Saw Sound of Music Last night, what's esleuse?

I know I didn't spell it correctly. The character Uncle Max said it to Captain Von Trapp "The Ensleuse happened quietly". I'm assuming it's something to do with the Nazi's in Austria before 1940.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Sorry for the uninformed and dumb question.


START THE REVOLUTION!!!

The capitulation of Austria to Hitler without a fight. Powerfully sad day.

http://www.linz.at/archiv/nationalsoz/ekapitel3.html

in the Seventies, and our history professor who also owned the town bookstore said the Anschluss in this town was the happiest day the town had ever had.

All the people from both sides of the border came out and together ripped up the border crossings and such.

Sure didn't look like such a good good idea 7 years later though.

At the time though, it was two German-speaking countries uniting, and the leader of Germany was himself an Austrian so there was some local kid made it big in the big city stuff. Also in 1938 the German economy was leading the world, much of which was still in the depression, so at the time to the common people it seemed like a good idea.

to the Anschluss.

it's used to describe the Nazi occupation of Austria but I don't know the precise meaning.

NGU.

It was the German occupation/annexation of Austria, I think.

Sound of Music.

Unlce Max is a jewish character. How is he portrayed? What is his primary concern for most of the movie? What does he finally overcome only at the very end, as if it were a big struggle for him to come to terms with it?

And what's up with the lyrics of Edelweiss?

...to become enlightened back then. I usually react the other way. I'm often surprised when I see glimpses of Progressivism in our past.

By the way, isn't Edelweiss a traditional song? Or was it written for the movie?

NGU.

Singing it would be a tremendous risk at that time and I think it was even outlawed just like the Austrian flag.

The song was written for the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It's not a traditional Austrian song: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=1920

Interesting, huh?

Von Trapp thinks of his country as a small white flower trampled on by Germany.

before he died. A swan song?

Really don't think it's sinister, it's the country flower.

The song was written by Rogers and Hammerstein.

http://german.about.com/library/blmus_edelweiss1.htm

and they didn't think that "The Diary of Anne Frank: The Musical" would have sold tickets (just as they probably didn't think "Springtime For Hitler in Germany" would have sold tickets).

So, to make audiences feel good, they tried to do what so much media does even today (even NPR) -- they target the emotions of the people they hope make up their audience -- WASPS who fantasize about being rich and who want to believe that the world revolves around them, who think that bad things done to other people are actually bad things done to them. So, Jews weren't the victims of fascism. It was the rich people with big housese with a strong sense of national pride (and entitlement) who suffered the most.

With the rare exception of movies like Sometimes in April or Hotel Rawanda, today we don't see many examples of movies where the victims of, say, racism and neoliberal exploitation aren't white. Look at movies like The Constant Gardener and Out of Africa (and maybe even The English Patient): the bad things about colonialism and post-colonialism and fascism are that pretty, wealthy (more or less), white people suffer a great deal.

Don't get me wrong. I like watching the Sound of Music, and I liked the Constant Gardenerl, but I think it's important to step back and realize that these movies are only telling a tiny part of story where there is a much more interesting and illuminating drama (in terms of understanding how the world works) where the victim is very different from the Von Trapps or a woman (Rachel Weisz's character) whose family was loaded.

I think the actors (Andrews and Plummer) transcend the sappy material to make this a fine movie. They had a lot of chemistry and humor which makes it so much fun to watch.

I heard Hollywood is thinking of remaking it which really worries me. I can only imagine to sickly sweet mess which would ensue.

You're right about the chemistry, etc., but the music (mandatory for a film set in "Austria") was excellent as well.

I love the movie too. I know it is unrealistic (the nuns at the end in reality would have been rounded up by the Nazis for helping the Von Trapp family), I know it is too sentimental, but I really think it is movie magic.

I love the folk dance scene with Plummer/Andrews. I also like how Plummer lightened the scene where Andrews as Maria is singing her love song to him.

I really really hope the rumors of Andrew Lloyd Webber attempting a remake is just that, rumors.

The music is wonderful, as you say. However, mho, the movie owes a lot of it's success to the leads who managed to avoid many sticky minefields.

Sort of off topic, but I love Coltrane's rendition of _My Favorite Things_

as I recall. Really stunnning.

Two words: Robert Wise. He also directed the best flying saucer picture ever made, The Day The Earth Stood Still. He died just three months ago.

