Gene Kelly, the leading man in the movie-within-the-movie, meets wholesome Debbie Reynolds while trying to escape the prima donna.

Thus, this is boy-meets-girl-next-door and comes-to-like-her more-than glamour-girl, but with an edge. The girl next door is feisty, holds her own, and doesn’t worship the famous leading man just because he is a famous actor.

All the main characters are actors (that is: play-within-play actors), and this signals that the story is going to take itself too seriously, even while pretending to be self-effacing. Actors can not only dream about the worship they will receive whenever they make an appearance in real life, but they can make even their fantasy world do the same. “Lockwood [Gene Kelly] is a sensation” raves one of the movie-in-movie viewers — a particularly absurd sentiment, since Gene Kelly has a weak, Hoagy Carmichael-like voice. This is the curse of narcissism, and it seems as though Hollywood cannot escape that disease, try as it might. At the end of the day, the unremitting narcissistic tone can’t be shaken off, “look at us; aren’t we cute, we hollywood types. You plebieans are right to worship us… but notice that your gods also have feelings.” It delivers an hysterical Preston Sturges-like sarcasm of the rich, even while ratifying the legitimacy of that culture.

Not only is the scorn heaped upon the prima donna unfair (we can easily forget that the nasty disposition she is given has nothing to do with the offensive bad diction), but the heroine status granted to Reynolds is also unearned: she too is really just another Hollywood bimbette looking for a gig. We’re supposed to pity her at one point because her name will not be blazoned in big letters on the marquee. Poor baby!

Additional criticisms: the entertainment tangents tend to be decadent (Siegfeld follies etc.); and there is an excessive amount of extended kissing. It is clearly prurient and intentional.

Having said all that, the music is eminently listenable and well-done; I can recommend viewing this song and dance a couple times.

Divorced Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson have a Taming of the Shrew like interaction. The story, a play-within-a-play, is actually based on the Shakespeare comedy. The play-in-play becomes entwined with the “real life” of the outer story; thus the cleverness.

What really makes it is the soundtrack by Cole Porter, who was at the peak of his powers. Indeed, some numbers are worked in for no reason other than the beauty of the song, like “So in Love” starting at 4:30. You will either (like I) like or hate “I hate men” (51:00); the hurled cannisters right in rhythm was a genius touch.

Not just the songs, however. The dance routines carry half the weight. My favorite: the opening of the play-in-play, “A troop of strolling players are we” at 37:00; a close second is the wooing of Bianca (Ann Miller) by the three lads, at 41:30 (note the three eternal factors of female fantasy: money, love, or social status, personified in the three suitors). Tommy Rall as the ne’er-do-well “Bill” doing his goofy, cut-up dance techniques, in “why can’t you behave” (19:00) is enjoyable.

The three-and-a-half minute three-couple revue near the end (1:41:30) is breath-taking and will stick with you a long time.

The dances are done to wailing dance band– we’re not left with Porter’s sad keyboard plinkin’ here.

I give it a Butler index, with the caveat that you use your “skip forward” key to edit out the tiresome bits. The subplot with the gangsters, for example, goes too far, above all when they do their soft-shoe routine. It is the “highlights” that will never wear out; some parts are already worn out the very first time.

This movie is a contender (with My Fair Lady) for the #2 greatest American musical. Finally, My Fair Lady may edge it out for heart; but there are several categories in which Kiss Me Kate would out-score.

The DVD includes a “music only” option so that you can listen to the sound track over dinner.

Reviews of “The Sound of Music” are legion so I will not bother with another. A few words about the music, though, may be helpful in appreciating the movie. For, as the title suggests, it is the music that is the soul of the film.

Like the movie’s setting, the songs are expansive, sunny, and joyous. It is remarkable that two New Yorkers, Rodgers and Hammerstein, were able to capture just the right spirit of quiet and simple life in the Austrian Alps.

Here are a few of my favorites.

“The Sound of Music”

The title song is one of the best. The music and the lyrics set the tone for the rest of the movie.

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears

The Alps serve as the backdrop of the film. They are not only featured in the opening and closing scenes (both include beautiful panoramic shots), but they provide an unstated theme: people and governments may come and go, but the hills will endure. As will music.

“My Favorite Things”

Brown paper packages tied up in string, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, silver white winters that melt into springs. One would be hard-pressed to give a better list of the best things in life. The song is a celebration of the simple over the flashy and it mirrors the love triangle that Captain von Trapp finds himself in. He must choose between the plain and earthy Maria and the sophisticated Baroness (played to the hilt by the lovely Doris Lloyd). After much soul-searching, the Captain realizes where and with whom his heart truly lies.

“The Lonely Goatherd”

This song, sung by Maria and the children while performing a marionette for the Captain, is great fun. If you have forgotten the tune, it combines an Oktoberfest drinking song with a generous portion of yodeling. Very Austrian and very right. Julie Andrews and the children play the scene, and the song, for all its worth.

“Edelweiss”

This is my favorite song in the film. It is sung twice: first by the Captain with Liesl singing harmony and a second time by the entire von Trapp family during the Salzburg Folk Festival. When he first sings it, the Captain is reminded of the important things of life, particularly music and his children – the two things he has forgotten since the death of his first wife. It appears again near the end. This time with a note of sadness. The Captain, wishing to leave Austria and a German naval commission before the Anschluss, offers it as farewell to his beloved homeland.

Edelweiss, if you did not know, is a wooly white flower that is found only in high elevations. In Austria it is a tradition for men to present bouquets of edelweiss to their sweethearts on St. Valentine’s. Since it grows in inaccessible places, the man demonstrates his sincere intentions by risking his life for love. But beyond this, the edelweiss represents everything that the mountainfolk of Germany and Austria love about their country. And the song taps right into this theme.

(For World War II buffs, the edelweiss was the emblem of the Wehrmacht’s 1.Gebirgs-Division. A company of this outfit planted the Third Reich’s flag on Mt. Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe, during 1942 Caucus campaign. It did not stay there long. As part of the disastrous operation that ended in the encirclement of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad, 1. Gebirgs was forced to make a slow, grueling retreat. One can imagine how their divisional badge reminded the Austrian or German Landser of his home hundreds of miles away.)

The movie is often dismissed as sentimental and corny. Such criticism is humbug. Almost everything good in life celebrated: first love, marriage, children, humor, sacrifice, attachment to one’s homeland, and, of course, music. If the sophisticates cannot see the beauty of these things, or the beauty of the film, so much the worse for them.

My family watches “Sound of Music” several times a year. There must be a saturation point when one finally says, “enough.” If so, we have not reached it yet. Few movies are worth owning on DVD. This is one of them.

The story is framed by a theater scene which sets up the rest of the movie as a flash-back, and the framing idea is rather clever.

This is not enough to rescue the story, however. The life of this debauched epicurean simply does not have enough appeal to make the “great tragedy” of his life seem very tragic. And there are images indicating Porter’s homosexuality that, though they keep it toned down enough for PG-13, are quite disturbing.

However, the songs are worked into the story in arrangements that often make them seem chic even to a modern ear. This is the value of the movie.

No doubt, Porter was a genius at both the catchy tune– often having true emotional development– and the clever lyric. Most of his songs were written for musicals (Kiss Me Kate being the apogee), but many also made it into the standard repertoir of crooners like Frank Sinatra.

The title comes from a line from one of the songs, “it’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely.”

I recommend a viewing not because the story is great, but as an introduction into one aspect of 20th century culture: the pop culture of our grandparents.

But it is not a tedious view, like having to watch some documentary cuz it’s good for you. It will do better than that.