The Sound of Music (film) of the film; the actor accepted after being assured that he could work with Lehman to improve the character; Plummer later described himself as having become quite arrogant at the time, "spoiled by too many great theater roles". Wise also spent considerable time and effort on casting the secondary characters. For the role of Max Detweiler, Wise initially considered Victor Borge, Noël Coward, and Hal Holbrook among others before deciding on Richard Haydn. For the character of Baroness Elsa Schraeder, Wise looked for a "name" actress—Andrews and Plummer were not yet widely known to film audiences—and decided on Eleanor Parker.
The Saddest Music in the World which country’s music was the saddest" but otherwise re-wrote. Like most of Guy Maddin's films, "The Saddest Music in the World" is filmed in a style that imitates late 1920s and early 1930s cinema, with grainy black-and-white photography, slightly out-of-sync sound and expressionist art design. A few scenes are filmed in colour, in a manner that imitates early two-strip Technicolor. During the Great Depression in 1933 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, baroness Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) announces a competition to find the saddest music in the world, as a publicity stunt to promote her company, Muskeg Beer, as Prohibition is about