A tangled web of affairs is weaved around actress, Desirée Armfeldt, and the men who love her: a lawyer by the name of Fredrik Egerman and the Count Carl-Magnus Malcom. When the traveling actress performs in Fredrik's town, the estranged lovers' passion rekindles.
Das Lächeln einer Sommernacht, Egy kis éji zene, Pequeña música nocturna, Dulce Viena, Un po' di musica notturna, Um Pouco de Música Noturna, Melodia nocturna, 小夜曲
USA
USA
As a teenaged gay well into the throes of his Sondheim obsession, I petitioned my local small town library to buy a copy of the newly-released DVD. It was a process for them and for me.
It was not worth it.
okay it is IMPOSSIBLE to find this particular version ANYWHERE (which is not fair because I deserve to see elizabeth taylor as desiree armfeldt!!!! give it to me!!!!!) so this rating is about the musical itself, not the movie
MORE IMPORTANTLY I did just watch the 2010 broadway revival (with the replacement cast OBVIOUSLY, I am nothing if not loyal to my brand) & I can't log that on letterboxd because ... uh ... it's not exactly a film if you get my meaning but anyway the point of all of this is to say: OI STEVE CAN YOU STOP RIPPING ME TO SHREDS EVEN WITH A HAPPY ENDING THANKS
nothing is funnier to me than how angry sondheim gets over Send In the Clowns going mainstream
gosh the things i do for len cariou and steve sondheim
i love smiles of a summer night!!! i love the the actual musical!!! i think they're both marvelous. i love how wheeler and sondheim adapted the film and the tweaks they made. but this film... is horrendous. it feels like an old tv film pleading to be hidden away from the crowd. evening primrose is much bearable than this, and that is an actual tv film. maybe i should stop hoping on actually liking a sondheim film adaptation because it seems like it'll never happen lol
ps: i bet todd philips lovesssss that joker has the sliver of connection to bergman because of send in the clowns smhhh
not a log for this film adaptation, instead i just wanna say a Couple things in the aftermath of being blessed to see a local community theatre production of the show. im super on the high of thinking that stephen sondheim was the best artist in any medium ever...i still need to plug some embarrassing knowledge gaps before i say that for sure (follies, assassins, merrily we roll along, and since im me i GOTTA get on the frogs and pacific overtures), but i rly feel like the direction of his particular personal disciplines is The Thing to envy and take notes from if ur ever gonna be even slightly prescriptive about How To Make Cool Art. the show itself…
It’s criminal that Elizabeth Taylor got excoriated for her performance in this! She’s funny, forlorn when she has to be, and her voice is not bad at all. The rest of the cast was solid, with Diana Rigg (deliciously sarcastic), Len Cariou, and Lesley-Anne Down (what a voice!) being the other highlights. Although not perfect in its execution, the flawless Stephen Sondheim music is more than enough to keep one rapt throughout.
"This picture has been made as if the director had never *seen* a movie"
Pauline Kael was right and she should say it.
Shoddy in conception and construction, this adaptation of the 1973 Broadway musical—based on Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night and featuring music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim—is most interesting for the presence of Elizabeth Taylor, who is at once sorely out of place and somehow the movie’s centripetal force. (I guess that’s star power?) She plays Desiree Armfeldt, a stage actress, circa 1900 Vienna, and the hub of an ever-expanding array of interconnected mistresses, wives, husbands, sons, daughters, and others. Taylor may not have the singing chops Sondheim’s material requires, but there’s a brash attitude and eventual vulnerability to her performance that nevertheless charms, culminating in a surprisingly moving rendition of “Send in the Clowns.” Otherwise, A Little Night Music is a supposedly scandalous sex comedy undone by an endless array of uninteresting medium shots and storeroom lighting, the latter of which makes poor Taylor look 30 in some scenes and 70 in others.
Harold Prince’s musical about an actress with a colourful past but now looking for some stability in her life. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Rigg, Len Cariou and Lesley-Anne Down.
Adapted from the musical of the same name by Hugh Wheeler, which is inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 Swedish comedy Smiles of a Summer Night, the story concerns an actress (Elizabeth Taylor), her married former lover (Len Cariou), her present lover’s wife (Diana Rigg) and other guests who meet at a circa-1900 estate.
Elizabeth Taylor gives an okay performance in her role as Desiree Armfeldt, the actress who doesn’t know at times what she wants to do with herself, which makes it frustrating for the viewer.
Elsewhere, Diana Rigg as Charlotte…
