In honor of the opening of the first Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler masterpiece -- which is one of my favorite musicals -- I pulled out my copy of this movie and watched it again.
The show is based on Ingmar Bergman's 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night, which in turn owes something to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Comedy in that both revolve around a series of mismatched lovers. Bergman's charming and droll film has been well served in Hugh Wheeler's adaptation. (As a side note, I feel a need to point out that Wheeler was one of the better musical book writers and his contributions to this play and to Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street are often overlooked in the same manner that Piave's contributions to Rigoletto and La traviata aren't always recognized. It's a composer's world, I guess.)
Only four scant years after the musical graced Broadway, Harold Prince had the notion to turn the stage show into a film. Unfortunately, it was a troubled production, despite the presence of a genuine movie star -- Elizabeth Taylor -- in the lead role. Financing proved difficult and there were starts and stops in filming. What ended up on screen is a pale imitation of the enjoyable stage musical.
It's always interested me that Prince could employ cinematic techniques when directing for the theater but put him behind a camera and he was at sea. His first effort, the Wheeler-penned film Something for Everyone, did not exactly inspire rave reviews. For A Little Night Music, the location was switched from Sweden to Vienna (because the score was written in 3/4 time?) which required renaming some of the characters. In the show, there is a group of leider singers who function as a chorus, but they are jettisoned, despite the film's first sequence that makes it appear the audience is watching a stage show. Somehow with the financial uncertainty, that aspect of the production got forgotten.
Instead, the audience gets a very turgid version of the original with almost all sense of the comedy lost. In a nutshell, lawyer Fredrick Egerman (Len Cariou) is married to his virginal second wife Anne (Lesley-Anne Down) who is the object of desire of his seminarian son Erich (Christopher Guard). Egerman decides to seek counsel from his ex-mistress Desiree (Elizabeth Taylor), a bohemian actress with a teenage daughter (Chloe Franks). She is also carrying on a relationship with a titled military man (Laurence Guittard) whose long-suffering wife (Diana Rigg) is acquainted with Egerman's wife Anne. All parties converge at the estate of Desiree's mother (Hermione Gingold) where the relationships get sorted out.
Cariou, Guittard and Gingold reprise their stage roles. None of the movie star names -- Down, Taylor and Rigg -- (who look gorgeous in Florence Klotz's Oscar-nominated costumes) are particularly noted for their singing abilities. Taylor tries mightily hard but doesn't capture the essence of the character. Her version of the show's best-known song "Send in the Clowns" is passable but hardly memorable. Gingold does what she can with her part but the best performance (in what is generally thought to be the best role) comes from Rigg.
That's feignt praise, though, as this film is nothing short of a disaster. Whether it was because of the monetary problems, Prince's lack of experience with film, bad casting decisions, or some combination of all, this version of A Little Night Music falls far short of the possibilities inherent in this musical. Hollywood has remake fever, yet they don't seem to want to take on terrible movies that cry out for a new version (like this one). Perhaps if the new revival proves to be a hit, then someone might take another crack at it.
Rating: D+
No comments:
Post a Comment