I'm in the process of watching the special features of the 2-disc version of this story of a series of horrific killings, set to music.

Actually, Sondheim & Wheeler's SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is my favorite musical of all time, possibly given my early bent for the macabre (such as when I got interested in the Borden case at age 12...).

I'm on record as saying that I think the film, as terrific and loving an adaptation as it is, is occasionally poorly directed in several important scenes. I'm thinking of the moment when Sweeney realizes what Mrs. Lovett's proposing to do with the corpse upstairs, and also when he hears for the first time who it is that evil Judge Turpin is planning to wed. Both scenes need more reaction from Depp to take him to the next beat. I bet Burton squelched Depp's instincts in the interest of maintaining a nearly realistic, low-key tone in the acting.

Having seen slightly different versions of the 24 minute p.r. promo on various channels in advance of the film's opening, it's interesting to see how longer footage of the talking head interviews, as seen on the discs, was cobbled down. Apparently, Sondheim sat in that room talking for quite a while. There's a lovely off-screen moment I haven't seen before in which Bonham Carter recalls how the property was something Tim Burton and she talked about early in their relationship; she jokes that it's actually all they have in common - "that, and the baby."

The disc sounds great (watch the bass at the opening - you may lose a knick-knack or two) and the color (or lack of it, for most of the film) seems correct. I plan to buy the eventual Blu-ray version, of course (and a player). I assume the opening bass on the Blu-ray will destroy my apartment, but it's a sacrifice I'll make. I'd like a house somewhere anyway, perhaps "by the sea?"

I'm also a big fan of the musical, although only from listening to the original Broadway soundtrack. I've seen a couple of recorded performances, but I've never seen it live.

I saw the movie twice in the theater. I think it does a good job of adapting the story, but I think Depp and Bonham Carter are pretty poor in the leads. (And I say that as a huge Johnny Depp fan.) To me, Depp just doesn't have the boiling, explosive, catastrophic rage that the character needs to be effective. This may be an interpretive choice, but I think it's also a reflection of his weak singing. So much of Sweeney's character is expressed in the songs, and he can't sell it, in "Epiphany" or elsewhere. Likewise, Bonham Carter just isn't up to her role vocally, to say the least. And as usual, I find that Depp has no chemistry with his female counterpart, and that's a problem in songs like "A Little Priest".

That said, I loved the production design and the orchestration and blood-spattered conception of the story. The final image is awesome and perfect.

I'm so torn on this movie.

I'm a fan of the musical stemming back from seeing the Angela Lansbury version on public television and a stunning production at Baltimore's tiny claustrophobic Spotlighters Theaters (essentially, it's a rowhouse basement) back in the '90s. The gentleman who played Sweeney in that production was an opera singer with a big boom and who resembled a handsome, young Christopher Lloyd (!!!). At least, that's how I remember him. Man, I wish I could remember his name.

Anyway, I have fond memories of "Sweeney Todd." Sadly, the Tim Burton film is not one of them.

And I don't believe that it's a bad movie at all nor is it without its ghoulish charms. It's just so devoid of fun and almost seems to be working extra hard to expunge the black comedy from the material. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Burton's film feels like the work of a depressed person.

You don't say.

For all of her vocal limitations, Helena really is the life blood of this film. And it's hard not to see parallels between the film's portrayal of the Sweeney/Lovett relationship and that of Burton and Helena Bonham Carter. It's funny to a point, but it's also despressing. Depp's Sweeney Todd is an intense, unfunny lump of goth rage while Helena's lovesick Lovett is mostly pathetic. These characters have always had these undercurrents, but it's as if the actors don't realize that they have a lot of scenery to chew on.

Of course, if you really want to go deep with the dimestore psychoanalysis, you could see parallels between the Sweeney/Lovett/Beggar Woman triangle and Burton/Helena/Lisa Marie. On another board, one poster quipped in response to CORPSE BRIDE: Man, Burton must still feel guilty about Lisa Marie.

At the time, I smirked at what I figured was no more than a glib theory. After seeing how Burton distilled this musical, I'm not so sure.

I think that Carter is a stitch in the film, and does a lovely job. I wish she were easier to understand when she's speaking, however. I was trying to figure out was was happening when the docu shows her recording her vocals to the orchestral playback in a smaller studio - and, as one can hear, to an already present singing voice.

It didn't seem to me she was double-tracking her vocals for strength (and they were undoubtedly pitch-corrected for the film), but I wonder if she was singing to an already pitch-corrected "follow-along" take of herself, or maybe even someone else's voice, for guidance in recording the "acted" takes. Can anyone shed any light on this for me?

I could watch Depp in SECRET WINDOW once a week for the rest of my unnatural life, and I love watching him work in SWEENEY, but there is just enough (of everything) not quite there or deleted to render the second half of the film a Reader's Digest version which is very hard to get worked up over. Not so with nearly ever stage version (and I've seen a lot of them) I've ever attended.

I'll grow to forgive the film its mistakes and to cherish that it exists at all.

