Something about the sound
My memories are being revised, thanks to Hollywood and Wiki. At least, my (faint) memories of a phenomenon called “The Sound Of Music” which has nothing to do with the volume setting on our stereo. Today, I learned that there will be a release of a refreshed version of the movie, with better graphical quality and all.
Let’s go back to my original viewing, in the cinema on Front Street in New Glasgow. A famous place, where Nova Scotia came to embrace the civil rights movement through the courts. Before my time, but not by much. Anyhow, my mother and my aunt gathered all of the children that could sit, unassisted, in a padded seat and we went to see a really big show. There was a lot of mention of Christopher Plummer; I couldn’t have picked him out of a police lineup until decades later, when he had already morphed into an old man. The music… I don’t remember much.
Sounds sacrilegious, but a group of kids standing in line and singing was so, well, choir practice. I had more than enough of that noise in school. As I got older, I embraced music, and the tunes seemed simple. No polyphony. No great bursts of volume. Stuff to play on a piano when you can’t really play.
I have seen the movie, again and again. Cable TV. Each time, I come away with new detail, so I guess that makes it into a better than ordinary piece of cinema. Today, I wondered whatever happened to those kids. Not the real ones, who ended up in Vermont; the movie ones. Here’s a photo that proves even kids that have odd names and movie star “parents” turn out to be adults. Heather Menzies. Angela Cartwright. Now they did some decent work on TV, week after week. That takes talent.
Will I buy a freshly printed DVD? Probably not. Then I’d have little excuse for missing the plot line. And there was a musical, you say?