...a different opinion of that work. But apart from that, I hear what you're saying.

NGU.

a family in Austria -- which was one of the annexed countries. I guess because they were white that isn't sufficient victimization to merit a movie.

Furthermore, the Von Trapp family story was already known as a result of the 1949 book about them.

As I recall, it's a movie that negatively portrays Germans but really doesn't object at all to the Germans being Nazis. The objection wasn't that the Germans were Nazis, it was that the Nazis were Germans (and not Austrian).

I've always suspected that Herr von Trapp would have quite happily served with an Austrian Nazi Party government that was allied with the Germans and would have equally left had a liberal, democratic Germany annexed Austria.

Not only does it not really care about the Nazi's politics and policies, the movie even leaves behind Max, the only Jew mentioned in the movie. The Von Trapp family leaves behind the one person in the film who is at the most potential peril.

Towards the end of the movie, Captain Von Trapp makes several comments against Nazi philosophy, or at least towards fascism. The one scene that really struck me last night is when one of the Germans reminds Captain Von Trapp that he was sent a telegram and refused to answer it. Von Trapp says, "I thought in Austria the contents of telegrams was private...at least in the Austria I knew."

Boy, I'm sure if Bush weren't asleep drunk on the couch at the time, he wouldn't have been too happy to hear that one get out on ABC.

Von Trapp also berates Rolf, saying "you're not one of them". It's pretty clear from the context that he means Nazi/fascist, not German.

one in the film. It was frightening, actually.

rather than his attitude towards the Nazi's politics. When he tells Rolf that he is not one of them, I think he is just telling him that he is a citizen of Austria and not of Germany.

As the poster above says, Von Trapp is mostly upset that his government is no longer Austrian, but is now German. If his own government had democratically decided to become fascist, it's not clear from anything in the movie that Von Trapp would have had a problem with that.

Nazis. He hated what the Nazis were doing to his country, both because they weren't Austrians and because they were Nazis. The two had become inseparable.

It had nothing to do with being "german," and everything to do with being a Nazi. The movie shows how Rolf became evil, someone so evil he would turn in his girlfriend and her family to possible imprisonment and death.

He was Austrian, became a Nazi, and was condemned by Von Trapp. He tore down the flag his Nazi butler hung from his house, makes many negative comments about the Nazis, and leaves everything behind so he doesn't have to serve the Nazi government. The real Georges Von Trapp was very anti-fascist.he movie is very anti-Nazi.

I think you have to squint REAL hard to find ANY way to not see that Nazis are quite negatively portrayed.

they're portrayed negatively.

Look at a movie like X-Men. That movie has a very coherent (if subtle) argument about the evils of fascism. The first one opens with Magneto's mother going into a concentration camp. The whole movie is about socieities which pick "racial" others to victimize in order to protect their power.

It's not about WW2 -- it has one short scene with Nazis -- but it makes a much more interesting argument about Nazis than SOM makes.

worth telling.

Had the Holocaust never even happened and Nazis were limited to simply annexing nearby countries, this story would be worth telling on its own merits.

This movie is not The Diary of Anne Frank. And I never said every movie about WW2 has to be The Diary of Anne Frank.

I also think just because you like a movie doesn't mean that it has to be about everything about WW2 or that it's politics are perfectly progressive and incisive (like, say, XMen).

But I do think it's interesting to talk about the ways this movie does deal with the parts of WW2 that wouldn't be fun parts to include in a musical because I think that it does do things consciously to address those parts of WW2 in order to make its audience not feel the feelings which would have prevented this movie from being as enjoyable as many people find it.

I don't think the movie makers chose to exclude those other elements - ie, the Holocaust - simply because they're "less fun".

The Holocaust simply isn't a part of THIS story, which is about the Anschluss which is a story on its own merit.

WW2. It was also a part of the story of the Anschluss.

However, I can't let pass the Von Trapp performance at the Salzburg Festival, backed by that extraordinary theater overseen by Nazi authority in an archaic setting that is the ghost of Roman coliseums and out-of-control empires. I can't let pass when the Austrian audience all joins in singing, "Bless my homeland forever" and one is given the impression that the last thing the Austrians wanted was a Hitler and the Third Reich.

