun, Maria (Andrews), who, too flighty to concentrate on religious duties is sent to be governess to the von Trapp children. She soon thaws out the icy Captain von Trapp (played by Christopher Plummer) and he sings "Edelweiss" with his children, and before too long he's in love with the noviate and eventually they are wed.

There are a number of little plots along the way -- Liesl (Charmian Carr) has a flirtation with Hitler youth Rolf and sings "Sixteen, Going on Seventeen," the captain almost marries the Baroness Schraeder (Eleanor Parker), and Max Detweiler (Richard Haydn) is amusing as the impresario of the music festival, who gets the kids ready to perform against the captain's wishes.

The film has a ton of delightful songs -- the title tune, "Maria," "Something Good," "Edelweiss," "Climb Every Mountain," "So Long, Farewell," "My Favorite Things," "Sixteen Going On Seventeen," and others which I personally remember by heart even today.

The sentimental, entertaining musical was a huge critical & commercial success & nominated for ten Academy Awards, and came away with five major wins: Best Picture and Best Director (Robert Wise), Best Sound, Best Score (Irwin Kostal), and Best Film Editing (William Reynolds). Its other five nominations were for Best Actress (Julie Andrews who lost to Julie Christie in Darling), Best Supporting Actress (Peggy Wood), Best Color Cinematography (Ted McCord), Best Color Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Color Costume Design. 

(Excerpts taken from reviews by different movie critics)