The Sound of Music (film)

The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise, and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 stage musical of the same name, composed by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Based on the 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp, the film is about a young Austrian postulant in Salzburg, Austria, in 1938. The movie was a major commercial success, becoming the number one box office movie after four weeks, and the highest-grossing film of 1965.

About The Sound of Music (film) in brief

Summary The Sound of Music (film)The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise, and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 stage musical of the same name, composed by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Based on the 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp, the film is about a young Austrian postulant in Salzburg, Austria, in 1938 who is sent to the villa of a retired naval officer and widower to be governess to his seven children. After bringing love and music into the lives of the family, she marries the officer and, together with the children, finds a way to survive the loss of their homeland to the Nazis. The movie was a major commercial success, becoming the number one box office movie after four weeks, and the highest-grossing film of 1965. It received five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, Wise’s second pair of both awards, the first being from the 1961 film West Side Story. In 1998, the American Film Institute listed the film as the fifty-fifth greatest American movie of all time and the fourth greatest movie musical. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it \”culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\”. The film sold 283 million admissions worldwide and earned a total worldwide gross of USD 286,000,000.

It was released on March 2, 1965, in the U.S., initially as a limited roadshow theatrical release. The film was just as popular throughout the world, breaking previous box-office records in twenty-nine countries, and earning a total of USD 286,00,000 by November 1966,  and held that distinction for five years. It has been listed as one of the top ten films of all-time by The New York Times, along with Gone with the Wind, The Godfather, The Wizard of Oz, and The Great Gatsby. It is also one of only two films to have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (the other was The Godparents). The film has been selected for the Golden Globe Awards, for Best Motion Picture and for Best Actress, as well as the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. It also received two Golden Globes, for best picture and best actress. The soundtrack was written by Ernest Lehman, adapted from the stage musical’s book by Lindsay and Crouse, with Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, and Eleanor Parker. The score was composed by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and it was released by Universal Pictures on March 3, 1965. The musical was released in the UK on March 4, 1965 and in the US on March 6, 1965; the UK release was on March 7, 1966; the US release on March 8, 1966. The UK release of the film was on April 4, 1966, and in Australia on April 8, 1967.