Because Austria's Germans, after WWI, became less contemptuous of Germany's Germans, and provided quite a dedicated following for National Socialism following the 1938 Anschluss. I read that though they were only eight percent of the Third Reich's population, the Austrians comprised fourteen percent of the SS and "forty percent of Nazi personnel involved in genocide", and that attacks on Jews by Viennese mobs, following the Anschluss, is "common knowledge".

http://www.idyllopuspress.com/bigsofa/sound_of_music.htm

who can't have an anti-war rally without trying to shoehorn in every other issue.

there was plenty of opportunity as Austria had a very large and active Nazi Party long before the Anschluss took place.

Plummer's character in the film is clearly anti-Nazi.

What I'm talking about in all my posts is HOW this movie is anti-Nazi.

Anschluss and this family.

To shoehorn in something ELSE about Nazis would be silly.

and fascism into its story.

I really liked that.

I also don't think it would be inorganic for any film about WW2 to make a similar criticism, but I don't think a blockbuster, feel-good musical would have been able to do that without costing ticket sales and those feel-good emotions.

It would have been "inorganic" to the genre and the boxoffice to do that.

comic book years before the movie and is important to his character development; B. referencing the Nazi Holocaust as a precursor to the Mutant oppression, thus enhancing the story.

But the Holocaust isn't necessary or important to the particular story of the Von Trapp family. There are more stories of that era than just the Holocaust.

The XMen is about fascism. The Sound of Music isn't really. No story needs to be anything or needs not to be something. Every story can be anything it wants to be. XMen wants to be a story about fascism. Sound of Music doesn't want to be one. My first post in this thread tried to capture the sense of dissonance I get when I watch the movie. It's a movie that criticizes Nazis while soft-pedalling its criticism to such a degree that it becomes dissonant to, at least, my ear, becuase, to me, a movie like XMen is really thrilling and fun and politically compelling. Incisive left-wing, anti-fascist politics doesn't need to be a part of every movie, however. I hope I made that clear in the rest of my posts.

"marginalizing" fascism?

Did you think fascism is the only topic worth telling? Or only telling about the WWII era?

already made for myself.

I've already made this point. In my second post in this thread, i believe that I made this point.

I think I should make it clear (again) that I enjoy this movie and I'm not trying to criticize anyone for enjoying the movie or for not picking up on these subtleties. I enjoyed the movie for years before I noticed any of this, and if I hadn't noticed this stuff for another ten years, I wouldn't be mad at myself.

wasps would appreciate the story:

"So, to make audiences feel good, they tried to do what so much media does even today (even NPR) -- they target the emotions of the people they hope make up their audience -- WASPS who fantasize about being rich and who want to believe that the world revolves around them, who think that bad things done to other people are actually bad things done to them. So, Jews weren't the victims of fascism. It was the rich people with big housese with a strong sense of national pride (and entitlement) who suffered the most."

And I think you're dead wrong. I don't think the holocaust was relevant to this story, which was about a particular family in a particular situation.

I furthermore think this is a story worth telling on its own merit.

from anyone in show business, for the most part.

I've seen the movie about 200 times, and until you wrote that, I had no idea Max was Jewish.

You have a movie about how bad Nazis are and pushes the holocaust to the background and foregrounds the struggles of a wealthy wasp family.

Basically, this is what NPR and most American popular culture does every day of the week. It pushes poverty, the strangling of democracy, the polarization of wealth, racism, etc., to the background, while foregrounding the "struggles" of the middle class, like whether you're a bad mom if you don't feed your kids organic food, or whether your daughter is going to develop a more varied palate when you take her on her summer trip to Spain.

Remember, we have a movie about WW2 where the WASP lead character oppressed by the Nazis sings a romantic farewell to his country: "small and WHITE...bless my homeland forever."

anything. :eyes:

I'm saying it does something with religion and fascism that is worth talking about. I'm saying that it pushes it to the background for reasons that I think are obvious. I talked about them in my other posts in this thread.

* The movie strategically ignores the holocaust to instead focus on the suffering of rich white people.

* Uncle Max is a stereotype, which as to do with being a Jew.

* There's something sinister about the song Edelweiss, in relation to the small WHITE flower.

* Von Trapp couldn't care less about what Nazis do other than invade Austria, and had the Nazi party been an Austrian invention he'd be a member in good standing.

