The Secret Sex In ‘The Sound of Music’

The Sound of Music turns fifty years old today, and it’s one of the rare films that not only stands the test of time, but one I would argue improves with age. Well, at the very least, you definitely pick up on a lot more in the film when you’ve reached a a certain age.

Confession: The Sound of Music was never my Julie Andrews movie. I grew up with a bootleg version of Mary Poppins that I watched ad infinitum until I had mastered my very own broken version of Dick Van Dyke’s horrifying cockney accent. It wasn’t until I was about eight or nine years old that I sort of got the hint that all the other kids I knew were watching The Sound of Music*. When I finally watched the sprawling masterpiece, I was absolutely charmed by Maria’s pluck, entranced by the tense World War II subplot, and I desperately wanted clothes made out of curtains and a career on the Austrian stage.

However, there was one part of The Sound of Music that I hated: the romance between Fraulein Maria and Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer).

As a kid, I found their whole love story to be confusing, gross, and, most damning of all, boring. I liked The Sound of Music for its fun songs and jaunty numbers. I liked the weird puppets and mischievous kids. I did not want all the fun and action put on pause so the mean old Captain Von Trapp could say something cold to Maria. I did not want to watch them dance their slow, grown-up dance. And most of all, I couldn’t wrap my brain around how they went from giving each other awkward stares to getting married.

Then, I grew up and I realized that wedged in between “Do-Re-Mi” and “Edelweiss” was a whole lot of sex.

I’m not saying that Maria and Captain Von Trapp were non-stop boning from the moment she entered his house to watch his seven unruly kids. I’m saying that as a fully-grown adult who can pick up on innuendo, it’s obvious that Maria and Captain Von Trapp wanted to be non-stop boning from the moment she entered the house. They even admit as much later in the film. Right before they sing the musical’s most exquisitely beautiful — and grown up — duet, “Something Good,” they discuss how they fell in love in the first place.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UetJAFogqE4]

Captain Von Trapp says that he fell in love with Maria when she sat on a pinecone during her first dinner, and she claims she fell for him when he first blew his “silly whistle.” As a kid, I thought this was dumb. She sat on a pinecone! He blew something! What’s romantic about that? Now, though, it’s tough not to see any sort of double entendre in those admissions.

Innuendo aside, there’s a subtly to the sexuality in The Sound of Music that is incredibly classy. It’s a mature sort of love, and that only makes it more alluring. I see that in every gaze, spat, and stolen touch, Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer were telling us that their characters were struggling to contain their desire for one another. They’ve got to maintain a polite relationship in front of aristocrats, friends, and, most of all, those seven bratty kids. How do they finally communicate and confirm their mutual desire? Through dance, naturally.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUfWRBGQkz0]

“The Laendler” is one of the most snooze-inducing parts of The Sound of Music for a small child, but that’s because it’s totally not for kids. It’s for the parents who know that dance was once one of the few ways men and women could touch in public. Andrews and Plummer don’t just make the traditional slow dance beautiful, but there’s a light tenderness to their movements. Both are trying not to smile too broadly at the thrill of touching each other, and if you look closely, you’ll notice they’re both trying to subtly check each other out. It’s a quiet moment if you don’t understand sex, but the subtext is loud and clear if you’re a hot-blooded adult. No wonder the Baroness was so heartbroken by the sight of it.

The Sound of Music is undoubtedly a film that the whole family can watch. That means that children of all ages can watch it from start to finish and be completely entertained without being scarred for life. That also means that Maria and Captain Von Trapp have to carry on their very sexy courtship right in front of all the children watching the film. To accomplish this, the film communicates their potent sexual tension through the sophisticated language of music, dance, and innuendo — it’s subtle, it’s sexy, and it’s glorious. In fact, it’s so great it almost makes you want to sing on a hilltop in the Austrian-Swiss Alps in unbridled ecstasy.

 

*My mother kept The Sound of Music away from me on purpose because she can’t stand Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. Take it up with her.

 

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