A Little Night Music (1977)

Directed by Harold Prince. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Len Cariou, Diana Rigg, Laurence Guittard, Lesley-Anne Down, Christopher Guard, Hermione Gingold, Chloe Franks, Lesley Dunlop, Heinz Marecek. [PG]

Stillborn film version of Stephen Sondheim’s musical based off Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, so flat and awkward, the experience becomes dreary before long…and remember, it’s supposed to be a frothy romance! Diana Rigg provides the only fleeting spark of enchantment in the wooden cast; some of the others make disjointed efforts to add lilting inflections to their lines, but it’s like reanimating deceased words, and there’s no conviction, no energy, no music in the readings. So sloppy in construction, I’m convinced only my familiarity with the Bergman picture allowed me to keep vague track of what was happening and who was interested in who and why. Absurdly won an Academy Award for its song score adaptation, when even its best-known song (“Send in the Clowns”) is rubbish thanks to Liz Taylor’s phlegmatic butchery. Famed theater director Harold Prince’s lone foray into making a movie musical (he also directed a “straight” comedy from 1970, Something for Everyone).

29/100