If I'm mistaken in my understanding of your posts, I apologize.

and to make sure that audiences enjoy it and aren't traumatized by the holocaust, it makes conscious decisions to push the holocaust to the margins and foreground the struggles of people whose affluence and lifestyle we envy. Max is the one Jewish character, and not only is he not there for you to empathize with, he's doesn't even get to escape with the Von Trapp family. To further emphasize that this is about just about anything but genocide, Edelweiss -- a song written for the movie -- really confirms that Von Trapp's feelings about his country are not oriented around objections to genocide.

I'm not saying that this makes the movie bad or that anyone should feel guilty about liking the movie. I'm just saying tha we should think about these things.

Nothing in that movie is there accidentally. Its creators were very smart people and made very conscious decisions about what they were portraying so that they could evoke specific emotions in their audience, and they did NOT want to make this movie a vehicle for contemplating the Holocaust.

disagree.

The Holocaust isn't marginalized -- the Holocaust isn't part of the story.

This story is about a real family, public ally known, and the Anschluss. It's not supposed to be about the Holocaust.

The Holocaust isn't the only story involving Nazis worth telling. The Anschluss is one of them.

And, as we learned above, even the story about this family has been fictionalized in order to make it more appealing to audiences.

They could have fictionalized it make Trapp a Raol Wallendberg-type figure. But that would have made for a different kind of movie (that probably couldn't have been a musical).

It doesn't need to include the Holocaust or any other aspect of WWII, and it doesn't marginalize those issues by not including them.

critically abotu things they enjoy on very emotional levels.

Last I heard "WASP" meant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The von Trapps are Austrians, and probably were Catholics since it is the dominant brand of Christianity in the region. So a more accurate derogatory label for them would be WARC: White Austrian Roman Catholics. As to your position; Diminishing anyone who suffered in that war is asinine.

the von Trapp's were WASP's, Hammerstein wasn't Jewish (but Max was).

is.

But Andrews's character is blond with an English accent, and is probably a WASP herself. Plummer is a Canadian whose family probably emmigrated from England.

At least there's no indication in the script that he is, so in all likelihood, he wasn't. There isn't even any subtext to that effect. Max Detweiler is never shown to be stressed or under any threat from the Nazis when they show up, either before or post-Anschluss (the latter of which occurs during the Captain and Tenille's -- erm, I mean, Maria's -- honeymoon).

The closest we get to any personal or background info about Max is this brief interplay between him and the Captain:

MAX: Things will happen. Make sure they don't happen to you.
CAP'N: Max! Don't you ever say that again.
MAX: I have no political convictions. Can I help it if other people do?

In 1938 Austria, it would have been a very stupid and shortsighted Jewish guy to have no political convictions. Unlike Max, the majority of Austrian Jews had far scarier things to worry about than losing their gravy train. They either fled, hid, or were imprisoned/killed after that fateful spring of 1938 -- grim realities that Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (both Jewish), not to mention authors Lehman (screenplay) Lindsay & Crouse (book), would've been all too aware of.

That grimness is why TSoM has not a single mention of Jews, much less the true horrors of the Holocaust. Wouldn't have made feel-good, family-friendly musical theater. Actually even now I can't think of any musical since then that really touches on the Holocaust ... except for The Producers, I guess!

So anyway, there's no textual evidence that Max is Jewish that I can recall from either the stage or screen versions of TSoM. To the contrary, I think it would take one's own wholly unconscious, wholly unintentional stereotyping to assume that because Herr Detweiler is depicted as a greedy showbiz impressario & suckup to the rich and powerful, he must have been Jewish. Hmph! :)

Jewish characters on Broadway in which she argues that Max is Jewish. However, she also calls him a "theater producer" (rather than a folk festival promoter). So...

do you think that might be?

I don't see why that's not enough?

Wouldn't the Anschluss be an event even if there had never been a single concentration camp?

But read some of the responses above where people say the Holocaust meassage IS part or that it is making incisive political commentary about fascism.

It isn't.

We can both like this movie and also recognize that it isn't making the most sophisticated anti-fascist arguments.

include the stance that the Holocaust is not only not necessary to tell this story in a meaningful way, but it would DIMINISH this story by being so scattered and by treating the Holocaust as the touchstone of WW II or fascism.

We agree on that.

What I think is most interesting in this thread is that people thing that because they like this movie they can't admit that that the movie does this.

I recall you saying the movie marginalizes the Holocaust. I disagree - it doesn't marginalize the Holocaust. The Holocaust is not relevant to this story and has no part in it.

