Six by Sondheim Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		5.0

Six by Sondheim Blu-ray Movie Review

Taking it apart.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 9, 2021

From the early to the middle part of the twentieth century, speaking in admittedly general terms, Broadway musicals seemed to be crafted largely by pairs, in terms of who wrote the music and lyrics. Rodgers and Hart. Kern and Hammerstein. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Lerner and Loewe. Adler and Ross. Bock and Harnick. Strouse and Adams. Schmidt and Jones. Kander and Ebb. There were occasional outliers who did it all themselves, of course, like Frank Loesser and Loesser acolyte Meredith Willson, but sole proprietors like that tended to be the exception rather than the rule. While he had a couple of notable (no pun intended) "at bats" as both composer and lyricist in the 1950s and 1960s, including one pretty substantial hit (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and one legendary flop (Anyone Can Whistle), Stephen Sondheim really started to claim the mantle of leading "one stop shopping" creator of musicals beginning with 1970's groundbreaking dissection of marriage and relationships, Company. That musical took New York by storm, and won a handful of Tony Awards, including two for Sondheim, courtesy of a weird anomaly whereby statuettes were doled out separately for music and lyrics, the only time in the history of those awards that that strategy was followed. Company's score was provocative and contemporary, and the sessions of the original cast laying down tracks for the cast album were filmed by celebrated documentarian D.A. Pennebaker in the unmissable Original Cast Album: Company (Criterion is supposedly releasing a Blu-ray of this in the foreseeable future, but it doesn't seem to have a street date yet, at least according to our database).

Over the course of the next several years in the wake of Company's huge success, Sondheim pulled a rare hat trick in the annals of Broadway (and the annals of different groups in the habit of doling out various statuettes, plaques and/or certificates for excellence), with Company's follow-ups Follies and A Little Night Music making Sondheim's "Tony shelf" in danger of collapsing. After a perceived misstep with Pacific Overtures, Sondheim was back with a vengeance (in more ways than one) with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, cementing his reputation (as if it weren't already cemented) as his generation's leading musical theater "voice".

Sondheim's post-A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street output has seen both incredible successes (Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, the latter exacerbating the Tony shelf issue), a succès d'estime like Passion, (even more stress for the besieged Tony shelf) and outright flops on the order of Anyone Can Whistle ( Merrily We Roll Along). But even Sondheim's ostensibly less "popular" musicals almost always offer an astonishing array of his brilliant wordplay combined with his often almost baroque accompaniment figures and completely distinctive melodies.

With such a glut of material to work with, it might seem like Six by Sondheim is limiting its focus, but this hugely appealing documentary helmed by Sondheim's frequent collaborator James Lapine offers a clear biographical through line, albeit one akin to montage rather than chronological narrative at times, with the history often voiced by Sondheim himself, often with some amazingly funny anecdotes. Unsurprisingly, Six by Sondheim also ends up touching on a veritable grab bag of classic Sondheim material. There are both archival elements (including snippets from the Pennebaker documentary about the recording of Company's original cast album) as well as rather well done newly staged scenes and analyses featuring Sondheim's songs, some of which include contributions by the likes of Todd Haynes, and which suggest rather strongly that film versions of some Sondheim properties yet unadapted could be quite intriguing should they ever come to pass.

But the best part of this documentary about Sondheim is, well, Sondheim. He's often laugh out loud hilarious (as mentioned), but also affable and seemingly accessible, with a sharp wit and a goodly amount of self awareness. Any Sondheim fan will delight to his reminiscences about his mentor Oscar Hammerstein, his guffaw provoking tales of his mother, and some of the many legends with whom he has worked. Just listening to Sondheim dissect his own work is like taking a Master Class in songwriting technique, especially within a character driven theatrical context.

Six by Sondheim Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Six by Sondheim is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO and Warner Archive with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (often) in 1.78:1 (as can be seen in some of the screenshots I've uploaded to the review, archival video can be in narrower aspect ratios). This is another documentary where the expected variances crop up between that archival video and the (then) newly shot material. All of the "contemporary" interview segments and the inventively newly staged musical interstitials all look nicely sharp and well detailed, with a nicely suffused palette. The archival video certainly is more widely variable in quality, with what I'm assuming are some old kinescopes looking pretty fuzzy but with other, ostensibly at least relatively newer, material offering at least somewhat better detail levels. There is some moderate banding at times, which I actually noticed most with regard to the HBO Documentary Films masthead.

Six by Sondheim Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Six by Sondheim features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which really only kicks into high gear with some of the newly staged musical elements. This is by and large a talkathon, with music interludes, and as such the 5.1 mix provides perfectly fine fidelity and support, but only intermittent immersive aspects. That said, both musical moments and spoken sections offer no issues whatsoever. Optional English subtitles are available.

Six by Sondheim Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements included on the disc.

Six by Sondheim Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Years (actually decades) ago, I had the distinct privilege of Music Directing one of the first west coast productions of Putting It Together: A Musical Review, a piece which, kind of like this documentary itself, is assembled out of many different Sondheim musicals. One of the coolest things about that production is that Mr. Sondheim sent the director a few updates along the way, and it allowed for some fascinating insight into just how picayune Sondheim's attention to detail can be. Those interested in songcraft, and musical theater songcraft in particular, will find no more articulate "deconstructor" than Sondheim is in this uniquely fascinating documentary. About the only deficit to this piece is that it was made in 2013, and as the widely touted streaming celebration of Sondheim's 90th birthday last year may indicate, Mr. Sondheim is, as someone once wisely put it, "still here". Technical merits are generally solid, and Six by Sondheim comes Highly recommended.