There is still debate over what was the best movie of the 60's. Some will say The Graduate, others will say Bonnie and Clyde, others will say Midnight Cowboy, Lawrence of Arabia, Easy Rider, or Blow Up. But for me this is an open and shut case: The best movie of the 1960's was The Sound of Music.
I'll give you my reasons why a bit later on. Based on the Broadway musical from Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein (sadly, it would be their last as Hammerstein would die in 1960 just one year after the play opened), the movie version was produced and directed by Robert Wise and written by Ernest Lehman (the two were coming off filming the musical West Side Story; which won two Oscars for Wise and sadly, both men died recently in a two month span). They took the project to 20th Century Fox because they knew that the studio was in deep trouble after Cleopatra put them behind the eight ball. Fox president Darryl Zanuck along with his son Richard (who was vice-president) knew that The Sound of Music had to be the hit to get the studio back on track.
Based on the true story of the Von Trapp family-in which in 1938 they were besieged by the Nazis in Austria, the film stars Julie Andrews as Maria-a nun who becomes caretaker to the Von Trapp's.
Christopher Plummer plays the widowed father while Eleanor Parker (probably the most underrated actress of her time) plays his baroness and Charmain Carr plays the eldest Von Trapp sibling (Mia Farrow was first considered for the role).
There are two scenes that I like the most: The first was the puppet show and the other was of course the ending in which Maria (who marries Plummer's character) and the children escape Austria. That almost made me cry and you are aware that did happen as the real Von Trapp family left for Italy and then realizing that it was ruled by Benito Mussolini they set sail for America.
When The Sound of Music was released in March of 1965 it would go on to first set the record as the highest grossing American movie and became the first to make $100 million worldwide. In some cities in America it played for two years! David Brown, who was an executive at Fox joked about the movie as being "The Sound of Money" and the studio finally had the hit they needed to stay at an even keel. In the end, the movie won five Oscars including Best Picture. But one problem persisted: How could the Academy passed up Julie Andrews for Best Actress?
(Especially the opening scene in which they should of just thrown the Oscar at her) Just because she had won the award the previous year for Mary Poppins and since that she was taking over a role that she didn't perform originally (Mary Martin was the original Maria on Broadway). This applies the same for Best Actor of that year when Lee Marvin won when some were shouting it should of been Richard Burton for The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Rod Steiger for The Pawnbroker.
There is one good reason why I pick this film as the movie of the 60's: It saved 20th Century Fox and although there would be more flops the studio would suffer in the next several years (Doctor Doolittle, Star! also with Julie Andrews, Myra Breckenridge) it was this movie that kept them from going underwater.
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