The musical film gets fewer and fewer every year because the talent that was under contract in the golden years of the studio system is no longer there. You have to pay the market rate for the talent you do get since the 60s. It's like when free agency came to team sports.
So it was with A Little Night Music which ran for 601 performances on Broadway stage. It's a curious film with a number of genuine musical performers like Broadway lead Len Cariou together with actresses like Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Rigg, and Lesley Anne Down who don't exactly have any great musical ability.
It's a mishmosh, but it does work more or less. The show is based on an old Ingmar Bergman film and the plot location is shifted from Sweden to Austria at the turn of the last century. Starting with Len Cariou everyone is either married to or kanoodling with someone they're really not suited for. Cariou is married to the much younger and still virginal Ms. Down. Feeling he has an itch he wants some scratching for, Cariou goes out one night and hunts up an old mistress, a notorious actress Elizabeth Taylor.
Cariou invites all the dramtis personae to his country estate where all the romantic problems are solved and everyone is now properly mated. Everyone but Hermione Gingold who plays Taylor's mother and is past interest in participating. Now sex is a spectator sport for her. Gingold repeats her role from Broadway as well.
Stephen Sondheim's score contained one big mega hit Send In The Clowns. A slew of artists recorded it even older generation singers like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. But Judy Collins's best seller is the one most remembered.
I'd have liked to have heard any one of the others sing it, but Elizabeth Taylor God Bless her was a talented actress and one of the most beautiful women ever. But a singer she was not.
A Little Night Music got an Oscar for Best Adapted Musical score and a nomination for costume design. Not the best musical adaption out there, but still a decent film.
So it was with A Little Night Music which ran for 601 performances on Broadway stage. It's a curious film with a number of genuine musical performers like Broadway lead Len Cariou together with actresses like Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Rigg, and Lesley Anne Down who don't exactly have any great musical ability.
It's a mishmosh, but it does work more or less. The show is based on an old Ingmar Bergman film and the plot location is shifted from Sweden to Austria at the turn of the last century. Starting with Len Cariou everyone is either married to or kanoodling with someone they're really not suited for. Cariou is married to the much younger and still virginal Ms. Down. Feeling he has an itch he wants some scratching for, Cariou goes out one night and hunts up an old mistress, a notorious actress Elizabeth Taylor.
Cariou invites all the dramtis personae to his country estate where all the romantic problems are solved and everyone is now properly mated. Everyone but Hermione Gingold who plays Taylor's mother and is past interest in participating. Now sex is a spectator sport for her. Gingold repeats her role from Broadway as well.
Stephen Sondheim's score contained one big mega hit Send In The Clowns. A slew of artists recorded it even older generation singers like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. But Judy Collins's best seller is the one most remembered.
I'd have liked to have heard any one of the others sing it, but Elizabeth Taylor God Bless her was a talented actress and one of the most beautiful women ever. But a singer she was not.
A Little Night Music got an Oscar for Best Adapted Musical score and a nomination for costume design. Not the best musical adaption out there, but still a decent film.