Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 2007 musical-thriller and the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's award-winning 1979 stage musical. It re-tells the Victorian melodramatic tale of Sweeney Todd, a fictitious English barber who, driven insane by the loss of his wife and daughter, murders his customers with a cut-throat razor, and with the help of his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, turns their remains into meat pies.
Having been struck by the cinematic qualities of Sondheim's musical while still a student, director Tim Burton had entertained the notion of a film version since the early 1980s. However, it was not until 2006 that he had the opportunity to realize this ambition, when DreamWorks announced his appointment as replacement for director Sam Mendes, who had been working on such an adaptation. Sondheim, although not directly involved, was extensively consulted during the film's production. It stars Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Nellie Lovett. Depp, not known for his singing, took lessons in preparation for his role, which producer Richard D. Zanuck acknowledged was something of a gamble. However, Depp's vocal performance, despite being criticized as lacking certain musical qualities, was generally thought by critics to suit the part.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was released in the United States on December 21, 2007, and in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2008, to largely enthusiastic reviews. However, Warner Bros.'s decision not to advertise the film as a musical led to complaints from some cinema-goers, who felt they had been deliberately misled. The film won a number of awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and the Academy Award for Best Art Direction. Although not an outstanding financial success in the United States, barely covering its $50 million budget, it performed well worldwide, and has spawned a soundtrack album and various DVD releases. The film received a "Restricted" rating from the MPAA for "graphic bloody violence".
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Plot
Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a skilled barber, is falsely charged and sentenced to a life of hard labor in Australia by the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who lusts after Barker's wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly). Fifteen years later, under the assumed name "Sweeney Todd", Barker returns to London with sailor Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower). At his old Fleet Street lodgings above Mrs. Nellie Lovett's (Helena Bonham Carter) pie shop, he discovers that Lucy, having been raped by Turpin, has poisoned herself, and his teenage daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) is now Turpin's ward, and like her mother before her, is the object of his unwanted affections. Todd vows revenge, reopening his barber shop in the upstairs flat.
While roaming London, Todd's shipmate Anthony spots Johanna and falls in love with her, but is ejected from the Judge's house by a disapproving Turpin and his associate, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall). Far from being discouraged, the sailor becomes determined that the pair will elope. Meanwhile Todd, during a visit to the marketplace, denounces a fraudulent hair tonic by faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), and later humiliates him in a public shaving contest. Pirelli and his boy assistant Toby (Ed Sanders) visit Todd's barbershop; Lovett keeps Toby occupied downstairs, while in the parlor Pirelli reveals himself to be Todd's former assistant and attempts to blackmail him. To protect the secret of his true identity, Todd murders Pirelli.
Judge Turpin, intending to propose to Johanna, pays a visit to Todd's parlor for grooming. Recognizing his tormentor, Todd relaxes the judge while preparing to slit his throat. Before he can do so, they are interrupted by Anthony, who, unaware of Turpin's presence, bursts in and reveals his plan to elope with Johanna. Turpin leaves enraged, vowing to never return. Infuriated at being thwarted, Todd has an epiphany, and decides to vent his murderous rage upon his customers while waiting for another chance to kill Turpin. Lovett becomes his willing accomplice, suggesting they dispose of the bodies by baking them into pies to improve her business. Todd enthusiastically agrees, and rigs his barber's chair with a pedal-operated mechanism, which deposits his victims through a trapdoor into Lovett's bakehouse. As the weeks pass, Todd's murders accumulate and Anthony begins to search for Johanna, who was sent by Turpin to Fogg's insane asylum as punishment for her refusal to marry him.
The barbering and pie-making business prospers financially, and Lovett takes in young Toby. Anthony finally discovers Johanna's whereabouts, and following Todd's plan, poses as a wig-maker's apprentice, allowing him access to the asylum to put a rescue plan into action. Todd's motive for assisting is to lure Turpin back to the barber shop, and he sends Toby to the courthouse to let the judge know where he will find Johanna. Toby has become wary of Todd, and when he returns he tells Lovett of his distrust, unaware of her complicity in his activities. He promises to protect her, and Mrs. Lovett returns this promise. Beadle Bamford arrives at the barber shop and is murdered by Todd, and Lovett informs Todd of Toby's suspicions. The pair search for Toby, whom Lovett has locked in the basement bakehouse to keep him out of the way. He is nowhere to be found, having hidden in the sewers after seeing the Beadle's body drop into the room from the trapdoor above. Meanwhile, Anthony brings a disguised Johanna to the shop, where she hides herself in a trunk in a corner of the room.
