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Plot summary
Austria, at the turn of the twentieth century. Frederick Egerman is a lawyer whose second wife, Anne, is eighteen. Eleven months into the marriage she is still a virgin, though she tells him she will be ready soon. Erich, Frederick's son from his first marriage, is a year older than Anne and studies for the church, and he desires her. Frederick buys tickets to a touring play and discovers its star is Desiree Armfeldt, the actress he loved fourteen years earlier. Anne sees the two exchange a look at the theater and insists they leave; afterward Frederick visits Desiree in her dressing room. Desiree, who travels Europe in play after play, has a fourteen-year-old daughter, Fredericka, and a married lover, Count Carl-Magnus Mittelheim. Tired of touring, she considers settling down and sets her sights on Frederick.
Cast
- Laurence Guittardas Carl-Magnus Mittelheim
- Ruth Brinkmanas Second Lady
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Little Night Music (1977)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the film Stephen Sondheim entirely rewrote “The Glamorous Life”, and that new version has since been incorporated into several later stage productions of the musical.
- Moving the story's setting from Sweden to Austria, where the film was shot on location, also changed the name of Frederich's son from Henrik to Erich.
- The film drew mostly negative reviews, with much made of Taylor's wildly fluctuating weight from scene to scene, and Pauline Kael in The New Yorker was particularly scathing, writing that the picture had been made as if Harold Prince had never seen a movie.
- A Little Night Music was directed by Harold Prince, and it turned out to be his second and final directorial role on a feature film.
