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Edelweiss, Edelweiss The songs were a high point of the film and one of the main reasons why the movie remains so popular nowadays, expressing not only romantic love but also love for country “Edelweiss, edelweiss, every morning you greet me… Edelweiss, bless my homeland forever.” Maria’s encompassing love for music and nature is also demonstrated through the many renditions of Sound of Music “the hills are alive with the sound of music…my heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees,” something that is rarely found in film nowadays when people are completely focused on the boy girl dynamic. Music was an inconsequential part of the 1934 romantic comedy, apart from a few catchy tunes here and there, but for Sound of Music, songs provide the basis for the entire movie, used not only to entertainment but also to convey emotion and character development through a new medium and to adjust the pacing of the movie. The changes implemented in the movie industry from the 1930s to 1960s as time went on become much too apparent when we compare and look at the movies side by side. While Sound of Music makes the most of it’s setting and includes many beautiful panoramic shots, It Happened One Night is always solely focused on the characters and their journey, nary blinking an eye at all those other little details. Marriage and Love There is also a very important difference regarding the relationships between the characters in both films; in Sound of Music, marriage between the Captain and Maria takes place more or less in the middle of the movie, with a lot of the plot continuing on after the wedding, while It Happened One Night ended with an implication of a marriage, demonstrating also a change in audience attitude. In the 1930s, all was needed was one of those cookie cutter, reliable happy endings for someone to leave the theatre satisfied, with an empty wallet; thirty years later, people wanted more, wanted to dig beyond the big reunion to see what happened after, demanding a more fleshed out and mature story.