AFI Movies: #55 The Sound of Music

Austria is going to be annexed by one of the most terrible dictators ever, but first, singing!

Jul 12, 2024

If you missed my first post where I explain what this is and how I’m scoring things, here you go.

As you look at the AFI’s list of top 100 movies from the 20th century, there are a whole lot of movies that I know I just missed out on because of when I was born, and the fact that they lost a lot of their fanfare by the time I was old enough to choose to watch films on my own. There are many others that maintained some level of popularity, or stuck with my parents or friends enough that I had a chance to watch them before I started going through the list. Somehow, The Sound of Music was not one of them. When I started watching The Sound of Music, I posted on my Instagram account about seeing the film for the first time, and I had several friends comment in surprise that I had somehow never seen it. As I’m writing this, I’m staying with some friends in Colorado, and one of them told me that when she was growing up, her parents had to hide the VHS of The Sound of Music from her and her sister because they would watch it non-stop, to the annoyance of their parents.

There are probably several reasons why I never got around to watching The Sound of Music. One of these reasons is because my parents never showed it to me, which could probably be explained by my dad’s disgruntled sigh when I told him this was my next movie. Another reason is my previously mentioned distaste for musicals. At the end of the day, as with all things in life, if something is a priority, you will make it happen, and I just never made watching The Sound of Music a priority, until now.

What I have found so interesting about the reactions I have received from people when I tell them I was watching this film is that, more than any other movie I’ve posted about before, the reactions are not only strong, but incredibly polarizing. For every one of my friends that told me they loved it, there was another that asked me if I was watching The Sound of Music “on purpose.” It just so happened that all the people that told me they loved it were female, while all the people that didn’t were male. Now, I never want to be one to oversimplify something like that, especially with the small sample size I was working with. As always, I wanted to go in to my viewing without any biases one way or another, so I just had to watch it for myself.

Enough stalling, let’s get into it:

Entertainment Value- 1.5/2

Here it is, my hot take about The Sound of Music: If they would’ve turned the last 20 minutes of this into a two hour movie, that is way more interesting to me1.

For what it is, it was a perfectly fine movie, but there’s a more interesting film hidden in there, and that makes me want to take half of a point off.

Correctness- 1/2

As a white man, I feel like I am incredibly qualified to identify when something is “white.” Most of the time, this is based more on vibes than on whether or not that thing is enjoyed by white people, if that thing is exclusively done/consumed by people who are white, or even if that thing was created by white people in the first place. I also want to make it very clear that there is nothing wrong with something being “white.” There are tons of things that are “white” that I love2, and tons of things that are “white” that are not in any way problematic.

All of that to say this, at one point while watching The Sound of Music, I wrote down “is this the whitest movie ever made?” I’d be willing to bet that the answer is no, but still, it got me thinking. I think the best way for me to explain this is by providing a list of things in this movie that gave me “white” vibes.

Europe. I feel like this is obvious.
Not a single person of color in sight.
Every person in this movie is just obnoxiously wealthy. There’s a literal baroness.
It’s a musical. That just feels white to me. Yes, I realize Hamilton is a thing, but white people LOVE Hamilton.
Nazis3

All in all, there’s nothing offensive about this movie, which in many ways is another way that it is “white.”

Influence- 2/2

Somehow, despite never once watching this movie, I knew all but one or two of the songs. I’d say that’s a pretty powerful staying power.

“Rewatchability”- 1/2

Something inside of me tells me I’ll watch this again at some point, and I’m not really sure why I have that feeling, but I do.

Technical Score- 2/2

The Sound of Music was filmed in a beautiful place, and the beauty comes to life on screen, so the filmmakers get credit for that. I already talked about how ridiculously earwormy the songs are as well.

Overall- 7.5/10

For as polarizing as the people in my life were about this one, I am kind of surprised to find myself kind of in the middle about it. As far as musicals go, it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen, but I still didn’t fall in love with it like others in my life have.

Words With Peck

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