MACTby Seven LaVigne
Theater directors generally stay in the theater, but some have branched out with films – not always successfully. For every Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse or Joshua Logan, there’s someone who should have known better. Harold Prince (1928-2019) is one of them! Fortunately, he only made two movies.
Winner of an unprecedented 21 Tony Awards, his 55-year career included such influential musicals as West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, the 1974 revival of Candide, Sweeney Todd, Evita and the longest-running show in Broadway history, The Phantom of the Opera. He also directed plays and opera in addition to being a successful producer.
Prince’s first film was the 1970’s Something for Everyone starring Angela Lansbury and Michael York. It’s a dark comedy about an attractive young man who uses his charms to drain an aristocratic family of their fortune. While it includes elements used in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley films and the recent Saltburn, in spite of its original X rating, Something for Everyone was a failure because it’s really an unpleasant experience.
During their long association, Stephen Sondheim shared with Prince his desire to create a musical with a score entirely made up of waltzes. After being denied the rights to Jean Anouilh’s Ring Round the Moon, they approached Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman who had no objections to their adaptation of his delightful sex comedy, Smiles of a Summer Night. Hugh Wheeler wrote both the libretto and the screenplay while Sondheim did the score. The results were multiple awards for Best Musical of 1973.
Set in Sweden during Summer Solstice, the story shares a similar theme with Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the night smiles three times: “for the young who know nothing, the foolish who know little and the old who know too much.” Retitled A Little Night Music (after Mozart), this is a sophisticated, romantic evening of theater, which played 601 Broadway performances. The original cast featured Glynnis Johns as Desiree Armfeldt, Hermione Gingold as Madame Leonora Armfeldt and former Guthrie actors Len Cariou as Frederik Egerman and Patricia Elliott as Countess Middelheim.
In London, Gingold recreated her role opposite Joss Ackland and Jean Simmons. A Broadway revival featured Catherine Zeta-Jones followed by Bernadette Peters as Desiree. Both Angela Lansbury and Elaine Stritch made their final Broadway appearances in the role of Madame Armfeldt during this revival.
The story follows Frederik Egerman, a barrister whose marriage to Anne, a child bride is unconsummated after 11 months. His son, Henrik, a deeply religious seminary student (renamed Erich in the film) is conflicted because he’s hopelessly in love with his stepmother. Frederik surprises Anne with tickets to see Desiree Armfeldt, his former lover in a play. When Desiree glares at Frederik from the stage, Anne grows upset and leaves. She catches Erich and her maid, Petra snogging, which infuriates her even more.
Frustrated, Frederik visits Desiree in her dressing room and they renew the relationship they had long ago, only to be caught by her current lover, Count Carl-Magnus Mittelheim, a military man. Desiree lies to Carl-Magnus, but he tells his long-suffering wife the situation, she tells Anne and complications arise. What next? Why, a weekend in the country, of course. The characters arrive at Madame Armfeldt’s estate, where the midsummer night does indeed smile.
With Cariou, Gingold and Laurence Guittard repeating their roles, Diana Rigg was cast as the Countess, Lesley-Anne Down as Anne and Elizabeth Taylor as Desiree Armfeldt. Elizabeth Taylor in a musical? Yes. To begin with Taylor is the right actress for the role because she embodies what it means to be an actress. Besides, without her, the movie might never have been financed.
Diana Rigg is superbly cast as the Countess. Although she was only in her mid-20s at the time, Lesley-Anne Down brings an unlikely maturity to the role of 18-year-old Anne. The character is naïve, but because Down had played more wiser women in such films as Countess Dracula and The Betsy her performance never rings true.
For some unexplained reason, the setting has been moved to Austria. We can only presume that, because the show resembles an operetta and because Vienna is the capital of that sort of music, this made sense, as ridiculous as it was. This change refutes the theme of the story. The summer night doesn’t smile the same way in Austria as it does in Sweden, where the Aurora Borealis is a common sight.
