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It’s exactly 45 years this spring since the release of the film version of The Sound of Music. Here’s my appreciation piece from the Sunday Express.

It's the film, which, in the words of critic Leonard Maltin has “pleased more people than practically any other film in history”. The Sound of Music, released 45 years ago this spring, is not just a film, it’s a global phenomenon. Sound of Music “flash mobs” have danced to such songs as Do-Re-Mi in railway stations as far apart as Antwerp in Belgium and Wellington in New Zealand.


Sound of Music sing-alongs, where members of the public, often wearing nuns’ habits and wimples, attend screenings, are sell-outs. In Salzburg, Austria, you can go on tours visiting the film locations. Over the past 45 years, millions of us have bought the film on video and DVD, and millions more watch when it is broadcast on television. Nearly half a century on from its release, the film’s popularity continues to grow. So how can we explain its extraordinarily enduring appeal?


First, there are the fantastic tunes. The composers, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, were among the most talented songwriters of the 20th century. They not only wrote the Sound of Music but other classics including the King And I, South Pacific, Oklahoma! and Carousel.


They penned songs that touched every human emotion. You’d have to be made of stone not to be moved by Climb ev’ry Mountain or charmed by Sixteen going on Seventeen.

Then there’s the great performances. Julie Andrews, the girl from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, was unforgettable as Maria, the high-spirited novice who decides to leave her life in the convent to become a governess for the von Trapp family.


Canadian Christopher Plummer was perfectly cast as Captain von Trapp, a disciplinarian who possessed enormous masculine charm.


Richard Haydn was memorable as impresario Max Detweiler, while Eleanor Parker made a glamorous Baroness. The children, headed by Charmian Carr as Liesl, were also magnificent.

Then there’s the way the film showcased the fantastic mountain scenery of Austria, surely one of the most beautiful countries on the planet.


Above all , though, there is the totally uncynical, joyous nature of the film. The Sound of Music was a product of its time: the sixties. It was an optimistic, upbeat age, where anything seemed possible. Post-war austerity had ended, the economic situation was improving rapidly and life, free of the stresses of the past, was there to be enjoyed.

Watching this film makes you feel glad to be alive. Forget antidepressants, the best tonic for modern living is simply to load a copy into your DVD player or listen to the soundtrack on your hi-fi, CD player or iPod.



It seems the authorities also understood the morale-raising qualities of the film. It was claimed that in the event of a nuclear strike on Britain during the Cold War, the BBC planned to broadcast its soundtrack on the radio.

My wife and I, long-standing Sound of Music devotees, paid our own tribute to the film when we recently visited Salzburg for the first time.


Like Maria and the von Trapps, we stood beneath the two statues at the entrance to the lovely Mirabell Gardens. We jumped down the steps at the top of the park as the children had done (though our choreography was nowhere near as good). Afterwards, we travelled by train into the countryside. on a glorious spring morning, gazing at the majestic mountain peaks, wooded hillsides and beautiful green meadows, it was easy for us to imagine the exhilaration Maria feels as she sings The Hills Are Alive. The question is, why don’t we make films like that any more?


Why is being cynical and nasty considered so “cool” nowadays? Is it because our society is much more cynical and nasty than it was in the sixties, when the film was made? Or could it be today’s downbeat films and tv programmes do much to create such an atmosphere? Nowadays it seems art is taken seriously only if it is dark, violent and shocking.


Contrast the wonderfully droll sixties Batman film and tv series starring Adam West with the latest, ultra-violent Batman film the Dark Knight, or ITV's early-eighties series Partners In Crime featuring James Warwick and Francesca Annis as charming husband-and-wife sleuths Tommy and Tuppence, with the current vogue for making gloomy detective programmes that feature incest, rape and violent sexual abuse.


It doesn’t have to be like this. Oscar Hammerstein, who died nine months after the opening of the stage show of the Sound of Music in 1960, believed that art, in order to be meaningful, doesn’t have to be downbeat.


“I don’t deny the existence of the tragic and frenetic but I say that somebody has to keep saying that isn’t all there is to life,” he declared. even in 1965, however, The Sound of Music was not to everyone’s taste.


Waspish film critic Pauline Kael complained: “We have been turned into emotional and aesthetic imbeciles when we hear ourselves humming the sickly, goody-goody songs.” Her view, and the views of other cynical Sound of Music haters, are the minority.


People around the world, in their continued affection for the film, have shown that they agree more with Oscar Hammerstein than with Pauline Kael.


Here’s to another 45 years of the uplifting Julie Andrews and co.

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Amid the dross, there are some great programmes on tv this Christmas- with BBC2 showing classic episodes of Dad's Army on most days. Another highlight is a rare tv showing of the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic musical 'South Pacific' on Boxing Day at 1.25pm.

Here's my Daily Express tribute to 'South Pacific', which was released exactly fifty years ago in March. The show featured several unforgettable songs, including the wonderfully upbeat 'Happy Talk', which you can watch being performed above. Enjoy!

