Could NIGHT MUSIC ever work as a movie?

Could it ever work? With the right director? I know it would NEVER work with Rob Marshall's "characters cannot sing in reality" concept.
I feel like the two hardest numbers to make work on screen would be Liaisons and The Miller's Son, and I would hate to see them cut as they were in the first movie.

If it did happen, I think having Zeta-Jones reprise the role on screen would be inevitable.

Thoughts? Will it ever work, or should it just be left alone?

Updated On: 12/18/09 at 10:54 PM

I think it would. Perhaps the context of "Liasons" would have to be slightly altered, but I think it'd be fine. Same with "The Miller's Son."

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Hmmm. Liaisons as a flashback might be a good idea. I just feel solo songs being sung to the camera in musical movies don't usually work. Thats why I would be worried about these two numbers.

Updated On: 12/18/09 at 11:12 PM

Oh and please set this (imaginary) movie in Sweden.

I think it might work as a film, but it would have to go way out of the comfort zone for most filmmakers and audiences. You not only have many songs (Liaisons, Miller's Son, Now, Later, In Praise of Women) where characters are singing their thoughts (aka, sung monologues), but you also have those pesky Liedersingers. We know that cutting the quintet and their "Greek chorus" comments leaves a dull and deadly impression (see previous film version), but including them means that you've got a highly theatrical devise running throughout the movie.

Can they just pop up in Desiree's digs or out from behind a birch tree to sing "Remember?" or "The Sun Won't Set," etc. Won't they look like operatic stalkers? Or Bergmanesque ghosts?

Or could you keep cross-cutting between a period stage play set in Sweden and "real life" in the Swedish countryside? Sort of like the opening sequence in the 1977 movie. I think it would get gimmicky really fast. Although it (sort of) worked in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

It would take a director like Baz Luhrmann to pull a film version of Night Music off. Someone willing to break the rules of cinematic storytelling. And I just don't know who the audience would be for this film. Unless they're all running around in lingerie (ala a Rob Marshall musical) and "sexing" it up in the woods, I can't see it turning much of a profit.

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Updated On: 12/18/09 at 11:56 PM

Lansbury did say she wants to do one last film. If they were going to make this with Zeta-Jones and Lansbury, I imagine it would need to be made soon.

I think the answer for many of these sung monologues would be to create "screen business" to be going on while the songs were being sung.

They tried that in the movie for Every Day A Little Death, by having Charlotte sing it while she was riding in the carriage to the Egerman's house. Not inspired, but it worked on a very basic level. The point is that you can't have any character just stand or sit and sing one of these monologue/songs. The story needs to keep moving forward.

For example, with Liaisons, you could have Mme. Armfeldt start this song while she's in her bedroom looking at her jewelry. Then you could have it continue as a voice-over while we see Desiree and Frederik having their "cheap, no frills" affair in the theatre dressing room. Meanwhile her mother is singing about her affairs with kings and dukes, etc. They could be going on simultaneously on screen, which would keep the story moving forward.

Still can't figure out what to do with those Liedersingers ...

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Phyllis, I agree with you, and I think that Tim Burton did that well, Bill Condon failed at it miserably, and well Chris Columbus...
Besty, I agree with you. I still wonder how numbers like "Now/Later/Soon" and a few others would work for a film.

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Now/Later/Soon would have to be trimmed carefully. They go on WAY too long for a film. That whole Egerman sequence is about 20 minutes long with the dialogue. Ten (total) would be good enough to establish these characters, their wants and desires, and get on with the plot.

And I think Burton failed far worse with Sweeney by cutting all the choral singing. A stupid mistake, because he doesn't "get" people singing together in unison. When actually that's more likely to happen in real life in a bar or tavern than someone singing solo (unless that person is doing karaoke).

And I don't like his "twisted cartoonish" world in Sweeney. It's too surreal and just as bad as putting the whole thing in someone's mind to justify the singing. Night Music may be a period piece, but it's not a fantasy or a legend. It's a romantic comedy about (supposedly) real people.

Sweeeny Todd (the movie) has managed to get worse and worse for me with repeat viewings, not better.

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Updated On: 12/19/09 at 12:25 AM

Maybe the Leidsingers are the Eggerman and Armfeldt butlers and maids, and they all get together for a weekly poker game and whenever they sing it's at their poker game.

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Hairspray and Mamma Mia each created worlds where the characters just burst into song. The success of those could be attributed to their casts or ABBA or whatever, but they were still hits.

I feel about Dreamgirls the way best feels about Sweeney Todd. Upon repeated viewings it just doesn't hold up.

Updated On: 12/19/09 at 11:28 AM

I don't understand all this "singing to the camera" stuff. I've seen few film musicals where people sing to the camera. They sing to many other things but not the camera. I keep bringing this up, but why is it that when I show classic film musicals to kids they never have a problem when someone starts singing. NEVER. You set the world of the film, you set the rules of the world and if you're good and the material is good the audience will follow. If you build it they will come. When Shirley Jones starts singing Goodnight, My Someone no one faints away dead from shock. When Riff starts singing the Jet Song no one runs screaming from the theater. When Julie Andrews bursts into the title song at the beginning of The Sound Of Music it's enthralling, not troubling. Just bloody DO it. The Sound Of Music is filled with numbers - people sing. It's also cinematic beyond belief in a way the stage show never was. Julie A. is not singing to the camera. What is that?

Oh, I definitely think it could work as a film, just not a film with a wide audience.

But if Ingmar Bergman can do extreme close-ups of actors' faces during monologues, singers could be shown singing solos, with and without montages depicting backstory.

And the Liedersingers cannot be servants. Class structure is an important part of the story, and the experiences they sing of in "Remember" are middle-class class experiences they actually had, while Petra's song depicts the one-and-only opportunity available to her with the miller's son, and the fantasies she has in the meantime.

But it wouldn't be as popular as Chicago: It lacks sex and murder and half-naked women. It could never be more than "caviar to the masses."

Like a movie-musical version of "Smiles of a Summer Night."

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