We recently watched The Sound of Music (1965) on blu-ray, a la Netflix. The kids loved the musical numbers, and I gotta show some respect to Rodgers & Hammerstein for their songwriting and musical abilities. Legendary filmmaker Robert Wise both produced & directed this film in 1965 on location in Austria and Germany, based on the successful 1959 musical.
The kids (and the adults) liked it so much, we decided to pick up the 45th Anniversary edition for $18 on Amazon.com. It’s a 3-disc set — one blu-ray containing the film, a second containing a raft of special features, and also a DVD version of the film. Apart from the film and the music, what compelled me to purchase the blu-ray set was the restored film in 1080p, and the audio soundtrack in DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1. There was some perceived fuzziness occasionally, but I thought that was Wiseman’s intention. Overall, excellent video quality. I read online that, for the Blu-ray release, the original 70mm negatives were rescanned at 8k resolution, making this the most detailed copy of the film seen thus far. I did see some clips online, and the original material looked very dark and grainy. The blu-ray release looked very clear and vibrant.
The Sound of Music (1965)
I did have a good laugh at the intermission and entr’acte. It was as if we were sitting in the movie theater way back when, and not sitting in our loving room.