Almost Angels

There are some buildings you just don’t think about as under construction. It’s weird and unsettling somehow. They’re iconic buildings that clearly just appeared fully formed in place. Imagine people building the Parthenon. Go ahead. And therefore it was startling to me that, when they show us the montage of Places The Boys Tour near the end, I was taken aback to see the Sydney Opera House under construction. When I was checking to see its construction dates, I was astonished to discover they hadn’t even finished deciding what the shells would look like. And if you’re curious, I knew it was Sydney because I recognized the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Thank you, Philippe Petit.

However, this movie is not about that. It is about Tony Fiala (Vincent Winter), a young boy whose father is a train conductor. His father (Fritz Eckhardt) wants the boy to follow in his footsteps, but his mother (Bruni Löbel) knows that her son has talent. (They never get names. It’s fine.) She takes him without his father’s knowledge to audition for the Vienna Boys’ Choir when Tony expresses interest. He gets in, though his father warns the director (Hans Holt) that, if Tony does not keep up with his school work, he will pull him from the choir.

The plot summary most places makes it sound as though Tony’s struggles are class-based. They are not. It’s mostly issues with Peter Schaeffer (Sean Scully), an older boy who is used to being the center of attention from the conductor (Peter Weck) and sabotages Tony in hopes of getting the him kicked out and keeping his supremacy in the choir. They eventually make friends, and it is even Tony who makes sure there’s a post-choir career for Peter when his voice breaks. Not that the leadership would’ve kicked him out onto the street, but Tony brings it to conductor Heller’s attention that Tony is a talented composer, for example.

Honestly, if Tony struggles with anything, it’s his father’s attitude toward music—and the math he’s shown as doing, which I would’ve struggled with at his age, too. Father Fiala lets Tony drive a train into the train barn early in the film and offers it to his son as a longed-for treat while Tony is trying to talk to him about joining the choir. Mother Fiala doesn’t even tell her husband that she’s taken Tony to an audition until the day after his acceptance letter arrives, and it is she who forces him to attend one of Tony’s concerts.

This is a light, pleasant movie filmed on location in Austria. They even filmed in the actual Augarten Palace, home of the choir; the extras were real members of the choir, which is easier than finding a choir’s worth of boys with that level of talent. Disney apparently even got them to make minor changes to the boys’ uniforms that are used to this day. 1962 was, frankly, not the best year in live-action Disney movies, but this is a solidly middle-of-the-road movie with low stakes but lovely music. Also, Wikipedia, it’s worth noting that while some of the music is authentically Austrian, “Greensleeves” is not.