I feel a bit dirty for having actually used some law in my last blog. That isn't what I went to university for years for, followed by that training contract thing and my post-qualification experience. Back to the fluff you're accustomed to instead!
So, I travel to Salzburg a fair bit
with my groups of lovely Americans. I delight in telling both showing them the locations used for the Sound of Music and telling them all the things wrong with the movie. So here goes for some of the things you might not know and almost certainly don't need to know.
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| Stunning Salzburg: the Do-Re-Mi fountain/ Castle |
Background to the MovieIt's based on a true story. Maria Trapp (the "von" is illegal in Austria and has been since the end of WW1) wrote her memoirs in a book called the The Story of the Trapp Family Singers in 1949. She negotiated a very bad deal and essentially signed away the royalties. The book was made into German language films, followed by a musical, and finally the movie we all know backwards and watch every Christmas or Easter entirely drunk. The movie has been watched by an estimated 1 billion people: the Trapp children received precisely directly $0 as a result. Great business woman!
There are lots of factual inaccuracies in the movie. Maria came to the family as a tutor for one of the kids, not as a governess to all. This took place in 1926, so she had been with them for 12 years (and married to Captain von Trapp for 11 years) when the Anschluss - the setting for the movie - takes place. The eldest child was a son, not a daughter; they had 10 children not 7. The family was actually quite impoverished, having lost their money with the collapse of a private Austrian bank in the 30s. The money came in large part from the Captain's first wife, Agathe Whitehead, the granddaughter of the inventor of the torpedo. The Captain was a
Ritter (Baronet, or Sir), not a Baron - having been rewarded for successfully sinking several British ships during World War One. He was actually an Italian citizen (he was born in present day Croatia, but owned a property that was transferred from Austria-Hungary to Italy with the Treaty of Versailles). After 1918 he was a plain old "Herr" - it remains a criminal offence to use noble titles in the Republic of Austria.
It's often said that when Rodgers and Hammerstein got hold of the rights to the movie, America was crying out for a saccharine coated story to cheer them up from the gloom and to distract them from the problems of a war in Vietnam (they had almost 200,000 troops there by the end of 1965), the shock at the death of President Kennedy, and on-going civil rights battles dividing the country. The Sound of Music, with its sweet, cheery, innocent "loveliness" was an instant and massive hit. It has remained one throughout the Anglo-Saxon world ever since.
Some Interesting Things About the MoviePoint number one is that virtually no-one knows the Sound Of Music in Austria, nor in Germany. It is an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. Salzburg is the city of music, yes - but the music of Mozart. (To be fair, he hated the place: there is a wonderful new modern art monument to him near the Salzach River. It is a tall chair with a hole in it. When I asked a city guide why, she quoted a letter from the 22 year old composer: "I hope it's not necessary to tell you that I care little about Salzburg and nothing at all about the archbishop, and that I shit on both of them.")
The only people who know the movie are those involved in the tourist industry. Those Austrians who have watched it consider it unbelievably kitsch and faintly ridiculous. References to "Schnitzel with Noodles" are found very amusing - no Austrian would ever combine the two.
The next thing is that if you know Salzburg, you know the sequences just don't work. The kids come out of one place and then are to be seen 25 minutes' walk away on the other side of town after turning a corner. The wedding church is in Mondsee, not at the Abbey, 27km outside Salzburg. The graveyard scene looks vaguely like St Peter's cemetery - but actually it isn't half as beautiful if you've been. In fact it was a set in a studio which had more space. Also the monks would not allow the cemetery to be filmed in.
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| Leopoldskron: the lake/ gardens (but not house) from SoM |
The "Von Trapp" villa is actually three different locations. The gardens with the beautiful lake are at Leopoldskron. The house exterior (it is nowhere near a lake) is at Frohnburg, a couple of kilometres away on the road to Hellbrunn Palace. The gazebo was in yet another place, but has been moved to Hellbrunn. Sadly, when I visited a week ago, there wasn't a trace to be seen of Rolf's fabulously and improbably tight trousers. Oh - and if Liesl was 16 going on 17 at the time of the movie, I'm the Pope. Try closer to 26 going on 27....
