La familia Trapp

This film, being the prototype of the more famous Sound of Music, naturally invites comparisons. The most glaring differences are the faster pace, lack of character development, lack of drama and expansion of the New York storyline. While there is nothing really wrong with this film, it doesn't use the story to its full potential and feels like it is being too straightforward and fast-paced, never slowing down to give the viewer a better impression of the setting, characters, music and emotion.

This is the film that started it all and via the musical gave us the film "The Sound of Music". This is the film of which Baroness Von Trapp after its premiere said: "Nothing is true, but it is wonderful". Well, wonderful it is not, but it ìs a fairly well-made, ditto scripted and entertaining film about Maria who would become Baroness Von Trapp. Ruth Leuwerik, who always would blossom under Liebeneiner's direction, is convincing as Maria and Hans Holt is the perfect Baron Von Trapp. Fine set design and as usual very good music by Franz Grothe.

It is not as saccharin as "The Sound of Music", and it should be considered a typical product of its time with its optimistic "to every problem there is a solution" premise; it may be that this premise was in the minds of the makers rather than the life of the Von Trapps. As such it was a modern fairy tale for German 50's audience with Maria as the fairy-godmother; this role is emphasized by the last shot of the film in which Maria looks straight at the viewer and says "Gute Nacht" as a kind of blessing.

Liebeneiner directs with light touch and knows how to tell the story economically, but neither he nor the scriptwriter seems very at ease in dealing with the thread of Nazism and the subsequent 1938 Anschluß of Austria; not surprising however as Liebeneiner could not have had a clear conscience on the matter. The script suggests that after their escape from Austria the Von Trapps went straight to the USA, while in fact they toured Europe and went to the USA in 1939 for an American tour; the trouble with the immigration never existed.

The film is loosely based on the memories of Maria Von Trapp, which she published in 1947; the family had already stopped with their singing. The story goes that the producer's agent lead Maria to believe that German law forbid payment of royalties to foreigners. Later she found out that this was not true, after which she received a lump sum of $ 9.000,--!. The story of the film (and its sequel "Die Trapp Familie in Amerika") was sold to Broadway producer Richard Halliday and the rest is history.

The year 1956 was the most successful cinema year in the history of the West German film industry between 1946 and 1969. More than 817 million cinema tickets were sold in West German cinemas in 1956, about half of which were for purely German/German-language films. A huge number that was never to be reached again!

And the most successful film of 1956 was THE TRAPP FAMILY by Wolfgang LIEBENEINER, with more than 26 million cinema tickets sold. With this success behind her, the Essen-born actress Ruth LEUWERIK, who sang and played the main role of Maria von Trapp, finally became the most successful box office magnet in the West German film industry.

The film tells the well-known story of Maria von Trapp, who came to the family of the widowed Baron von Trapp (very pale: Hans HOLT) as a novice at a monastery, captured the hearts of his seven children, married the somewhat boring Baron, fled from Salzburg to America with the whole family to escape the Nazis and began a legendary career there as a member of the family choir. With this material, the busy German film producer and distributor Ilse KUBASCHEWSKI had discovered a real goldmine. The film, with LEUWERIK in the lead role, was even very successful in cinemas in North America (box office: 800,000 USD).

Great pictures from Salzburg and the surrounding area, cute children (including Michael ANDE, who later became very popular in the TV miniseries DIE SCHATZINSEL and the crime series DER ALTE with Siegfried LOWITZ, and stars like Josef MEINRAD and Agnes WINDECK! The biggest box office success (box office equivalent to more than 16 million EURO) in German film history was complete. It was not until WIR CHILDREN FOM BAHNHOF ZOO 25 years later that the earnings of DIE TRAPP-FAMILIE were surpassed.

It is also interesting that the Memoirs of Baroness von Trapp became a major musical success on Broadway in New York in 1959. Mary MARTIN, the mother of DALLAS star Larry HAGMAN, played Maria von Trapp there. The film musical with Julie ANDREWS, which was made six years later, became an enormous box office success in America and worldwide. Only in German-speaking countries was THE SOUND OF MUSIC less well received. Here The version with Ruth LEUWERIK continues to be more popular.

If you want a true account of the von Trapp family, you'd best read up on it yourself. While there have been movie accounts (including "The Sound of Music"), all take liberties with the facts. "Die Trapp-Familie" is closer to the truth, but it still feels a lot like the Hollywoodized film.

The version of this movie I watched combined both "Die Trapp-Familie" with its sequel, "The Trapp Family in America", into one movie....and it was dubbed into English as well...at least most of it. The songs, in contrast, were all sung in German.

In this less musical version, the only singing you mostly hear is when the family is performing in concerts...and the style of music is nothing like any you hear in "The Sound of Music". "The Sound of Music", simply put, has great music written for it....and the German-made films feature mostly classical style and religious tunes.

I could recount the plot...but most everybody knows about the family. So instead, let's talk about what was good and bad about the movie. The singing was, at times, dull and the entire movie looks and sounds like the Hollywood film but with a cheaper look to it. It is interesting but flat. Overall, it's similar enough to the more famous film that most won't want to bother with this one. Mostly it's a film for the very curious.

No, this does not come across as a poor man's version of The Sound of Music. It was the precursor of it by almost ten years, not strictly a musical as such, although naturally full of music, and the most successful film in the (struggling) West German cinema of the 50's.

The version I saw was clearly an amalgam of this one and its less-popular sequel The Trapp Family in America, merged into a standard 100-minute running time, dubbed in English, with many scenes inevitably cut - and it shows. But it is closer to the true family history than the more famous musical, where they were setting out to 'climb every mountain' straight into Mussolini's Italy! It accurately shows the Von Trapps having to flee the country because they'd gone bankrupt, for reasons to do with the 1938 German annexation of Austria. And Germany's top star Ruth Leuwerik makes a more realistic Maria than Julie Andrews ever did, a suitable mix of glamour and grit that would carry her team across the States if it killed her. Equally, Hans Holt as the Baron manages to carry conviction in the part without looking quite such a cad as Christopher Plummer.

The film ends with a nice touch, as they start building a new family home in the mountains in Vermont, all singing as they go!