'Do Re Mi' unplugged

In Salzburg, Ashis Dutta directs his own version of 'The Sound Of Music' by visiting locations that have given the film a geographical superiority

It’s outrageous,” said Maria von Trapp. She went on to grumble, “As much as 20% is not true.” Never to be cowed down, Robert Wise, the director who had just completed filming The Sound of Music, based on the life of Baroness von Trapp, took solace that the baroness was okay with 80% of the movie waiting to be released. Wise had invited the baroness for a pre-release show.

That was not the first time Maria von Trapp was displeased about the movie on her life, the movie which went on to become nothing short of an epic. Right during the casting, she didn’t approve of Christopher Plummer — “so unlike the Captain.” But Robert Wise had his way.

Frankly, I didn’t have to look for The Sound of Music in Salzburg. Wise made this picture-postcard Austrian town and its surrounding countryside perform like living, breathing characters of the movie.

The opening frames silk through Wolfgangsee and Fuschl am See — and the other lakes —  glistening amid the hills come alive with the sound of music. They show up in the movie now and then, and finally in Mondsee — the tiny outpost beside Lake Mondsee, where, in the 17th century St Michael’s Church, Captain von Trapp and Maria are seen getting married.

I stood in front of the church, which looked brighter, maybe because of a fresh dose of paint, than the demure yellow in the movie. A contingent of tourists entered the church to seep in the spirit of that fairytale wedding. The wedding scene inside the church, however, was a studio set. I decided to settle down at the café with — what else but Maria’s favourite — crisp apple strudel.

Where it begins

But as Julie Andrews sang in her inimitable voice, ‘Let’s start at the very beginning.’ And to do that, ‘a very good place to start’ would be the Nonnberg Abbey atop the cliff, bang in the middle of Salzburg, with its unmistakable dark-red onion dome trying to reach out to the sky amid the celebration of see-green baroque domes around.

The real Maria joined Nonnberg Abbey in the hope of becoming a nun. And somewhat true to her life, in the movie, the nuns of this Benedictine nunnery were at their wits’ end — ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ Maria, the real person, I mean, was indeed deputed from the abbey to von Trapp family. But unlike in the movie, not to be governess to the seven children but to nurse a sick child.

I didn’t climb up the 140 steps to the abbey. I wasn’t sure how the 14 nuns who still live there would react to my intrusion into their serene life. I came closer to The Sound of Music at Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron. Well, getting into the place was verboten. But that didn’t matter. For the real thing was its façade and the patio facing the lake, and there was no stopping me from getting to the lake side and seeing the façade from across.

This façade was shown in the movie as that of Captain von Trapp’s residence, but the scenes of the interior of von Trapp residence were not shot inside that building. And the lake? It is here in this lake, if you recall that sequence in the movie, that Maria and the seven children waved at the Captain from a small boat and while doing so, lost their balance and toppled into the water.

Not that girl!

The story goes thus: while enacting that scene, Kym Karath, playing Gretl, the little one, drowned and was rescued just in time. She was, naturally, petrified and refused any retake. There is an amusing side-effect to this accident. Karath was thereafter showered with so much of chocolates and sweets that over the weeks of shooting, she put on a lot of weight.

So much of weight that at the shooting of the scene of the family’s escape from Austria through the Alps, Christopher Plummer refused to carry her  on his shoulder. A lighter double had to be included, whose face was cleverly hidden behind that of Plummer’s in those final shots.

My tryst with The Sound of Music continued. I alighted from the bus in front of the dwelling house of Mozart — the toast of Salzburg. But leaving the musical genius behind for another day, I headed for Mirabell Gardens just across. It is in this garden that a large part of the song ‘Do Re Mi’ was filmed.

The prancing-horse fountain — where Maria and the children danced around. The tunnel-tress of creepers through which they ran. The statues. The steps — Julie Andrews might just skip up those steps any time now, as she touches the high notes in the final phrase of ‘Do Re Mi’.

From Mirabell Gardens, walking across the Salzach River over what’s popularly known as Love-lock Bridge, I walked past Mozart’s statue to Felsenreitschule — that eerie auditorium where the von Trapp family was seen performing before giving the Nazis the slip.

Historically, the Nazis marched into Austria a good three years after the real von Trapp family left Salzburg. And they, the von Trapps, did so by catching a train to Italy from Salzburg Railway Station. But lo! There’s utter lack of drama in that. On the other hand, crossing the Alps, even if it’s the wrong mountain to climb, is so romantic.

The Untersberg mountain peak, which is shown to be climbed — both from the lake-front patio and at those tense moments from the church graveyard, just before the escape — stands on the German side of Salzburg, and crossing that would factually have taken the von Trapps right into the den of the Nazis. Guess Robert Wise managed to mollify Baroness von Trapp with those little inaccuracies. All for romance’s sake.

Side by side

During the shooting in Salzburg, the baroness, who by then was settled in Vermont, USA, was holidaying in Italy, and Wise persuaded her to come down to Salzburg and act in the movie. She did. But unless you know, it’s impossible to recognise the real Maria von Trapp in the frames of The Sound of Music. She is one of the women, in a cluster of three, seen passing by in the distant background when Julie Andrews-the-Maria is on her way from the abbey to von Trapp mansion.

I finally touched, yes, indeed, touched, The Sound of Music at Schloss Hellbrunn (Hellbrunn Palace). There in its garden, the glass-walled gazebo — with its snow-white frame — used in the film is kept with great care. An epitome of romance, for once I really jumped back in time and felt like ‘I am 17, going on 18...’