There's a lot going on beneath the sunny and earnest innocent surface of The Sound
of Music that you probably didn't recognize when you watched it as a kid. So get ready for
some of your favorite things to be the details that only adults notice in this classic film.
The romance between governess Maria and Captain von Trapp is presented as perfectly prudish.
The two initially fight their mutual attraction, remaining platonic until their splashy church
wedding. But there's a lot of innuendo underneath the surface if you look for it.
For example, Maria tells the Captain that she fell in love with him when he "blew
that silly whistle," and the Captain admits that he fell in love with her
when she sat on a pinecone left on her chair by one of his children as a prank.
The innuendo of these two symbols probably goes right over kids' heads, but adults know what's up.
"Do you know when I first started loving you? That
night at the dinner table when you sat on that ridiculous pinecone."
If you're still not convinced, consider what happens when Maria confesses to the
governess that she fled the von Trapp house because she's fallen hard for the Captain.
The Abbess tells her that God is all for a good love story, and that Maria must experience life
before committing to the convent. Then she sings a song encouraging Maria to "Climb
Every Mountain." If the mountain in question isn't Captain von Trapp, we'll eat our shoes.
One of the most memorable sequences in The Sound of Music is the Ländler dance at the
ball that Captain von Trapp hosts. Maria and the children look on woefully from the outside
as all the fancy folks dance. Maria then begins to teach the children a traditional
Austrian dance called the Ländler, and when Captain von Trapp notices, he begins dancing
with Maria to demonstrate. By the end of the dance, everyone at the ball is turned on.
But that dance isn't just a nice romantic moment
that makes it clear that Maria and the Captain are hot for each other.
The two of them have to behave very carefully in public. If he touched her in a familiar way,
it would be a scandal. But dance has always been a loophole. By dancing with her in public,
he gets a few uninterrupted minutes to touch Maria and be close to her without causing an outrage.
Dance has been part of the public courtship ritual for centuries, so there's a very good reason why
the Ländler scene ends with Baroness Schraeder openly horrified at what she's just witnessed.
As every adult in the room knows, Maria and the Captain were basically making out in their heads.
The Sound of Music is generally clear on a couple of things:
the Nazis are the bad guys, and the Nazis are no good. There's no real wiggle room here,
and that's clear even when you're a kid. But when you watch the movie as an adult,
you realize that it still kind of downplays how evil the Nazis actually were. Captain von Trapp
seems to dislike them because they want to force him to serve in their navy and go to Berlin,
not because they committed genocide and were determined to invade most of Europe.
You could argue that The Sound of Music is set before the world was generally aware that the
Nazis were about to launch one of the greatest genocides of all time. But even from that
perspective, the depiction of Captain von Trapp's conflict with them still doesn't hold water.
Austria hadn't existed as a separate country for very long at that point, and someone like
Captain von Trapp would've been more likely to want Austria to become part of Germany.
Thus, as historian Peter Levine has argued, the filmmakers contrived an Austrian character
who was anti-Nazi without once mentioning any of the things that made the Nazis evil.
Despite very much having the hots for the Captain, Maria is interpreted by some
viewers as subliminally homosexual. From the very beginning, she's an outsider who's troubled and
uncertain about herself, which is something that many LGBTQ individuals can readily identify with.
She's also styled in a subtly butch manner, with a short, boyish haircut,
and in the beginning of the film she's dressed in an androgynous way that symbolizes her
conflict between becoming a nun and becoming a wife. It's easy to take this one step further
and imagine that she's trying to decide if she's straight, or not so straight.
As noted by historian Stacy Ellen Wolf in her book A Problem Like Maria, it's unsurprisingly common
for queer women to have a crush on Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music at an age when they're just
starting to figure out their own orientation. They see Maria as a symbol of freedom because
she spends most of the first half of the movie rejecting the traditional roles that she's asked
to play. She won't be the chaste and obedient perfect nun, nor will she be Captain von Trapp's
idea of the perfect governess, thus symbolically rejecting traditional gender roles. She seeks joy
in her life despite the disapproval of others, so it's no wonder that she's a queer touchstone.
When you're a kid, the doomed romance between Rolfe and Liesl is probably one of the most
boring parts of The Sound of Music. But you nevertheless know that Rolfe becomes a bad
guy in the end, turning on Liesl just when she needs him to be her friend. With older eyes,
you probably start booing every time Rolfe shows up on screen because he's objectively
a jerk from the very beginning. Our introduction to Rolfe includes an exchange of dialogue that
makes it clear that he's already a part of the Hitler Youth and cheering on the Nazis from afar.
"I trust everything is under control?" "Yes. Yes." "Good." "Are there any developments?" "Perhaps."
And he just gets worse and worse over the course of the film. He's manipulative and abusive towards
Liesl, refusing to communicate with her and then acting like she's the crazy one. He also calls her
a baby during the performance of "I Am Sixteen, Going on Seventeen," which is kind of sexist.
