Monday 15 July 2019

Musical Monday #212

Nazis sure don't like it when people sing about their love for their homelands.  See similar scene in Casablanca for corroboration. 

Edelweiss from The Sound Of Music
Performed by Christopher Plummer and/or Bill Lee* and Julie Andrews
Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

*apparently the starts and ends of the songs are Plummer, and the main singing is dubbed by Lee.  

2 comments:

  1. Oh, Nazis like people singing about their love for their homelands a lot, provided the homeland is Deutschland...

    Meanwhile, the closest thing to this scene in the original movie is quite different in tone:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEoGDQPQW18
    It's a song contest, and the family triumphs, but the father of course won't lower himself to singing with them. Immediately before the scene, the father shouts angrily at the kids, because in the German movie, he never stops being a shouty, grumpy, verbally abusive man, even if he allows himself to be browbeaten by his new wife a lot.

    Incidentally, the thing they are singing is a song about hunting, which is why it starts with the singing of hunting horn notes. Then, there is the bit where the kids sing barking sounds, while the lyrics warn "run, hares and run, deer! Hide in thorny bushes, or the hunters will shoot you dead!"

    In the original movie, the Anschluss (where Nazi Germany took over Austria) happens *after* the song contest, and the family don't flee on foot over the mountains, but travel to America thanks to an invitation by a talent spotter / theatrical agent who heard the above song contest. In America, however, the talent agent betrays them, and they are nearly evicted by border agents at Ellis Island.

    The big tearjerking song at the end in the German movie is this one:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7ZGNNgx5mI
    ...which results in them being allowed to enter America after all, because everyone is so touched by their singing.


    I never managed to watch the German movie in entirety. It's sooooo boring, and the music is choral and dire, and it's not nearly as smooth or sweet or likeable as the American remake. There are German Heimatfilme which are watchable, but only really the ones that don't take themselves seriously. This isn't one of those. This is pretty much the most serious, most pompous, most joyless, and most successful German Heimatfilm (homeland movie) ever made. And yes, it's a German homeland movie, even though it's set in Austria & about an Austrian family. Because really, Austria is just a slightly different brand of Germany, the Pepsi to Deutschland's Coke. Somehow, I think the Nazis wouldn't have minded the Edelweiss / homeland song. To get into trouble, the Trapps would have had to sing about democracy, or peace, or tolerance, or some such thing...

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    1. I'm not sure I would call The Sound of Music the American remake. Admittedly i didn't know there was a German version of the story. But The Sound of music is based on the stage show The Sound Of Music and the stage show was an adaptation of the memoir 'The Story of the Trapp Family Singers' - although I think it was commissioned or whatever after someone saw the German movies. The German film may have been an earlier adaptation of the memoir but that doesn't make later films remakes. Just different adaptations of the same source material I guess. Escaping over the Alps may be a big pile of baloney but it certainly sounds a lot more exciting!

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