Here’s a rambling collection of mostly spoiler-free reactions I’ve been jotting down since late December, inspired both by Sweeney Todd and comments at both this thread and the other Mobius Sweeney thread here. Sorry to take up so much space. Can’t help myself.



With the owners of the Hammer Films label attempting a new project and various recent gothic tributes to the classic Cushing/Lee years, I’ve heard the phrase “the Hammer movie that Hammer never had the money for” used many times. Well, here it is for real. A 50 million dollar Hammer gothic horror epic. Something must’ve gone wonky with the universe, because I’m not supposed to get something that ideal for Christmas. This is the great Hammer tribute that I wanted Sleepy Hollow to be, a Victorian England Hell filled with dark and sooty details. As a devotee to Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd musical for close to decades now, I haven’t been too quiet on Mobius about my doubts and nay saying towards Burton, Depp, and the whole idea of an abridged Hollywood version with non-singers. Well, I’m happy to admit that they pulled it off. They did it. They bloody did it. And they did it bloody too, in bright gushing Eastmancolor red.

Horror fans who normally can’t stand musicals should give Sweeney a chance. Most of the songs reflect the inner desires of some very obsessed and rather unbalanced mindsets, as if singing is the only way these damned souls can articulate their sins and purge themselves of these thoughts. Even the sweetest of the romantic stuff has a creepy element. When separated from Sondheim’s gorgeous music, the lyrics of the big ingénue romantic number “Joanna” read like something written by a stalker/serial killer on a scrap of paper tied to a brick thrown through some poor girl’s window:

Within his first few minutes onscreen, Depp totally won me over as Sweeney. No, he ain’t no Len Cariou when it comes to singing. But the massive screen presence he gives to Todd made me forget his youthfulness, slight build, pretty face, mild voice, and all the other things that seemed to spell disaster here. He’s a storm cloud, a boiling force of vengeance, a Victorian newspaper caricature brought to frightening life. Thirteen years after Ed Wood, Depp’s the one reflecting Lugosi at his dark and dramatic best, as if he were going to hit Fort Marmorus after London and give that Karloff fella some what-for. And speaking of Boris, check out Depp when he tempts Toby with a cup of gin, full of that chilling false kindness Karloff did so well.

I agree that Burton and Depp really missed an important moment when Todd barely reacts to the news that Turpin plans to wed Joanna. Todd is a character with many layers to be revealed, needing the kind of attention that Scorsese or Peckinpah would have brought to this story. I missed the grief-stricken weeping naïve young man that Bob Gunton showed occasionally in his Demon Barber during his NYC stage run back in ’89, especially during Depp’s stunned and cold reactions in the final basement scenes. But I think this is an indicator that Burton and Depp are intentionally presenting a somewhat different Todd, a really cold and brutal serial killer, the kind of guy who would greet the idea of secretly feeding the public human meat with no more than an amused little “Ahh.”

Bonham-Carter acquits herself as a first-rate actor, spoiling us with a soulful performance filled with great little bits of action, but she really can’t sing. Sondheim’s lyrics keep getting lost between her mumbling and the powerful orchestra music that overwhelms her. It’s almost unfair to Bonham-Carter if, like me, you’ve ever seen or heard all of the humor, physicality, and singing-power that Angela Lansbury brought to the role. All the same, Bonham-Carter really makes amends with her use of the close-up. A great example is “No One’s Going To Harm You” where you can see in Lovett’s eyes the decision to kill the boy and how disappointed she is in herself. The boy playing Tobias (much younger than the stage character) is the opposite: a powerful and heart-breaking singing voice, but the emotions required by that song aren’t fully conveyed by him.

Alan Rickman is excellent as usual, a haughty but understated Vincent Price, so I can forgive his rather weak singing voice. I was so glad to see and hear a very funny and congenial Timothy Spall in the DVD extras, as his Beadle Bamford is the most disgusting and hateful Penny Dreadful heavy imaginable, like the worst of villains from Dickens to Hammer Studios. The movie versions of Anthony and Joanna are still rather shallow ingénues, portrayed by an attractive pair far better at singing than acting, but Burton & Co have improved things by making them both vaguely creepy and haunting. Not to mention everything the make-up and costume department did for The Beggar Woman… brrrr!

As much as I’ve thought about Sweeney Todd over the years, regardless of being such a horror movie fan, it just never occurred to me that things should be this violent. There were times where I felt in my gut that things had gone too far. And this is good. This is Grand-Guignol. They stepped over the line and really shocked me, just as they should with a story like this. Making each death stylized with an over-abundance of that bright and stagey blood kept things in line with the heightened reality created here.

Would a curtain call with the actors have been too upbeat or theatrical for Burton? I’m thinking of a dark version of the end credits curtain call from The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, with clips of each actor’s performance elegantly framed against a stylized backdrop. And during this, a chorus would finally get to sing “The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd”*. Burton picked a truly amazing last image, but this musical is just too big and bold to end so suddenly.

