Oh, that's true. He has been critical of film versions of his work. But not usually till years later.
In fact, on the Mike Douglas Show, some months before the film version of A Little Night Music was released, Sondheim praised Elizabeth Taylor's performance of "Send in the Clowns" in the movie, saying that she sang it so well that people would not believe it was her singing it, but it was her voice. Douglas had not asked him about it. Sondheim brought it up himself.
Meanwhile, I interviewed Sondheim before the film was released for a paper I was writing. (This was a few months after the Douglas show appearance.) When I asked him about the film, he had little good to say about it. He praised Len Cariou's performance, but that was it. Of Taylor, he said something like "She has one or two good comic moments, and one or two good touching moments, but otherwise . . ."
He was surprisingly open about some things in the interview. He mentioned that there was a new version of "The Glamorous Life" and said something like "That would have been good if Hal had filmed it the way I laid it out." But, of course, he never spoke about it publicly like that, certainly not at the time.
I think that Sondheim really feels that way about the Sweeney film, which just proves to me how little perspective he has on these things. Of course, why should he have perspective? How could he have perspective? It's so close to him. But it doesn't exactly make you trust his judgments on these matters.
Personally, I think both the Sweeney film and the Gypsy film have good points and weak points. Sondheim did try to make it sound (and he seemed to genuinely feel) that the Sweeney film was on some notably higher level than any previous film version of a Broadway musical. I think that few people, even those who loved it, quite agreed that it was so much better than any other film version of a musical.
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