Who doesn't love this film?

A compelling case can be made for "The Sound of Music," as the last picture show of its kind, a triumph of craftsmanship and the apogee of the studio system that produced the kind of entertainment that dominated mid-20th-century mass culture.

A film that was easy to mock as stale and conventional in the wake of the French Nouvelle Vague (and on the brink of "Bonnie and Clyde") is far easier to appreciate now for its old-fashioned gloss and arch performances from silken pros.

"Not only too sweet for words but almost too sweet for music," Walter Kerr wrote in The New York Herald Tribune.

But from the very beginning, the public lapped it up.

"Nobody has the magic wand, or there'd be movies like this done all the time, In retrospect, it's a very good story, with very good tunes. The score doesn't really sound like a score written by 60-year-old men. There's a kind of youthfulness and honesty to the songs, about how to learn music, but also how to break down barriers. It doesn't sound like someone's trying to phony something up."