And that it soft-pedals on the hard stuff.

I think you're working very hard to find something that isn't here (a strategic marginalization of the holocaust).

We agree on that.

What I think is most interesting in this thread is that people thing that because they like this movie they can't admit that that the movie does this.

"Oscar Hammerstein II (July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American born Jewish writer and producer of musicals for almost forty years."

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Hammerstein_II

I just googled that myself to fact check something else I read in the link above:

Why was Austria portrayed in the screenplay as it was for an audience barely a generation removed from the truth? And Richard Rogers, who was Jewish, and the German-American Oscar Hammerstein II, both who would certainly have been aware of the "Flower War", what was their intention with "Edelweiss"? Was the song meant to be redemptive, concilliatory, an accusation, or all of these things?

for the German navy when Austria had been a land-locked country for 20 years.

Austria was not landlocked-it was a large empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire and had seaports, which it lost in the Versailles peace treaty. Von Trappe was a submarine captain during World War I for the Imperial Austrian navy. he served with great distinction. Moreover, he survived the war. If there was one branch of the service with a higher mortality rate then U-boat crews in World War II, it was U-boat crews in World War I. If I am recalling his story correctly, von Trappe continued to be active in naval advances between the wars. The German navy wanted his expertise.

I learned something. That was helpful.


START THE REVOLUTION!!!!

our daughter had a party with about twenty teenagers at our house - we stayed upstairs and watched the movie because when my husband was 9 he played Kurt in a high school production (doing his cousin a favor she attended an all girl school. He likes to see if he can remember his lines and the songs

Anyway, we were struck by how much it resembled the environment now in America- especially the scene from the ball onwards

Frightening

That was the first time I've sat down and watched it. My mom was steamed at all the commercials. DVD, anyone?

"The Sound of Music" is about rich white people only because it was attempting to tell the story about a family of singers and how they happened to come about during a very difficult time in their nation's history. If they had been poor or of some other color or Jewish, their story would have been told differently, and they would have been depicted as having had even more obstacles to overcome than they did. But the mere fact that their story is about a rich white politically well-connected family doesn't make it any less valid or worth telling than if it were about poor people of color, or any other disenfranchised group.

Jews and other parrticular persecuted groups may have had the most to lose from Nazism--their very lives--but they were certainly not its only victims. Nazism took freedom away from EVERYONE ruled by it--the rich and white who disagreed with and rejected its philosophies, or even those who merely went along with them to survive, as well as everyone else. You might be allowed to stay alive in a Nazi-ruled country by dint of your Aryan heritage, but would it really be "living"? Would you have the freedom all human beings deserve? No. That is part of the message of "The Sound of Music."

The Von Trapps left Austria not because they were necessarily in imminent danger--they could have played along and pretended to be politically sympathetic to the Nazis and survived just fine and dandy until the Third Reich was defeated--but that was not what they chose to do. They saw their country becoming something they could no longer believe in; hence, they made the decision to risk their own lives for a chance to leave. It's too bad not everyone was able to make it out with them--even in some cases a person with more to lose--but so often, that is the story of people escaping totalitarian regimes: they end up unwillingly leaving loved ones behind, who for one reason or another couldn't get away, in their own quest for a better life.

Others, faced with the same decision, might have chosen to stay and participate in the resistance. But neither reaction is necessarily superior to the other. One can fight from within, or fight from without. Either way, taking a stance against oppression is always risky.

The song "Edelweiss" is more symbolic than anything else. To the Austrians in the story, it represents everything they think of when they think of the beauty and peace and happiness of life in their homeland as it should be. It was concocted for the purposes of telling the story, but it functions in a way like "America the Beautiful" or "This Land Is Your Land" does in the United States: it makes people think about the natural beauty of their homeland, and about the values their country stands for in general. It's for this reason that the Von Trapps singing it just before they escape, and a theaterful of people singing along, is so symbolic: it represents the spirit of an oppressed people finding its own little way to rebel and say "What is happening to us now is NOT something we believe in, and we WILL eventually prevail." In that way it functions much like "La Marseillaise" does in "Casablanca," without being an actual national anthem.

