A Little Night Music

I love this Sondheim masterpiece and having seen what Sondheim considers the finest staging ever (New York City Opera) live and on video many times over, the movie still has significant virtues. It was widely panned and dismissed as if all the film critics secretly met and took a vote to hate it together. Yes, some songs have been cut and some themes (most sadly, Mme. Armfeldt's) basically eliminated. But there are still some truly definitive performances and beautifully mounted scenes. And Elizabeth Taylor is far from terrible in her part. Unfortunately the current film on video is in terrible deterioration. This film deserves to be preserved as a rare film adaptation in Sondheim library. Remember the horrible film versions of Funny Thing Happened..., South Pacific and other great Broadway musicals that received poor screen adaptations. Taken in context of how seldom movie versions successfully transfer to the screen, A Little Night Music is not great but is certainly good, and far better than many other movie musicals that seem to be held in higher esteem than they deserve.

With this much talent on the table this should have been so much better. Liz was a great star, not a singer though, just the wrong actress for the role she should never have been cast. Not only does she not seem comfortable in the role she is not looking her best. It is a shame they didn't cast Glynis Johns in the stage role she created, she would have been perfection as the flighty, melancholy aging actress and she and Hermoine Gingold make sense as mother and daughter. Hermoine and Elizabeth Taylor bear no resemblance in either feature or gesture making it even harder to get into the material. Diana Rigg, Hermoine Gingold and Len Cariou do what they can with their parts and the settings are lovely but the direction is flat, in this sort of whimsy that is deadly. It has moments of pleasure but overall a miss.

There are several misunderstandings about this woefully mis-guided film floating around.

First, Liz Taylor cannot be blamed for the sound of her singing -She was dubbed! I've heard her actual vocals -be very, very glad that another singer was used. Only Len Cariou, Diana Rigg, and Laurence Guittard's singing voices are their own.

The decision to move the locale from Sweden to Austria had nothing to do with art and everything to do with finances. The picture was financed by an Austrian company... And woefully underfunded, which limited neophyte director Prince's re-shoot options (re the ever-expanding, ever-contracting Liz).

Prince has said he simply couldn't figure out a way to use the vocal quintet for the film, so they and their songs were cut. Sondheim wrote new lyrics for Liaisons, and the song was filmed (as was In Priase of Women) but for some reason they were cut from the final version of the film. Perhaps length. Perhaps to keep the focus on the Cariou-Taylor plot line. The new version of The Glamorous Life was extremely well-done, and shows the potential of the piece in surer, better-financed hands.

Casting the film proved extremely difficult. Liz Taylor's name value was crucial to the production. Many different leading men were considered, and in the end Cariou was only brought in at the very last minute because no one else had been signed. Ditto with Laurence Guittard. It's ironic that their performances are the best in the film.

Most of the blame for this shambles falls on Hal Prince. He allowed the movie to be far too dark and Taylor to be far too desperate and clutching. Stephen Sondheim is said to have encouraged the dark tone. Perhaps another director would have lightened things up a bit and allowed the film to be more romantic and fun.

A DVD transfer is extremely unlikely -The original negatives are all but destroyed, not having been preserved properly. Image Entertainment had the title on their release list for some time, but eventually gave up on it, saying the original elements were unusable and the title not likely to sell nearly enough copies to make a restoration worthwhile. The sound, in particular, is problematic -as it was terrible to begin with. There is a very good laserdisc release of the film, which is much clearer than the VHS version, but it's exceedingly hard to find.

So -What was good about this film? The new Glamorous Life song/sequence worked wonderfully, as did the expanded Everyday A Little Death sequence. Cariou, Guittard, and Rigg gave excellent performances. Jonathan Tunick's new orchestrations and underscoring were, as always, first-rate -particularly during Erik's attempted suicide. (Tunick has a cameo as the conductor at the film's opening.) Prince's transition from the theatre stage to "real life" was well done, and the movie has a very promising start. Fans of the original stage musical will forever be frustrated by this film version, which could have been wonderful.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this the film has been (at last!) released on DVD, and the soundtrack recording is now on CD. Several reviewers have complained of the poor quality of the DVD, but the video and audio restoration work was extremely well done. The film never looked or sounded better. According to the new liner notes for the soundtrack CD there were four additional songs from the stage score that were to be filmed, but the production ran out of money. I'm upped my original rating of the film, as each time I see it I find more to enjoy.

Yes it's true, Hal Prince did really ruin his most sophisticated and gorgeous stage musical, by transferring the plot to turn of the century austria (nonsense), skipping the greek chorus and cutting some of the best songs of the show (the miller's son, Liaisons). Nevertheless, one has to be thankful, that the talents of the original broadway production were chosen to recreate their respective successes on screen, even if they finally have been butchered in the cutting room. Biggest miss is the final scene in which the night smiles for the third time and Mdm. Armfeldt (Hermione Gingold) passes away. Still, its the only thing visual, that's left from that great Broadway Cast and though I hate it, I love it.

The most baffling thing about this disaster of a film is the fact that it was directed by Hal Prince..the director of the original Broadway production. Unfortunately Prince,who managed to create a stage masterpiece gave us a film flop! Miscasting,poor editing and excising of songs really hurt this one. Elizabeth Taylor is terrible as the wistful Desiree Armfeldt,clodhopping through the film like a bull in a china shoppe.Her singing is pitiful(in send in the clowns she actually can be heard trying to find the note!)Christopher Guard and Leslie Anne Down are dull as Henrick and Anne,no emotion,no passion.

There are some strong performances however, Len Cariou,Laurence Giuttard and Hermione Gingold shine in the roles they created on Broadway (even with Guittard's and Gingold's big solos being cut)and Diana Rigg is outstanding as Charlotte,giving the film some much needed life. Altogether its a big miss,but with some small rewards.