Julie Andrews at 90

Today marks the 90th birthday of actress Julie Andrews. As such, it's not a surprise that TCM is spending the evening with a night of her films. Not too many: just four, since all of the movies are over two hours. The night kicks off with a movie that premiered on TCM only a few months ago: The Sound of Music, at 8:00 PM.

Now, this isn't going to be the biggest of synopses, since I presume most people know the basic story of The Sound of Music. Maria (Julie Andrews) is supposed to be a student and possible novitiate at a convent in Salzburg, Austria, but she's a flighty young woman who would rather go up in the mountains and sing. Indeed, I don't think we have a line of regular dialogue until about 15 minutes into the movie as we get the title song followed the nuns singing about how to solve a problem like Maria. They decide to solve that problem by sending her off to be the governess of the von Trapp children. They're a wealthy family of seven children whose mother died some time back but who have a way of scaring off would-be governesses.

Part of that is the children's pranks, but just as much of it is because of the father, Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer, for whose Summer Under the Stars day the movie got its TCM premiere). He's humorless, runs the family like clockwork, and doesn't expect the kids to do such normal kid stuff like play or, God forbid, sing. Meanwhile, he's on-again, off-again seeing a baroness (Eleanor Parker), and there's an expectation that Georg is going to marry her since she seems like she'd be a good stepmother to the children. They do genuinely seem to like her, as well has her producer friend who comes from Vienna, Max Detweiler (Richard Haydn).

Of course, the viewer knows that Maria winds up a von Trapp. Her presence fairly quickly brightens the children's lives as she's willing to take them out for a day on the town to play, as well as hike up mountains and sing. This is also going to piss off Dad. But Max likes their singing, and Maria is just so damn nice that Georg starts to warm to her. However, there are going to be many complications along the way.

One of them is the class difference and the expectation that George should marry a woman of the Baroness' social standing. But the Baroness eventually realizes Georg and Maria are meant to be together. The bigger problem is the political situation. The Nazis had been putting all sorts of political pressure on Austria, with the eventual result being the Anschluss, when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. George was not pleased with the Nazis, and this was obviously going to be difficult for him. In the movie, he receives a telegram from Berlin informing him that he's being voluntold to go to Bremerhaven to join the German navy and take up his old job as a ship's captain. This is what convinces him that he and the rest of the family have to escape.

I am not, as I have stated here quite a few times over the course of the years, the biggest fan of musicals. To me they're incredibly artificial. The Sound of Music is no different. It also goes on incredibly long, lasting a shade under three hours. But I can't deny that the movie is extremely well made from a technical point of view, with a fine performance from Andrews and a lot of lovely cinematography. Not that it's difficult to make the Austrian Alps look good on screen. So for anybody who likes musicals, they're going to love The Sound of Music. Granted, such people have probably already seen it. But if anybody who likes musicals has not yet seen The Sound of Music, do yourself a favor and watch it tonight.