To denigrate "The Sound of Music" or any other story merely because it's about the problems of rich white people facing a totalitarian enemy seeking to destroy people who are not rich, or not white, or not whatever, is to miss the point. The point being that totalitarianism and fascism aren't really good for ANYONE. They benefit a chosen few with wealth and power, at the expense of many others. They place value on wealth and power over the things that really matter: peaceful coexistence, cooperation, diversity, love. By doing so, they ultimately ruin the lives of all, and leave the chosen few who benefit from them spiritually and morally bankrupt.

There's nothing wrong with sending that message by telling the story of a particular group of rich white people and their problems in living through such a regime (even if, as Bogie says in "Casablanca," they might seem not to amount to "a hill of beans" to anyone else). It is no less valid than telling it by showing the stories of those who have their lives to lose. In fact, it is likely to find a wider audience and open more eyes, because while it's easy to regard fascism and totalitarianism as a problem for "other people," the way to really make their evil hit home is to show that they hurt EVERYONE--even people who are not their direct targets.

For many reasons, TSOM is one of my favorite movies. But it speaks to me more now than it ever has. I feel more and more like Captain Von Trapp in a country full of Rolfs every day.

1. If the Von Trapp family actually crossed over the mountains from Austria, they'd be in the heart of Germany and the Third Reich. Get out your atlas.

2. The real Maria Von Trapp was approached by the Captain regarding marriage in a casual manner. She went to her archbishop who told her she had to marry him. Maria broke down in tear (not necessarily for joy) when she gave her archbishop's response to the Captain.

3. The real Von Trapp family went to the train station and bought tickets to leave Austria. No police, no Nazi's, just bring your passport.

4. The Von Trapp family made some money touring as a singing group after they arrived in this country and bought some land in Vermont where they started a resort (Schwartenegger family did the same thing). But after Maria's death a few years ago, the surviving Von Trapp children have been in court fighting it out for the property and the estate.

5. I went on the SOM tour in Salzburg. We were driven around by the bus driver who took the cast and crew to location. He dished that he couldn't understand how the stars could get so close during the love scenes as Julie Andrews smoked a lot and Christopher Plummer loved his beer.

that makes the overall story no less valid. And of course it beefs up the "daringness" of the escape, for fictional purposes of course. So what if the von Trapps' escape was not really that dramatic or difficult? Doesn't mean the Captain wasn't losing a lot by leaving. Any time you flee your homeland, you're losing a lot. And when you have some status there that doesn't necessarily carry over elsewhere you go, you also lose quite a bit.

And of course the story of Maria and the Captain's "romance" is oversold. It's a musical. It's romanticized. Musicals have to have love stories. If the writers can't find one in the raw material they're working with, they create one. That's just the way it is.

And the von Trapps aren't really the perfect happy little family that they are depicted as fictionally. So? What family is?

And the "lovers" in the movie weren't always thrilled with how each other's breaths smelled when they kissed. Again, how does that make them different from any other two movie actors pretending to be in love? Viven Leigh said it was all she could do to kiss Clark Gable in "Gone with the Wind" because his dentures smelled bad.

It's all interesting to know, but it does nothing to make the movie less valuable as an entertaining story with a point behind it.

I've heard the story about the actress who objected to kissing him, but that happened later.

Gable wanted to join up after December 7th, but FDR told him to stay put. Then his wife, Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash while on a "Buy War Bonds" junket. Gable went to join up. They refused him because their dentists couldn't his capped teeth--or so the story goes.

He had his teeth pulled & joined up. Mostly, he made propaganda films--but he did this in England, as a member of the AAF. And he did go on a few missions.

The Sound of Music? Yes, it embroiders history. Christopher Plummer found the whole thing much too cloying, but has reportedly mellowed.

Many years ago my parents and I had lunch at the von Trappe ski lodge in Vermont and met Maria von Trappe, then a rather sprightly septagenarian. She signed my copy of her book and because there were very few visitors, we had a chance to talk with her. She mentioned that she is actually in the film as a pedestrian in one of the early scenes when Julia Andrews is crossing the main square in Salzburg. She also said that she and the family hadn't wanted the crossing the mountain scene as it was done but accepted the need for a dramatic ending for the movie. Mrs. von Trappe certainly was interesting, and boy could she whip her car along the mountain roads.

of communities and whole nations with the mere visible ability to use force to do so. Move in, takeover, delcare all prior systems of law invalid, assert ultimate executive authority over all acitivities including judicial and religious, keep public in fear and awe of the horrific willingness to use overarching military force to reach any end, and use it just enough to prove intent to use it. Sound familiar?