Simply put, just about everything he does is the behavior of an abuser.
If you don't pay close attention, you might make the mistake of thinking Baroness Schraeder is a
villain. After all, we know that Captain von Trapp and Maria are destined to be together even if
we're unaware of the true story behind the film. We're primed to hate the Baroness just because
she's Maria's rival. Furthermore, she engages in a series of superficially villainous acts,
like scheming to send the children off to boarding school, and telling Maria that the
Captain is falling in love with her, because she knows that will make Maria leave immediately.
But in reality, none of these things are particularly evil. The children behave terribly
towards the Baroness because they prefer Maria, so believing that they might need some discipline
isn't unjustified. And while her motivation behind telling Maria about the Captain's feelings is
clearly selfish, she doesn't lie, nor does she force Maria to do anything. And when it becomes
painfully clear that she's lost the Captain to Maria, she's the only one in this love triangle
to behave with class. She makes it easy for the Captain to break up with her, and she makes no
effort to take revenge on Maria or stop their marriage by spreading rumors. She's all class.
"Auf wiedersehen, darling."
The original Broadway musical version of The Sound of Music was first staged in 1959, so
it's not surprising that the gender roles in the film aren't exactly progressive. But even for the
time period's standards, they're actually kind of shockingly bad. For example, the film presents an
extremely unrealistic ideal for women. The teenage Liesl is presented as a total innocent, completely
ignorant of all aspects of men and romance. And this is clearly a good thing as far as the film is
concerned. The "I Am Sixteen, Going on Seventeen" scene is intended to be funny because even though
Rolfe isn't much older or more experienced than Liesl, the song's lyrics still support
the idea that the best way for a young girl to be is "totally unprepared" to "face a world of men."
Later on, Maria advises Liesl that when a woman marries a man, she belongs to him like a piece
of property. Since this is coming from a cheerful Julie Andrews, it comes across as
the most obvious truth in the world. And in the film's universe, the only way that Maria calms
down and finds happiness is when she lands a husband, which is not exactly encouraging.
"There are so many things I think I should know, but I don't. I really don't." "How can you?"
One thing that kids and adults can surely agree on about The Sound of Music is that Uncle Max
is delightful. He's that fun family friend you adore as a kid and like to drink with as an adult.
But when you grow up, you realize that he's also the darkest part of the film.
Because while it's not explicit, there's plenty of reasons to believe that Max is
both Jewish and gay, which is cause for concern when the Nazis arrive.
According to historian Peter Levine, Max is presented as, quote, "the money-grubbing
urbanite," which is a notoriously prejudicial Jewish stereotype. The film was released in 1965
and aimed at families, so it's not surprising that the filmmakers chose to keep things light,
but it's hard to miss the darker undertones with older eyes. After spending most of the film
looking out for himself, Max finally becomes selfless and helps the von Trapps escape,
but unlike the real person the character is based on, he stays behind. That means that a Jewish gay
man who has just broken several laws is about to be arrested by members of the Nazi Party.
"Heil, Hitler!" "Oh, uh, heil, Hitler."
The Sound of Music is based on the real Maria von Trapp's memoir The Story of the Trapp Family
Singers. But just because it's based on a real story doesn't mean it can be used to teach real
history. The list of historical inaccuracies is very long, even if you just restrict it to the von
Trapp family's personal history. For one thing, the ages and names of the children were changed,
as the eldest von Trapp child was fully grown and a practicing physician when the family fled
Austria, while three kids were simply omitted altogether. Furthermore, Maria and the Captain
got married nearly 10 years before they fled. And most notably, the reason the family became touring
singers was because they had gone broke during the Great Depression and needed to make some money.
And the film gets plenty of other history wrong beyond the von Trapps. For example, "Edelweiss"
isn't a traditional Austrian folk song. Instead, it was written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar
Hammerstein for the musical. And the family didn't climb the Alps into Switzerland. For one thing,
crossing the Alps would've brought them into Germany, where they definitely did not want to be.
In reality, they didn't do any hiking at all, as they took a train to Italy.
When you're a kid, the costumes in The Sound of Music probably come across as pretty hokey. But
when you grow up, you just might realize that they perfectly indicate the status of each character.
For example, Maria's clothes track her development. Initially, she's wearing the
cast-off clothing given to her by the abbey that are drab, boxy, and similar to what the
children wear. But when she and the Captain finally admit their feelings to each other,
she's wearing a much more feminine gown that flows and shimmers. Her wedding dress is a fairly
obvious symbol of transition. But what's really notable is the sophisticated outfit she wears
after her honeymoon, symbolizing her ascension as both an adult and the woman of the house.
Meanwhile, the Captain starts off wearing military-style clothes
that underscore his rigid, bitter life, and his children are dressed in drapes,
marking them as just something else rattling around his house. But by the end,
he's dressed very similarly to his children, signifying his return to his family.
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