Hi everyone, and welcome back to your favorite segment Sound of Musicals. 欢迎回来你们最喜欢的板块【曲外之音】. Hi, Oliver.
Hello. Good to be back. Hello, hello.
It has been a while.
It has, hasn't it, yeah. Very busy recently, I'm afraid.
Yeah. Same here. But I can't wait for us to dive, re-dive back into the sea of musicals or musical movies.
I know, I've been looking forward to this all week. So which musical movie do you want to dive into today?
I give you a hint. This is an oldy but a goody. So, Doe, a deer, a female deer.
Ray, a drop of golden sun. I know, I know, I've got it. It’s a good one, it is a good one, The Sound Of Music, classic.
The Sound Of Music, 音乐之声。其实我们这个板块叫做Sound Of Musicals, it's also a play on Sound Of Music.
Yes. It is where this name comes from.
Yeah. So first of all, The Sound Of Music, I'm pretty sure The Sound Of Music is one of those musicals or musical movies that most Chinese audience are quite familiar with. So is it the same in English speaking world The Sound Of Music? Is it something that everyone knows?
I think it is very, very well known. Certainly, it's one of the most well known and popular musicals in many places, many countries. Definitely.
So I know I grew up with my family, my grandfather specifically watched it every year at Christmas. That's how I was kind of introduced to not just The Sound Of Music, but musicals in general, it was kind of my first experience of them.
It does feel like one of those Christmassy or just festive movies to watch, right?
It does, and I'm not entirely sure I could tell you why. But for me, it's a Christmas musical because my grandfather watched it at Christmas.
And again, I'm not sure why, because I don't think there's anything really about Christmas in it at all.
No. No. But I think it's just like happy ending, everyone everything worked out in the end. That sort of, like warm fuzzy type of thing.
It’s, yeah. It's got some serious moments, but overall it is quite a feel good film, isn't it?
Emm. So let's start with the background, we were talking about musical movies, so which came first remind me, was it the musical or was it the Disney film?
Actually. It was a book, it was neither. The first idea of The Sound Of Music, it comes from the memoirs of Maria von Trapp. So the Maria from the musical was a real person.
Oh, I did not know that.
And it's from her memoirs. So she wrote down her experiences of living with the von Trapp family and becoming part of the von Trapp family in Austria during the1930s. From there it became a musical on Broadway in 1959, is when it premiered on Broadway.
And then after that, it became the Disney film that we know today that most people know today.
I see. I never really knew it was based on real life memoir. I thought it was just one of those stories that were just created for the sake of it really.
I know. I was exactly the same when I found this, when I was looking into interesting things to say today. I was quite surprised to find that it was a real thing.
Okay.
So let's get into the story itself. I'm pretty sure a lot of our audience knew the story, but maybe you need a little bit of refreshing, but before you start, von Trapp, this von, v-o-n that sounds aristocratic and German.
It is, yes. Certainly Germany and Austria and a lot of those kind of central European countries. They have a lot of the nobility, the aristocrats, they often have ‘von’ in their name.
Unfortunately. I'm don't really speak much German, so I'm not entirely sure what von means. I need to do my research there.
Von means from, I think it's from, so it's basically you kind of own the... like your family, probably like own the land. That's why you're like from that place or of that place.
Okay, I see. Yeah. So that's the aristocratic noble side of it. I see, okay.
Yeah, and also you said it was set in the 1930s, so that was the beginning of the whole Nazi thing, right?