I also wasn’t too wild about the David Fincher – Fight Club CGI roller coaster used for the sequence proceeding “The Worst Pies In London”, which looks too much like the animated DVD menus it would soon to become. Without “The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd” or a dancing/singing ensemble, they had to suggest the energy of those elements in some way. But I found it just too videogame-like and clashing with the ugly-beautiful atmosphere hanging over most of the film. I think I would have preferred some kind of Eisenstein montage, showing the various dark alleyways and horrible faces of London in quick succession.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Danny Elfman’s work, but it was really refreshing to experience a Burton film sans Elfman. There are some fantastic orchestral bits here not found in the original stage show, full of terror and dramatic punch. I figured Sondheim worked on these, but that isn’t the case. Additional Music Arrangements are credited to Mike Higham and also Alex Heffes of The Last King Of Scotland. Great stuff. I hope the recordings become available at some point.

Generally, I’m really so happy with this film and I know DVD’s gonna get played a whole lot at my pad. Apart from a few unfortunate cuts from the stage version and a few other small nitpicks, I’m in continual awe of the whole damn thing.

-Bill

* Of course, I’m not saying they coulda got someone like, say… Christopher Lee to sing it. An idea like that would be just cra-razy talk, wouldn’t it? :rolleyes:

The 1936 Tod Slaughter Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street:

SWEENEY TODD (1936) at Archive.org

Bill, what a lovely, thoughful post.! I also loved the almost Kabuki horror face of Depp (freeze-frame it!) after one of his swipes across the neck of a customer. He's nearly dead-white in the lighting, and his mouth is in a baroque twist. As you proabably know, Lansbury didn't play the pathos of having to kill Toby as much as "Damn. what do I do now?" with a turn on a dime decision. I saw Dotty Loudon, the second B'way Lovett, grieve over her choice in much the way Carter's Lovett does.

Talk about arrangements - did you catch the added horn in two sections of the second act "Johanna" trio (which used to be a quartet) giving them a kind of twisted nobility? And there's the slightly discordant note (strings?) added under the vamp at the end of the song, when Depp sings "Goodbye." It gives those couple of bars a really nasty, sly quality.

A lot to love in this movie, even if I feel the second part is TOO condensed.

Maybe someone here can answer this for me... If they recorded all the songs they were using before shooting, and "The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd" was planned to be included at that point, isn't this recording with Christopher Lee and Anthony Head (along with other chorus) in existence somewhere? And why ain't it on my hard drive?

Since we have Chris Lee talking about it, it's possible they were given scripts and maybe even rehearsed. Having read the screenplay, though, I felt the use of the ghostly balladeers was way intrusive.

And to answer my own question, the singers did record vocal tracks with the live orchestra for timing purposes, and then sang back to those tracks in the smaller studio to make the final, acted vocals.

Hmm, I figured a singing Christopher Lee ghost, peering into the window and sky light of the barber shop at Depp, would have been damn scary, bringing back memories of Kill, Baby...Kill!

Trust me, I read a scene in which Depp was surrounded with the ghosts in his room, and it seemed crowded. It would've taken away the chance for Depp to keep so much inside with him having to react to the ghosts. Also, I believe one of the ballad lyrics was unchanged from the stage version:

HE SELDOM LAUGHED,
BUT HE OFTEN SMILED.

And, if there's one thing Depp doesn't do often in this flick, it's smile!

Well, regardless of how badly it would've fit in the film, I dearly want to hear this recording. No luck finding it so far.

From Wikipedia, although they credit a 2003 interview promoting Big Fish as the source:

For the really brave fans, here's Christopher Lee (apparently directed by HAL 9000) singing Sweeney's "Epiphany":
Lee's Epiphany, Your Misery

You know, I haven't seriously persued a fan edit in nearly a decade now. The last thorough fan edit I did was for MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION in 1998 (I was shacked up in a residential hotel and living off of Red Bull and Power Bars). Since then, I did a fan edit of an ATTACK OF THE CLONES bootleg which was rather good except that it was bootleg quality, done on videotape and I generally lost interest since I started to feel like a fool for ever caring about STAR WARS in the first place.

Since then, I did an easy, mild mash-up of the Russian and international cuts of NIGHT WATCH which allowed you to have those crazy subtitles while still having Ignat in the movie and that kooky Russian rap song over the end credits.

But now, it might be time to do something a little more radical.

Last night, while rewatching Burton's SWEENEY TODD (with a "tumbler of gin"), I had the inspiration to do a mash-up of SWEENEY TODD and FROM HELL.

Essentially, edit both movies together and pretend that they're both parallel stories in the same movie.

Who doesn't think it can be done?

Hmmm, well, your tumbler of gin sounds very confident on the idea. ;)

SWEENEY SPOILER

If you can get Depp to chuck Graham and her "Irish accent" into the oven at the end, I'm all for it!

SPOILER ENDS

Inspired by The Mist B&W version, I attempted my own instant reworking of Sweeney by dialing down all the color on my TV. A primitive method, but this is a film that really looks amazing going from its pseudo-B&W to a total lack of color. The only problem is the blood, which utterly loses any impact.

While you're at it, Tom, why not have The Mist's Tom Jane leave the supermarket to travel up to the mountains of Dreamcatcher to battle ass weasels, driving through the sleepy burg of Silent Hill on the way?