Hugh Wheeler eliminated the Lieder Singers warming up with “Night Waltz” at the top of the show. Instead, the story is framed as a theatrical piece and the performers waltz to “Love Takes Time,” an introduction for audiences unfamiliar with the material. Sondheim rewrote “The Glamorous Life,” which overall works, but isn’t as much fun as the stage lyric. The film eliminates several songs, including “In Praise of Women,” “Perpetual Anticipation,” and Petra’s hopeful ode to sex and love, “The Miller’s Son.” Far worse, Gingold’s delightful vocal memoir, “Liaisons” was cut, giving her character very little to do and making this a thankless role. More about this later.
So, is the film version of A Little Night Music any good?
If you’d asked me after I first saw the movie decades ago, my reaction was no. However, seeing it again in preparation for this article, my opinion’s changed somewhat, because I realized, above all else, that the movie has become more of a curiosity than anything else.
In his autobiography, Sense of Occasion, Prince believes he made a mess of things and reports that he was bored with the film process. The eternal preparation to get the lighting right. He didn’t trust Elizabeth Taylor who was such a consummate professional, he didn’t realize that she’d done what he wanted until he saw the rushes. Keep in mind, however, that Taylor was the only one in the cast who really knew how to act for the camera. Diana Rigg didn’t appreciate how often Taylor was late. But what of Taylor’s vocal performance?
In the 1974 celebration of MGM musicals, That’s Entertainment, Taylor explains that she “was no threat to Jane Powell or Judy Garland,” meaning that her musical talent was minimal. However, there are 30 years between Cynthia, where we first heard her mediocre soprano and A Little Night Music. During that time Taylor had done a lot of living, much of it under the public eye, and it’s evident that she enjoyed making this film. Taylor did most of her own singing and it’s just fine. He rendition of “You Must Meet My Wife,” which she talk-sings, is a highlight of the film.
Because of the ¾ time signature, Sondheim’s lyrical phrases are short, as in this section of “Send in the Clowns”: “Isn’t it rich, Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, you in midair, Send in the Clowns.” Most of the song has 4 syllables per section. This is perfect for Taylor’s breathy vocals, because it adds passion to her delivery. Orchestrator Jonathan Tunick won an Oscar for his work on the film, so musically, it’s better than you’d expect.
On the other hand, the role of Madame Armfeldt, the retired courtesan who was “deeded…a Duchy,” has become thankless for two reasons. The first, as stated above, is that her song, “Liaisons,” which explains who she is and how she acquired wealth, position and this country estate has been eliminated. Far worse, however, is the last scene when the summer night smiles “for the old who know too much.” The camera focuses on Taylor and Cariou in the foreground, walking arm in arm toward the house. Meanwhile, on the balcony, as Desiree’s adolescent daughter Fredricka observes them, Madame Armfeldt dies – in a dimly lit long shot!
Unless audiences are familiar with either the stage version or Ingmar Bergman’s film, this important part of the story is lost to them.
While the film works as research for directors doing productions of the musical, the acting is subdued and lacks energy. Evidently, those long camera setups kept Prince from demanding stronger performances from the cast. No matter, because the film was largely panned, had only a limited theatrical release and then disappeared.
A decade later, New York City Opera revived it at Lincoln Center under the guidance of Scott Ellis. Sally Ann Howes, Regina Resnick, Kevin Anderson and Maureen Moore were among the principals and this lively, beautifully staged production was broadcast Live from Lincoln Center, restored interest in A Little Night Music, which is now done frequently. However, it’s not an easy show to do. Many productions focus on Sondheim’s melodic score. The book gets short shrift in these productions, because it’s forgotten that underneath that score, the story is a sex comedy and should be loads of fun while still being beautifully sung.
As I stated above, this film is a curiosity, so if you choose to seek it out after reading this article, it’s easily found at the public library. To be honest, though, you’d be better off with Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, which is superior to Harold Prince’s “mess.”