“The hills are alive with the sound of music.”

This is the opening line sung by Julie Andrews as she spins across a high meadow in the Austrian Alps. Her character, Maria, is studying to be a nun – – – until the young acolyte is nudged by the Mother Abbess ever so gently out the convent door and on to another profession. As the singing governess to Captain Van Trapp’s seven children, she dances into the hearts of the children and the arms of their father. With their musical talents, Marie carries the youngest child over her mountains as the family escapes the Nazi incursion. Leaving the hills behind, the Van Trapp Family Singers move beyond their beloved homeland and sing their way into history.

The movie is the 1965 Hollywood blockbuster of the Broadway adaptation of the true story of the Von Trapp family. It was and is a blockbuster. The first run of the film played in theaters for four and a half years. In some cities, the number of tickets sold exceeded the population. After the first release, there were the re-releases, which have really never stopped. Within a year of its release in 1966, the Sound of Music had become the highest grossing film of the time, surpassing Gone with the Wind which held the top spot for twenty-four years. Today, The Sound of Music remains one of the top-earning movies ever produced, with an inflation-adjusted take of over $2.5 billion — not bad for a young nun, seven kids and a captain.

Our EthnoFamilyMovieOgraphy (EFMO) audience liked the show very much. So much so that the film’s after-movie survey evaluation of 9.57 out of 10 places it at #3 from the top in the list of the first 38 Oscar-winning Best Pictures.

One of the survey questions each EFMO viewer is asked to answer for that evening’s film is the following:

“Assume hypothetically that you are angry with a person and considering leaving the person out in the freezing cold on a bare hillside in the snow without food or water or retrieving the person to the comfort of a warm cabin. There are no consequences to your decision. Immediately after viewing this show, which way would this movie influence you to act? Circle one:  LEAVE  RETRIEVE”

Hooray for Marie and those beautiful singing children! No one circled LEAVE. A wonderful happy zero inhabits that column. This is the second week for this welcome result to occur. Last week, no one circled LEAVE for the lovely My Fair Lady. We have had the real pleasure of watching back-to-back two delightfully entertaining and easily appreciated shows. Of the 38 Best Pictures to date, only six have received goose eggs in the LEAVE column, and we have unanimously retrieved that poor shivering person on the hillside for two shows in a row.

“What was the short summary sentence for The Sound of Music?” you ask. Well, here it is:

“Almost everyone listed ‘music’ as their first ‘like’, and most liked everything about the film (the second most-liked-everything movie in a row after My Fair Lady the week before); with the music, some identified ‘story’ and ‘love’ as likes, reflecting the overall happy and uplifting nature of the show and lifting the movie the the #3 position of the 38 movies viewed to date.”

There you have it in a scant sixty-seven (67) words.

And the single word for the movie is?

“MUSIC”

Could there be another for The Sound of Music?

Thank you for listening and please consider watching.

This is one of the best films to walk down the aisle for its award.

Grandpa Jim

Eliza Doolittle sells violets on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London England. She speaks squeaky Cockney English which horrifies Professor Henry Higgins who studies and enunciates the King’s English. Offhandedly, Professor Higgins comments to Colonel Pickering that he could make a lady of Eliza in six month’s time by teaching her proper English. Eliza’s untutored mouth may twist the English tongue but her mind is as sharp as a tack. She knows what words mean and she thinks about what those words so causally dropped might mean for her.

The next morning, our ragtag flower girls presents herself at the very proper bachelor retreat of Professor Higgins. Eliza offers to pay real money for language lessons to make a lady of herself. At first, Professor Higgins is reluctant; but the kindly Colonel Pickering converts the waif’s proposal to a more acceptable wager. If Higgins will teach, Pickering will pay. The Colonel will cover the costs of the lessons, provided the Professor’s efforts are proven successful by Eliza passing her vernacular examination at the Embassy Ball in six month’s time. The gentleman shake. With that, they and Eliza are off to the races in a musical reconnoitre that will forever alter the future of a flower girl and her Professor.

The music is worth the trip. The story is endearing in a distant, unkindly and worried sort of way. The language is tortured and memorable in the haunting fashion of an early morning dream. The costumes are simply not to be missed. The ending is oddly unsatisfying yet reassuring, like a lost pocketbook that has somehow found its home. Only, I’m not sure who of the two is that pocketbook or who has found whom?

Audrey Hepburn is Eliza Doolittle. Rex Harrison is Professor Higgins. Wilfred Hyde-White is Colonel Pickering. The movie is “My Fair Lady,” the film awarded the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture at the  37th Academy Awards ceremony hosted by Bob Hope for the 14th time.

Is this a show not to be missed, to be added to your must-see list of best films?

Our EthnoFamilyMovieOgraphy (EFMO) reviewers say that it is.

The EFMO viewers have seen the first 37 shows.

Their assessment: #5 from the top!!!!

This is a good one.