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| No Rolf, No Tight Trousers *sad face* |
All *interior* scenes were filmed back in Hollywood. Therefore when you see Maria talking to the Captain in the garden, watch carefully. The scenes were filmed as monologues in 2 different locations - you never see both the lake and the house together. Maria is filmed with the lake behind her; the Captain is filmed with the house behind him, and they simply cut and pasted the sequences together. Clever for the early 60s. When anyone enters the house, the scene is in fact back in California, not in Austria.
The real Trapp house is in yet *another* location and does not feature in the movie at all. It is now a hotel. It gets great reviews.
Whilst the movie was filmed, all of the child actors, their mothers, Maria and the rest of the cast stayed in the beautiful 5-star Hotel Sacher by the river. It was at this time known as the Österreichischer Hof. Legend has it the name was changed as wealthy Americans staying there could not pronounce the name to taxi drivers. Christopher Plummer alone stayed in the Hotel Bristol across the square. He apparently didn't mind the noise of the children, but did mind their mothers.
Some ClangersThe movie is *full* of mistakes - part of which makes it so much fun to watch. I seem to spot something new each time. The very first scene announces we are in "Salzburg, Austria in the last Golden Days of the 30s" - watch out for the modern 15-storey concrete tower block on the far left close to the railway station. The area was bombed to shit by the USAF during WW2 and the building in question is the Hotel Europa, fondly known as the "Cigarette Packet" locally and of 1957 vintage.
The opening sequence looks like it is a paid-for advert by the Austrian Tourist Board. It takes about 10 minutes before the camera swoops in on Julie spinning round on the hillside. Moments later she is rushing back on foot to the Nonnberg abbey - about 15 km away.
Maria famously rips down the curtains to make play-clothes for the children. They dance around in them during Do-Re-Mi - but watch mid song as they change into a whole SET of other multi-coloured clothes - before changing back into the original curtain clothes. Has a single window in Salzburg been safe from Maria's kleptomaniac activities during these weeks?
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| How many windows were harmed in filming this scene? |
The Captain drives a lovely Mercedes-Benz cabriolet. Its steering wheel is on the wrong side. Austria drives on the right (and has done since 1918), yet the car is a right drive model. It also has 4 seats. This does not stop the family (7 kids plus 2 adults AND the ever so slightly sinister Uncle Max of the splendid "
Gloomy Pussies" line) at various points from piling in. Ten people in a four seater car is quite some going. Bagsy not sitting on Uncle Max's lap :o
The movie has wonderful summer sunshine. The birds are singing, the trees are in full leaf. The kids are wearing adorable little curtainy Lederhosen: they even go for a dip in the lake! Now consider the timing. All this happens directly before the couple get it together (that scene where they do actually makes me feel suicidal) and then disappear off on honeymoon. They come back to find Austria has been annexed by Germany. The actual date of the Anschluss? 12 March 1938. January and February aren't that warm in the mountains, kiddos!
The Real Life MariaThe real life Maria Trapp was by many accounts an utter battle-axe. By contrast her husband was universally considered a lovely, sweet man. He died in 1947 in the US. Maria was extremely controlling with regards to her step-children and children and forced them to sing like puppets. They sang beautifully on stage, which they had to do to earn money when they arrived in New York, but American audiences did not like them. During one performance a fly flew into Maria's mouth and she nearly choked. The children burst out laughing, as did the audience, and from that moment she realised that an American audience required entertainment, not just perfect harmonies.
There are various stories of Maria's daughters having nervous breakdowns and being found wandering in fields, having climbed out of the window of the ski lodge she eventually bought in Stowe, Vermont. She certainly seems to have been a very difficult and not entirely stable individual. She would attend performances of the movie and apparently lose herself and walk down the aisle of the cinema during the wedding scene, for example. She actually married the Captain in the Nonnberg Abbey, not the church at Mondsee as in the movie. The nuns refused to allow the camera crew to film inside and were incidentally horrified to see actresses having cigarette breaks outside the abbey (they could not stop the filming of the outside).
