How Stephen Sondheim’s Work Did (and Didn’t) Translate to the Screen

What’s it that makes it so tough to adapt Sondheim to the display screen? There aren’t, with only a few exceptions, nice display screen interpretations of his work that aren’t filmed theater productions.

He offers you one thing that you just assume you perceive. Even with “Into the Woods” (the 2014 movie), it’s like, “Oh, it’s a deconstruction of fairy tales.” However that’s actually not sufficient to go on. There’s one thing actually profound happening there about disappointment and loneliness that’s most likely actually arduous to sq. with the style trappings. They’re tough as a result of he’s all the time doing two issues directly. And whenever you make a movie, filmmakers usually give attention to the spectacle, not realizing that the spectacle needs to be elided. That’s actually arduous to do in movie.

I used to be considering in the present day about which Sondheim works I want there have been films of. I by no means need “Sunday within the Park With George” to be a film, simply by advantage of what it’s, the way it’s produced, what it’s about. What it’s doing feels so New York stage, it might be so unusual.

May you speak about Sondheim and Madonna’s cinematic work in “Dick Tracy”?

For me, as a bit of homosexual boy together with his Madonna “I’m Breathless” cassette tape in 1990, it was the important factor. Interval. “Dick Tracy,” the gruff lantern-jawed masculine comedian e book detective, simply doesn’t curiosity me. However I keep in mind these songs. It’s a type of issues that’s a queering agent. “Dick Tracy” actually seems like a hybrid of plenty of completely different sensibilities. I like the best way that Sondheim and Madonna’s contributions assist to negate the uber-masculinity of the textual content.

And we’ve to speak about “The Final of Sheila” (1973), which he co-wrote with Anthony Perkins.

That’s a tough one. It’s attention-grabbing that they selected an intricate, whodunit homicide thriller plot, as a result of how else would you intelligently funnel this Sondheim complexity and thought of overlapping narratives, characters, themes right into a style movie? I believe that’s what makes it pleasant. With Sondheim you see the gears working with out it taking you out of the movie. It’s a film about recreation taking part in, by which you’re continuously being requested to measurement up the folks concerned. It’s very mechanical in a enjoyable approach.

And in a nasty approach that I like, too.

One of many recreation playing cards within the movie reads, “You’re a gay.” And the best way they speak about it’s surprisingly informal and type of progressive. There’s the concept that that is an accusation. However when it’s revealed, there’s an actual casualness about it. It’s shocking for “closeted” — on the time — homosexual males to write down.

See It Huge: Sondheim runs by way of Could 1 on the Museum of the Shifting Picture in Astoria, Queens. For extra info, go to movingimage.us.