The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music

I know it is not 100% accurate or the best in some eyes. but I have watched it numerous times...good back story, It also lets you feel how they might have felt. It is another perspective. I enoyed it and will show clips to my classroom.

Rogers & Hammerstien created The Sound of Music, and it's a wonderful movie we've all seen many times, but it's not history. Here you see the National Socialists (the Nazis) as they really were-the unemployed, many of them veterans who fought in the First World War, who saw their countries-Germany and Austria-torn apart by the Treaty of Versailles.

Agathe (named Leisel in The Sound of Music) is the protagonist. She's in competition with Maria, the nanny, until Georg, a submarine captain, Catholic, and hero of the war, falls in love with her. This Maria is not the Julie Andrews version.

Their chauffeur becomes head of the Nazi Party in Salzburg. When the German Army is on Austria's border, he's the one who warns, and then threatens Captain von Trapp.

It is all very good.

I really enjoyed this film. Much more likely story behind the musical. I loved the way it connected with now. Agetha telling her great niece their history. It must of been a tense time just coming up to the war.

This is a great show. Not a Hitler let bashing, although he deserves all the bashing he can get. It's about death, family, heart ache, bended families. growing up. A story of, if I knew then what I know now, as told by the oldest. I think every viewpoint will be so different as will every review.

I went into this movie expecting a more historically accurate, if still sweet telling of the von Trapp story. Well, it is more historically accurate in that in keeps the original names of the children and mentions that Maria and the Captain had more children together, but other than that it is basically an abridged version of The Sound of Music.

Granted the story is told from the eldest daughter, Agathe's perspective but I still wanted to see more of their lives in America and not just what I already knew. Not only that, but the acting is so bad in some parts (particularly the scenes in the present with an elderly Agathe and her granddaughter) that I was reminded of a Hallmark movie. However, I liked Eliza Bennet as young Agathe and how she develops a relationship with her new stepmother. But it wasn't enough to save this movie.

After seeing this, I'd rather watch The Sound of Music on a continuous loop than watch this movie again.