No Questions, No Answers, No Time: A Review

There is a latitude on this Earth that, in summertime, has very, very long hours of daylight and practically no nighttime. This latitude includes Sweden, a Scandinavian nation near Norway and Denmark.

That kind of eternal sunset proves a fantastic metaphor for man's frustrations, a metaphor utilized by Ingmar Bergman in his 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens Leende) and by playwright Hugh Wheeler and composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim in A Little Night Music, a 1973 English-language musical based on that film.

In 1977, veteran stage director Harold Prince and Vienna's Sascha Film company brought A Little Night Music back to the screen in a low-budget, relatively unsuccessful film that was more or less buried in a film vault for the better part of thirty years. A few years ago, Hen's Tooth Video restored the film negatives and released the movie on disc in the United States. This is a review of that film, which I, as a classic film buff, have recently seen.

I'll begin by stating how much rancor there is out there for the movie version. Instead of a musically gifted lead actress (like the original stage show's Glynis Johns, whom you may recognize as the mother in Mary Poppins), Prince went with Elizabeth Taylor hoping her name would be enough to sell the movie to an audience that hadn't really loved a musical since 1971's Fiddler on the Roof. Needless to say, the name was not enough. But the most drastic change to the structure/story/content is what many people believe robbed the tale of its meaning: the transplant of the setting from ever-sunny Sweden to central-European Austria. Also needless to say, Austria doesn't have the eternal sunset.

And there goes the metaphor.

The song "The Sun Won't Set" has been replaced by a ditty called "Love Takes Time" or something like that, which opens the show with the characters singing about their experiences (or lack thereof) in such issues. The new lyrics are good enough, however, and visually the opening sequence is captivating enough (considering the poor sound and picture quality).

A Little Night Music is the story of a middle-aged (or somewhere thereabouts) actress named Desiree Armfeldt (that's Taylor), who is getting tired of her pedestrian career and her relationship to a married military man. Sounds familiar. Figure in Frederick (in the play, Fredrik) Egerman, the lawyer with whom she was previously involved. Frederick is now married to an 18-year-old virgin named Anne. On top of it all, Frederick has a son, Erich (originally Henrik), who is in love with Anne... which is just a little less bad than it sounds, considering he's actually a year or two older than his stepmother. Desiree is getting tired of the vain, moronic dragoon she's with (and the dragoon's wife, with whom he is entirely honest about the situation, is also getting sick of it) so she hatches a plot to get Frederick back on a weekend in which the Egermans will be invited to her mother's country house. Matters are complicated when the Mittleheims (previously Malcolms), the hilariously stupid dragoon and his emo wife, learn of the invitation and descend on the Armfeldt home that same weekend.

The sense we get right from the start is that only one of the couples really belongs together. As should be expected, things work out in the end, although I won't say how.

On to the specific movie.

Falling under the axe were a surprising number of hit songs from the show-- "Liaisons," "In Praise of Women," "Remember?," "Perpetual Anticipation," "The Miller's Son," and, of course, "The Sun Won't Set." The "Quintet," a group of three women and two men who acted as a kind of Greek chorus for the show, are also gone, grounding the film a little more thoroughly in reality, which is both a blessing and a curse. Returning from the original cast are Hermione Gingold (she sang "I Remember It Well" with Maurice Chevalier in Gigi and fought to ban books in The Music Man) as Desiree's mother, Len Cariou as Frederick, and, best of all, the riotous Laurence Guittard as the Count. Diana Rigg (Miss Piggy's put-upon employer in The Great Muppet Caper and Bond's true love in the hideously boring On Her Majesty's Secret Service) is the Countess, and she is by far the best new addition to the cast. The rest of the cast is unmemorable, especially Taylor. Early in the film, she hurries off stage after a performance saying she couldn't kill the "old cow" (her character) any faster tonight-- I wonder if it's what the real Liz Taylor said after finishing her death scene in Cleopatra.

And the big bone of contention about Taylor is that she was not a singer. Never was, never will be. She had tried out for the lead in 1958's South Pacific movie, but she wouldn't sing. I guess twenty years later it didn't matter as much to her. She's dubbed in "Love Takes Time," but in the uproarious "You Must Meet My Wife" (a highlight of the film, in which she learns of Frederick's bizarre situation) and the famous "Send in the Clowns," it is obviously her own voice... paper-thin and reaching. It's not pleasant.

But look at Sophia Loren in the underrated Man of La Mancha. Her big solo, "Aldonza," is scratchy and waily, but emotionally it's exactly what it should be. Taylor tries boldly to hit the same mark but misses, although barely.

All in all, I would love to see a film of A Little Night Music done right, with the quintet and the complete score and the Swedish setting. As far as I know, the play was recently revived, so there should be renewed interest in it. Of course, it probably won't happen. Ever. Movie musicals have been dead for decades. Occasionally you have a Grease or a Jesus Christ Superstar that does some small or large amount of business. But mostly, it's Rents, horrible versions of strictly theatrical stories, or Sweeney Todds, which, like Night Music, lost too much from the original play to be more than "good."

But since it isn't easy for people to go see a play, movie musicals are great because they allow those who wouldn't normally be able to see them, to see them. I discovered South Pacific, Carousel, La Mancha, Camelot, and many other great musicals through movie versions widely deemed subpar by the critical majority. And for the most part, it's a good system. A Little Night Music: 1977, PG, Sascha-Wien Film/Hen's Tooth Video. 119 minutes. Not perfect, but great, and for exposure to one of the best musicals ever written, a perfect opportunity.