I’ve been a little too obsessed with The Sound of Music since I was a toddler. And honestly, what’s not to love about a World-War-II set love story with singing nuns and one very handsome widowed Austrian Navy captain struggling with his bratty kids?
Julie Andrews plays Maria in this musical classic. A whimsical novitiate unable to fit in at her convent, she searches for direction in her life, and she accepts a governess job with a wealthy family, where she meets Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) and his seven children. Though they initially butt heads, they of course eventually bring out the best in each other and fall in love. Then the threat of war and fascism spreads across Europe, forcing them to flee.
Let’s strut confidently into the discussion of today’s quote from this film.
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The Scene
Before the love story and before the Nazis and all of that drama, Maria has to leave her convent and make her way to the von Trapp family estate in Salzburg, taking a bus and walking from the station to the estate nervously.
This scene, which serves as the opening of her journey with the von Trapps, is the source of today’s quote.
Maria begins outside the convent, wondering what the future holds for her. She muses in song, “My heart should be wildly rejoicing / Oh, what's the matter with me?” She’s scared, she admits, despite wanting the freedom and adventure now in front of her.
She talks herself forward. “A captain with seven children / What's so fearsome about that?”
She knows she can fill this position, and do it well. She just has to convince the family—and herself. She takes the bus into the countryside, essentially manifesting how she wants to be respected and followed by the children.
Finally, she reaches her stop and exits the bus in a much cheerier mood, singing about having confidence in herself and in things around her.
“All I trust I leave my heart to / All I trust becomes my own! / I have confidence in confidence alone—”
She reaches the impressive estate and looks through the gate. It’s imposing. She says in a small voice, “Oh, help.”
With a burst of energy, she finishes the song and runs up to the door to begin her new life.
What the Song Means
The song serves an essential function within the musical genre. In many musical theater productions, whether on stage or in film, the protagonist almost always gets an early song in which they express their doubts and goals, laying out what the audience should know about them for the rest of the story. It’s usually known as an “I want” song.
You can find it if you look for it. For example, in The Little Mermaid it’s “Part of Your World.” In Wicked it’s “The Wizard and Me.” Usually these characters want adventure (think Hercules and “I Will Go the Distance,” or Dorothy and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”), but in this case Maria is already on her way. She’s on her adventure whether she’s ready or not. So all she has to find is the nerve to keep going.
Here, Maria shares aloud that she’s nervous and scared and uncertain about the direction of her life, but she’s going to take this one step at a time. She lists her fears (a mysterious captain with a daunting number of children), then catches herself and pivots. “I am seeking the courage I lack,” she sings.
The whole song is about facing her fears and choosing to go forward into a new life anyway. The lyrics allow those inner conflicts to be external in a way that makes sense.
Maria does eventually say she’s confident in herself, but she’s also confident in ideas like sunshine and rain, which makes sense for a nun who would rather be up a mountaintop than in church.
But by the end, she repeats that she has “confidence in confidence alone.” It’s the idea of confidence driving her, not anything specific like “I’m confident I will be a good governess.” Her faith is enough to keep her going.
'The Sound of Music' Credit: 20th Century Studios
The Song Exists Because of the Movie
The Sound of Music was a stage show that began in 1959 (with music and lyrics from the famed Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II) before becoming a film in 1965. But “I Have Confidence” was not included in the original production. By 1960, Hammerstein had died, so Rodgers wrote the new song by himself.
Beyond being a necessary “I want” song and character beat, the new musical number is connective tissue between the abbey and the von Trapp villa, which wasn’t needed for a stage show.
So the song was a solution to a uniquely cinematic problem. How could the filmmakers get Maria from the city to the estate in a visual sequence that still revealed character?
The song was incorporated into later stage productions of the show.
Location, Location, Location
Another thing this song allows is expansion from what has been established on the stage show. Obviously, we can’t see a ton of Salzburg inside a black box theater. The song takes Maria from the Abbey to iconic landmarks across the city. She splashes in the Residenz Fountain. She walks under the Domplatz arches.
And there’s an Easter egg in the sequence, too. Per the Rogers & Hammerstein site, the real-life Maria von Trapp can be spotted when Maria is crossing Residenzplatz.
The film also gives the song a ton of motion and variety in blocking. Maria is almost never still. She might slow down with doubt or pause, but she always finds the motivation to move forward, lending the song dynamism that could easily go stale if she were just standing in one place singing all this.
This is just one great example of a character’s internal conflict shown visually in several ways, through motion, through performance, through lyricism.
What are some of your favorite lines from The Sound of Music?
