This month we are spending half the month highlighting movies for the Oscars. Here is this which I bought for $6. I thought this was going to be terrible and even though that is a terrible reason to buy something, that is why I bought this.
A Little Night Music was smash Broadway hit from 1973 with music/lyrics by Stephan Sondhiem and book by Hugh Wheeler. Oddly enough, this work was based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night (so a film version of the musical kind of comes full circle). It was pretty successful, winning that year’s Tony for bets Musical (along with Best Book and Best Score). For anyone else, this would definitely be the best work of one’s career, but for Sondhiem, it is hard to say. Definitely among the best of his many successes. “Send In The Clowns” for sure is his most covered song. I had posted the West End version of the production last year. You can see that here.
This recording is from the movie adaptation, which came out in 1977. Directed by longtime Sondhiem collaborator Harold Prince, the film featured Elizabeth Taylor in the lead along with Diana Rigg and Lesley- Anne Down. Manitoba boy Len Cariou reprised his lead role from the stage along with Hermoine Gingold and Laurence Guittard. I thought it was odd that this was a Roger Corman production but then I found that I had confused Corman with Russ Meyer, which would have made for a different movie all together.
The movie was critically panned for various reasons. One such factor that gets brought up is the fluctuating weight displayed by Taylor throughout the movie. Other than that (and perhaps the death of the movie musical which technically happened way before 1977), without seeing the movie, I am not sure what went wrong.
Rigg came out of this ordeal OK with critics praising her work. Also , the movie won an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song Score and its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score. They no longer honor this category at the Oscars.
So then what to make out of this then? First off the bat, Sondhiem re-wrote my favorite song from the musical, “Glamorous Life” and I straight out hate it (he also added lyrics to “Night Watlz”. Several songs such as “The Miller’s Son” and “Liaisons” both of which I liked were taken out of the main work and used as background music. Finally, the Greek chorus was removed from the film version (which I guess makes some sense and would probably have more impact on seeing the productions rather than listening to records). That being said, I actually enjoyed this album. It was not as terrible as I would have imagined. Of course this has a lot to do with the principles from the stage version. Apparently, Taylor sung her own parts and since the role was not designed for a strong singer, in this regard, she did fine.
For samples, I went with “You Must Meet My Wife” which is ever so witty. I enjoyed it from the West End record and was quite glad I had not used it as a sample. I also decided to go with the ensemble piece ” A Weekend in the Country”.
Again, album was not as bad as I would have thought. Satisfactory.