Its Enduring LegacyAll of this is of course utterly unimportant: the movie is utterly fabulous: good kitsch shite, and I love it. You can probably tell from how much I know about it that I *might* have watched it more than once. Ahem. It has enduring appeal: thousands of people still go along to Singalong Versions that are held regularly. Some idiots even get dressed up and take yodelling goats under their arms with them. Ahem again.
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| WHO would humiliate themselves like this?! |
Most recently the show has made it to Salzburg - with lyrics in German - in the form of a puppet show. The puppets actually control puppets in the Lonely Goatherd song, which must be amazing to watch. The Sound of Music brings millions in tourism each year to Salzburg. Almost 50 years later it is still going *very* strong. It is good clean fun, and we love it.
A More Serious Problem The PROBLEM though is the utter whitewash of Austrian history. The movie portrays Austria as the innocent victim, the object of Germany's aggression. This is so far from the truth it is offensive. I have heard the statistic that Austrians made up 7% of the population of the Reich, 25% of the membership of the SS, and some 40% of the management of the death camps. Hitler was Austrian, as were Eichmann (chief implementer of the Final Solution), Stangl (commandant of Treblinka), Arthur Seys-Inquart (Reich Protector of the Netherlands), Odio Globocnik (lead administrator of the Death Camps), Amon Göth (of Schindler's List fame) etc etc . This country was
up to their eyebrows in the whole murderous chapter.
After the Anschluss a referendum was held: admittedly there was intimidation etc, but nonetheless 99.7% of Austrians voted in favour. Hitler's reception in Vienna was rapturous. Austrians threw flowers at the German tanks, rather than shooting at them. Remember the Singing Contest scene in the Sound Of Music where everyone in the audience gasps and shakes their head when the Captain announces he will have to go off to Bremerhaven to join the Navy of the Third Reich? (actually he did consider doing this in real life). The 0.03% of Austrians who voted against annexation with Hitler's Germany could actually probably have fitted in the Salzburg festival hall. The Nazis in Berlin were actually shocked at the utterly vicious spontaneous attacks on Vienna's Jews by their Austrian compatriots and tried to rein them in as they gave such bad publicity.
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| Orgasming Austrians in Vienna crowd to meet their Führer |
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre continues to criticise Austria strongly for its unwillingness to put Nazi criminals on trial (the last was in the 1970s) and compares it highly unfavourably with Germany in this regard. The "victim theory" is highly damaging to Austria's present and future. Only recently I was in Auschwitz and visited the Austrian exhibit. There was a massive disclaimer at the start from the Austrian government that said they realised how one-sided and historically inaccurate the exhibit is. Things are changing, but only slowly. The Sound of Music has widely perpetuated the "innocent little Austrian" myth abroad and this is actually very, very bad.
If you want to read some more serious thoughts on how dealing with history affects a country's present and future,
have a gander of this by me, written during the Queen's visit to Ireland.The Final SceneThe movie closes wonderfully with the family singing "Climb Every Mountain" all the way to Switzerland. Had Mother Superior been wheeled out to sing this by the Austrians, incidentally, the Anschluss could no doubt have been prevented single-handedly. The notes she hits would have stopped Panzers in their tracks and shattered glass in Munich, 2 hours away.
In any case: Switzerland! Yes, it's around 350km from Salzburg. That's quite a long way on foot, singing the whole way. Actually the family in real life took a train to Italy, then a boat via Southampton to New York. Oh and they weren't *exactly* upping and escaping from the Nazis either. They came back to the Third Reich, entirely voluntarily, in the summer of 1939 and didn't leave again until well after World War 2 had broken out.
Last but not least, do you recognise the mountain in the movie? I do. It's the Untersberg. Unmistakable. It leads straight to Germany. Not just to Germany, but to Hitler's Eagle Nest mountain hideout. Yes, just the place to escape from the Nazis......