NOWADAYS we have grown used to the phenomenon of the movie blockbuster.
Weeks of pre-release publicity. Interviews with the stars on the Jonathan Ross show. A red carpet launch at Leicester Square.

But even the attention given to today’s most hyped-up films pales into insignificance compared to the enormous public interest generated by the release of the film version of the musical South Pacific, 50 years ago this month.

“Try combining all of the media fuss surrounding a present-day Hollywood blockbuster, the British Royal Family and Christmas and you’ll come pretty close to understanding the frenzy surrounding South Pacific,” says film historian Robb Marsh.

The original soundtrack, released at the same time that LPs first became commercially available, soon became a bestseller – it was said that by the end of 1949, everyone in New York had bought a copy. The South Pacific phenomenon quickly spread to Europe. In London, the show opened to sell-out audiences in 1951 at Drury Lane.
After years of war and privation, colourful, upbeat musicals were lapped up by the public on both sides of the Atlantic.

And the kings of the musicals were undoubtedly Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The first show they wrote together was the groundbreaking Oklahoma! which had its Broadway premiere in 1943. It was the first musical that integrated songs, lyrics and dance into the storyline. In 1945, Carousel, which includes the rousing You’ll Never Walk Alone – a song that became an anthem for football fans – opened on Broadway.

But as popular as these shows had been, Rodgers and Hammer­stein’s greatest success was yet to come. Set on a tropical island during the Second World War, South Pacific tells the story of a romance between high-spirited US Navy nurse Nellie Forbush and middle-aged French expatriate plantation owner Emile de Becque, a widower with two mixed-race children. A parallel romance is between US Marine Joe Cable and Polynesian girl Liat.

When news came out that a film version of South Pacific was being planned, there was intense speculation as to who would be cast in the main roles.

While several leading stars were tipped to play Nellie Forbush, including Doris Day and Elizabeth Taylor, in the end the part went to the relatively little-known actress Mitzi Gaynor. The Italian heart-throb Rossano Brazzi was chosen to play Emile de Becque. They were to prove inspired choices.

No expense was spared to make the film one of the most lavish and most technically advanced ever seen. It was one of the first to be shot in Todd AO, an extremely high-definition wide­screen film format. In addition, special colour filters were used by director Joshua Logan for dramatic emphasis.

South Pacific was released in America on March 19, 1958, and had its UK launch a month later. The public’s response could not have been more emphatic. At the Gaumont in Manchester, South Pacific played continuously for two years and two months.

At the Dominion Theatre in London’s Totten­ham Court Road, the film ran for an incredible four years and 22 weeks – a total of 2,551 performances. It was a huge international success: in Sydney it enjoyed a 180-week run and it played to packed audiences across Europe.

The public weren’t only queueing up to see South Pacific in their millions but were also rushing to buy the soundtrack. The album of South Pacific, featuring Gaynor and Brazzi in a romantic embrace on the cover, was the first No1 in the album charts, which were launched in Britain in November 1958. It stayed at No1 for 115 weeks – which remains a record to this day. It was also the first album to sell one million copies in Britain.

The sheet music of South Pacific also sold in record numbers. There were other spin-offs, too: the name South Pacific was licensed for cosmetics, dresses and lingerie.

How can we explain South Pacific’s extraordinary appeal?

First and foremost, it was one of the greatest musicals of all time. “South Pacific has the lot – memorable songs sung by real people, embedded in a coherent plot; music, lyrics and book [the script],” is the verdict of music critic Mark Steyn.

South Pacific contains some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s greatest work: romantic ballads such as Some Enchanted Evening, and Younger Than Spring­time, upbeat songs including Happy Talk and Cockeyed Optimist and exuberant chorus numbers such as There Is Nothing Like a Dame.

Although Rodgers and Hammerstein did portray characters with darker sides, South Pacific, like all of their work, is tremendously uplifting: just the tonic for audiences in the immediate post-war era.

“I see plays and read books that emphasise the seamy side of life, and the frenetic side, and the tragic side. I don’t deny the existence of the tragic and frenetic. But I say that somebody has to keep saying that isn’t all there is to life,” said Oscar Hammerstein, explaining his positive outlook.

Rodgers and Hammerstein transported the public away from their humdrum lives to magical and colourful worlds, where romance was always in the air and where even the wildest of dreams could come true.

Fifty years on from the film’s release, and nearly 60 years since it opened on Broadway, South Pacific is still enchanting audiences. A major touring production of the show opened in Blackpool in August and will finish in Cardiff in July. A Broadway revival opens in New York early next month.

After writing South Pacific, the duo created two more unforgettable musicals: The King And I and The Sound Of Music.

Because of their tremendous and enduring popularity, it’s fashionable in certain circles to sneer at Rodgers and Hammerstein. Yet their work has brought more happiness to more people than any other 20th-century song-writing partnership.

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"Surely it's scientifically impossible to find a more charming film than Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day", says the First Post review.

Well, I certainly can't remember seeing a more charming film.

