The Sound of Mucus

 I expect there are readers who could enumerate exactly the matters upon which H E Bishop Richard Williamson, a Wykehamist, agrees with me. Two, in particular, occur to my mind:

(1) Despite, er, everything, Bergoglio is lawfully and canonically, Bishop of Rome; and

(2) The Sound of Music is corrupting mush.

This film is a most fascinating combination of genres. As I watched it on Christmas Eve, the opening minutes reminded me of nothing so much as Leni Riefenstahl's work in the '30s ... that long sequence of landscapes, as the late-comers to the cinema stumble their way to their seats. But Mills and Boon soon take over. Or rather, SOM turns out to be the grandest conceivable apotheosis of Mills and Boon. M&B offers us Humble Nurse Winning the Heart of Consultant ('Carbolic Soap Opera'). In SOM the last expiring sighs of Whiggery's Pamela, are metamorphosed into magnificence almost beyond belief by being transposed into the key of Novice Nun gaining the affections of Naval Hero Owner of Vast Swathes of Unmarred Mountain Scenery and Rococo Architecture. But, whereas Richardson's Pamela bore the message that the girl who makes deft use of her chastity wins through, SOM appears to teach that witlessness... ('femininity to the point of imbecillity', as Lord Feverstone described it) ... will always and rightfully displace the 'artificial' sophistication of a Viennese baronin. 

And, of course, Spontaneity is all. Children can spend their days shouting in trees and then turn out a perfectly produced musical performanance. Falling out of trees will never damage them; capsising their boat in the lake can never be more than a jape.

And, above all, Discipline and Duty must lack all and any emphasis. 

And as for Vocation ... we mustn't mention that.

The film of SOM emerged in 1965 (stage Musical in 1959). What a decade! The smooth elegance of The Great Escape (1963) had come two years earlier; by the end of the decade, the deification of revolutionary violence in If ... (1968) and the acid anti-war malevolence of Oh What a Lovely War (1969) had swept all  before them. Perhaps most significantly, Doctor No, introducing decades of strongly preached amorality, had in 1962 come from the pen of an Ian Fleming who, we are told, loved whipping a wife who (of course) loved being whipped. And that was the very same year as Lawrence of Arabia, which raised its own questions about homophobia and Masochism.

So Mills and Boon, the Thirties 'Tuppenny Library' of escapist fiction for women, and the military 1950s moral simplicities of The Dam Busters and Ice Cold in Alex and The Cruel Sea, both gave way to a culture which had not the faintest idea what it wanted, but wanted it good and stong.

As early as 1946, Waugh had described "the war" as "a sweaty tug-of-war between teams of indistinguishable louts". I suspect, indeed, that most years seen as the beginnings or ends of eras, must involve major oversimplifications, from 410 and 1066 onwards.

But I feel that 1965, Year of The Sound of Music, can stake a valid claim to have been quite pivotal.