One of my jobs is to synthesize the EFMO “Like” and “Dislike” comments into a single sentence. In 75 words or so, here is my abstraction of their appreciation of My Fair Lady:

“Most liked everything — the music, the acting, the story, the humor, the costumes, Eliza’s transition; and although some felt the stereotyping and arrogance were a bit much for today’s viewer and were concerned that Professor Higgins never shared his feelings for Eliza, the film was highly rated (#5 of the first 37 Best Pictures) and, from observing the audience reaction, one of the most enjoyed.”

Yes, the movie carries some of the baggage of a 53-year old film. I fear the dialogue is, in parts, not as correct as it might be – to today’s ears, of course. Nevertheless, and in retrospect, whose verbiage would be perfectly correct after the passing of all those years. None of us ages as well as new thoughts emerge to date ourselves and our words. That is, I suspect, a sign of the times. Nonetheless, the film, despite its bluster, is remarkably adhering and comfortably appeasing. I think the lyrics and music of Lerner and Loewe have much to do with its staying power and still high marks for My Fair Lady.

One last point: The comments on each film must be reduced to a single word. Long sentences are appreciated but what goes into the night when the thrown slippers are finally found and retrieved must be a single elemented locution, a single term.

For “My Fair Lady” the single word, that says it all, is: “lovely.”

And, for that, you must watch the show.

And appreciate the accent.

Movies are fun,

To see

And

To hear.

Grandpa Jim

You have some time and you want to watch an old movie. You want to watch a movie from the 1920s, 30s, 40s or 50s — the first four decades of the Academy Awards. It should probably be one of the 32 Best Pictures from those years — one that received the Oscar, but you don’t know which one? What are the top films of the 32 movies selected by the Academy of Motions Picture Arts and Sciences as the best movies of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s?

Your question has been answered!

Your quandary is resolved.

The EthnoFamilyMovieOgraphy (EFMO) family of viewers has done just what you are requesting. They have watched each the Best Pictures from the first four decades of the Academy Awards, and the faithful EFMO reviewers have rated each film individually and evaluated all 32 movies together as a group.

It has taken some time, but the combined results are now tabulated and ready for your review.

The best of the best films for the first four decades of the Best Pictures are — with the top rated movie shown in the #1 position . . . and the year of each film noted in parentheses . .  . well, I can’t wait any longer, herrrre they are!!!!

#1 Ben-Hur (1959)

#2 Gone With The Wind (1939)

#3 It Happened One Night (1933-34)

#4 Casablanca (1943)

#5 On The Waterfront (1954)

#6 The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)

#7 Mrs. Miniver (1942)

#8 Marty (1955)

#9 Going My Way (1944)

#10 Rebecca (1940)

Ben-Hur and Gone with the Wind are no surprises. They essentially tied for top EFMO appreciation. Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur was appreciated more for his moral positioning than his place in the most memorable horse race of movietime. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh are more than memorable as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, perhaps the most famous couple of all movietime, and their film is still the greatest overall money-maker of any show to take the Best Picture Award.

Surprisingly, a comedy is next. At #3, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert chase each other around the countryside in the screwball comedy that launched the genre. Delightfully entertaining and the oldest show on our top list, you can watch this movie anytime and laugh. It does transcend the ages.

Casablanca is probably my favorite. I can’t get the music and the line out of my head, and I don’t want to. Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart are magical in a film that reminds me oddly and sadly of the The Lord of the Rings. There is something in a good leaving that does last forever.

On the Waterfront is, in its ways, the most serious and most dramatic of the top 5 films. Marlon Brando is the beat-up and knocked-down Terry Malloy who stands true at the end and walks into movie history. The supporting cast is outstanding, as it is in all the Best Pictures.

There is, I think, a natural break here. The next five films can move up and down. In some sorts, they can switch with ones farther down the line; but in their own ways, they are the best of the next tier.

The Bridge On The River Kwai may be the best war film made after World War II. It took some time to look back at that hard time. There is an honesty here that may always be hard to appreciate.

Mrs. Miniver is set during the wartime at the moment of the rescue of the British troops stranded on the sands of Dunkirk. The film is an oddly at-home piece and one that struck home with our audience today, so many years later.

Marty is, what can I say, Marty. My grandfather was a butcher. Marty reminds me of him and the quiet era when the young boomers were starting to grow up in a new time and place. The street scenes are worth the show.

Going My Way is good clean fun, a respite in a war-torn time and an uplifting film for every audience.

Rebecca, to me, represents a new age or style or something in film. Mrs. Danvers is the villain I remember from watching movies on the old black and white TV in the cold basement of our home. She is the very worst and never to be forgotten.

Well, there you have it. They are all great movies. One thing we have learned from watching the Best Pictures is that they are all best films. Amazingly, in one evaluation, 24 movies of these first 32 received at least one vote in someone’s top 5. Truly, they are all great films. You can not go wrong.

Enjoy the shows.

Grandpa Jim