"Everything you could possibly want in such a movie is here: the Cinderella-esque transformation, the simmering cat-fights, the wonderful costumes, the fabulous music... light and airy and sweet, it's a perfect little souffle of a movie."

I can only concur- 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day' is the best- and most enjoyable- new film I have seen since Peter Bogdanovich's superb 'The Cat's Meow', a few years back. Like 'The Cat's Meow', Miss Pettigrew is wonderfully old-fashioned, the sort of film that Hollywood used to make- before the 'special effects'/ let's put as much violence into a film as is possible' brigade took over. It's a film for those who don't really like modern films and who are sick and tired of ultra-violent, soul-destroying crap being served up as 'entertainment'.

If you haven't seen it yet- head on down to your nearest cinema/movie theatre asap- you're in for a real treat. And if you read it- then ignore this terrible Daily Mail review of 'Miss Pettigrew' from Friday. The person who wrote it clearly hasn't got a heart.

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This article of mine appears on the Guardian's Comment is Free website.



We've already read a lot on Comment is free about 1968 - the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Paris riots and the invasion of Czechoslovakia. But there's one interesting aspect of that most tumultuous of years - and of the late 1960s in general - that has so far escaped attention. Namely, just how open we were in Britain to European culture. It might seem paradoxical, but the more Britain has integrated into the European Union, the less European cultural influences there are in this country.

In the late 60s, the pop charts were full of great European music. In the spring/summer of 1968, a regular play on Radio Caroline was the hauntingly beautiful French orchestral hit Ame Câline (Soul Coaxing) by Raymond Lefèvre (itself a cover of a song by French singer-songwriter Michel Polnareff). Another big hit in 1968 was L'Amour Est Bleu (Love is Blue) performed by Paul Mauriat and his orchestra, also from France. The charts of the time were full of international acts, including Esther and Abi Ofarim from Israel (who in February 1968 became the first, and to date only, Israeli act to make it to No 1 in Britain), Nana Mouskouri from Greece, Aphrodite's Child (with Demis Roussos), Bert Kaempfert, Sacha Distel, Serge Gainsbourg and many others. The music of Jacques Brel and Gilbert Becaud was hugely popular, being covered by a whole host of British performers.

On television, BBC2 regularly showed foreign films on Saturday evenings. Today, if you ask Britons to name a continental film star, they'll probably only come up with just two: Juliette Binoche and Gérad Depardieu. Back in the 60s, Simone Signoret, Melina Mercouri, Yves Montand, Alain Delon, Fernandel, Catherine Deneuve, Romy Schneider, Gert Fröbe and Maximilian Schell were household names.

A feature of the mid/late 1960s was the international film - a production (sometimes co-produced) that featured actors from several countries. In Ship of Fools, France's Simone Signoret played alongside Austria's Oskar Werner, America's Lee Marvin and Britain's Vivien Leigh. In Topkapi, Greece's Melina Mercouri starred with Austria's Maximilian Schell, Armenian Akim Tamiroff and Peter Ustinov, a man whose own cosmopolitanism seemed ideally suited to the age. There were international comedies too: such as Monte Carlo or Bust: in which our very own Peter Cook and Dudley Moore starred alongside legendary French comedian Bourvil, Italy's Lando Buzzanca and Walter Chiari, and Germany's Gert Fröbe.

Then there's television. Children's TV schedules in the late 1960s abounded with excellent European imports from both western Europe: The Magic Roundabout, Hector's House, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (with its wonderful theme tune), Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, Belle and Sebastian, The Flashing Blade, and, from communist eastern Europe, The Mole, The Singing Ringing Tree and numerous animated features, as well as programmes that were co-productions between east and west, such as The White Horses, made by Radio Television Serbia and BR-TV of then west Germany.
Today, you will struggle to find a single programme on terrestial British television that has been made in continental Europe. There's certainly no children's television series that tells the story of a siege during the War of the Mantuan Succession, as The Flashing Blade did, or relates the story of a riding stables in the Balkans (The White Horses).

The sad truth is that the era of turbo-globalisation hasn't led to a greater cross-fertilisation of cultures as its supporters claimed it would - but the overwhelming dominance of an introspective, bland and dumbed-down transatlantic global culture that isn't a patch on the true cosmopolitanism we had in the 1960s.

The political changes in eastern Europe in the late 1980s has led to the slow death of the region's television and film industries: as subsidies were withdrawn, many film studios closed or have been taken over by western production companies. While in the west, media liberalisation has led to the decline of state television, a proliferation of privately owned satellite channels and a massive lowering in quality. The domination of the music industry by a handful of powerful multinational firms has led to a destruction of diversity: there's little chance of a French orchestral number getting into the higher echelons of the UK singles chart now.

Back in 1968, we faced currency restrictions whenever we travelled abroad and there were no cheap Ryanair flights or Eurostar trains to the continent. But while we may have found it harder to go to Europe, European culture certainly found it a lot easier to come to us.

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