The sound of Nazi angst

[igenlode]

Watching "The Sound of Music", I realised with a wry smile that my gut reaction to the film was that the person I'd be interested in writing a fanfic about was Rolf. Because that's the conflict I can actually identify with -- the dilemma between wanting to impress his shiny new friends in the Nazi Party and wanting to impress the girl who thinks he's wonderful (and happens to be the daughter of the local lord of the manor, whilst without the Party he's a nobody). And the dilemma between obeying the Voice of Authority (and conscience), or doing his duty and pulling the trigger to kill a man for the first time in his life. He's used to doing what people like von Trapp tell him to do -- older, wiser, his social superiors. But now he doesn't have to any more, because he has higher orders. Only those orders aren't so easy to obey...

I was also left wondering uneasily what happened later to the nuns after the fugitives had been found on their premises, clearly with their connivance :-(

Comments

[cosette_giry]

It could definitely be interesting to write something that ultimately turns around the psychological aspects of radicalization of youth, and the whole aspect of "point of no return". I'd be looking forward to it if you ever commit ;)

The stage musical has Rolf cover up the von Trapp family and the nuns the minute he sees Liesl, but in the film, they went for him being ultimately a side villain. So I think that considering the nuns were pretty much Maria's surrogate mothers, I guess they were willing to sacrifice themselves for her and her family's sake - and needless to say, the Nazi Party was *not* kind to the Catholic clergy, so it's easy to assume the nuns were sent to camps and/or killed :(

I knew a film teacher who argued the nuns dying was foreshadowed/hinted at in the film - mainly because during Climb Ev'ry Mountain, the Mother Abbess, despite being near the window, stays in the shadows, while Maria's face is lit up...

[erimia]

I haven't seen the musical, but I'm not surprised, it seems that many Nazi (and other kinds of far-right) characters have a potential for exploring such themes. I'm watching The Handmaid's Tale series now and one of the antagonists, Serena Joy, is easily one of the most interesting characters there precisely because of this conflict between conscience and duty, conscience and ideology, with a heavy dose of post-revolution angst when the character is discovering that what she fought for may be not that great after all.

[igenlode]

The stage musical has Rolf cover up the von Trapp family and the nuns the minute he sees Liesl, but in the film, they went for him being ultimately a side villain.

It's odd that they'd do that (and counter-productive, since, as in LND, when I get the impression that a character has been gratuitously villainised my immediate reaction is to sympathize with his point of view rather than condemn him!)

I wonder if they were terrified of being seen to be 'sympathetic to Nazis', given the wider distribution of a film versus a Broadway musical (and into potentially much more conservative hinterlands); anyone joining the Nazi Party has to be depicted as reassuringly All Bad. Or maybe they just wanted more of an action climax, and regarded Rolf (again as in LND) as dispensable for plot purposes?

I knew a film teacher who argued the nuns dying was foreshadowed/hinted at in the film - mainly because during Climb Ev'ry Mountain, the Mother Abbess, despite being near the window, stays in the shadows, while Maria's face is lit up...

This reminds me of the Phantom of the Opera "Hidden Plot" people who spent hours decoding the position of mirrors to 'prove' that E/C was always intended in canon ;-p

[cosette_giry]

To be fair, that film teacher was REALLY into visual theory, which *does* apply to the films of directors like Coppola, Kubrick or Lang. And Schumacher kind of used it in the 2004 film - but not very well, and not on a conspiracy theory level the Hidden Plot has. So yeah, maybe that particular instance in Sound of Music it was a way of keeping it family-friendly and not show a bunch of Nazis shooting nuns :P

But it could have been changed due to not wanting to appear sympathetic towards Nazis, since the Baroness and Uncle Max are of the mind in the original musical that collaborating with Nazis is possible. And to give other instances, the film adaptation of Cabaret had a lot of the songs from the original musical cut, apparently because the studio thought a musical with Nazis in it was risky business (and even then, the film got censored in several places)...

[cosette_giry]

Have you read the sequel to the Handmaid's Tale (The Testaments), though? I think it might definitely interest you, then. :)

[erimia]

I'm definitely planning to! I heard it does some interesting things with Aunt Lydia character.

[igenlode]

I don't swallow the 'visual theory' theory; if you wanted to show that the nuns' actions would lead to their subsequent death, you'd be doing stuff like showing an ominous shadow falling across their faces at the end of the film when they're busy rejoicing over having sabotaged the Nazis' car (and who exactly did they think was going to be suspected of that?)

Having the light fall on the face of the main protagonist before any of this has happened -- during a scene which is all about her and her choices rather than about the minor character with whom she is sharing the room at the time -- isn't symbolic of anything save the fact that the Mother Superior's big number refers to Maria :-p