A disfigured beggar woman, who has been pestering Todd, Lovett, and Anthony throughout the film, now makes her way into the shop. Todd kills her moments before Turpin arrives, then finally gets his revenge upon the corrupt Judge. As Johanna peeks out of the trunk she is hiding in, Todd spots her and prepares to slit her throat as well, not recognizing her as his daughter. A scream from Lovett diverts him to the basement, where she tells him that Turpin had still been alive and tried to grab at her dress before bleeding to death. Viewing the corpses in the light of the bakehouse fire, Todd discovers that the beggar woman was his wife, Lucy, whom he had believed to be dead based on Lovett's account of the poisoning. Todd realizes that Lovett knew Lucy was alive, and she confesses that she only lied because she loved him and wanted him to marry her instead of Lucy. Todd begins to waltz maniacally with her around the bakehouse before hurling her into the open oven, where he watches Mrs. Lovett burn to death. He returns to Lucy and cradles her dead body as an enraged Toby emerges from the sewer and picks up Todd's discarded razor. Todd, now wishing to die, silently offers his own neck to the boy, and Toby slits Todd's throat. The movie ends with Todd bleeding over his dead wife, and Toby walking away.
Cast
Johnny Depp as Benjamin Barker / Sweeney Todd, a barber who slits the throats of his customers after being driven mad by the loss of his wife and daughter. Depp first learned of Sweeney Todd in 2000, when Burton gave him an original cast recording of the 1979 stage musical. Although not a fan of the genre, Depp grew to like the tale's musical treatment, saying "How many chances do you get at a musical about a serial killer?" He cited Peter Lorre in Mad Love (1935) as his main influence for the role, and practiced the songs his character would perform while filming Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Although he had performed in musical groups, Depp was initially unsure that he would be able to sustain Stephen Sondheim's lyrics. He appreciated that there were "a lot of half-steps... kind of go G to A-flat to A to B-flat. It's super, ultra complicated; these notes that shouldn't work together at times." Depp recorded demos of himself in West Hollywood, working with Bruce Witkin to shape his vocals without a qualified voice coach.
Producer Richard Zanuck acknowledged the risk he was taking with Depp, admitting it was "millions of dollars committed on an assumption. [But] we all said to one another, 'Johnny is a smart guy. He would never put himself in this position if he didn't think he could do it." Sondheim supported the casting decision, saying, "I figured he'd have a light baritone... I love him as an actor, and always have. Put those things together, I didn't hesitate for one second." He told Depp that his performance would be more about acting than singing, although much of Sweeney Todd's dialogue was eventually cut. According to Depp, "We focused on the dangerous and unsettling idea of stillness, that he doesn’t look many people in the eye, or say much"—an idea Burton compared to Boris Karloff and other actors in classic horror films, where "his eyes and the music [...] tell the story." Depp decided on a punk rock approach to his performance, citing inspiration from Anthony Newley and Iggy Pop, whom he called a "very aggressive crooner".
Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Todd's accomplice, who bakes the corpses of his victims into pies. Bonham Carter was cast in the role, which she had wanted since childhood, by Stephen Sondheim, and was eager to prove there was no nepotism in her starring in the film. She spent three months while pregnant during the production of the film being trained to sing by Ian Adam, and Sondheim viewed around twelve of her audition tapes, saying "Even in a recording studio, wearing a schmatte, she is as beautiful and sexy as they come." Bonham Carter also spent many hours practising pie baking, commenting "you had to do it to syncopated Sondheim rhythm and sing at the same time." The character of Mrs. Lovett often sings while performing other activities, a behavior which Bonham Carter dubbed "the Olympics of multi-tasking". She was given some of the most difficult songs in the film, one such being "By the Sea". Bonham Carter recalls reading about Angela Lansbury (the original Mrs. Lovett) consulting Sondheim on where to breathe in the score; Sondheim replied that he hadn't written any room to breathe, and that you just don't.
Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin, an evil judge who locked away Todd, raped his wife, and adopted his baby daughter Johanna as his "ward", intending to marry her when she was older. Rickman said, "The music is sort of constant, and it slips in and out of speech and song. Because it's in real rooms and real spaces, the move from speaking into singing becomes much more organic."
Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, Turpin's personal assistant.
Sacha Baron Cohen as Davey Collins/Signor Adolfo Pirelli, Todd's disguised rival and former assistant. For his audition, Baron Cohen sang songs from Fiddler on the Roof; Burton commented, "I wish we had a camera, because he literally went through the whole score".
Laura Michelle Kelly as Lucy Barker/Beggar Woman, Todd's wife.
Jayne Wisener as Johanna Barker, Todd's daughter and the ward of Judge Turpin.
Jamie Campbell Bower as Anthony Hope, a sailor who befriends Todd and falls for Johanna.
Ed Sanders as Tobias "Toby" Ragg, Pirelli's gin-loving young assistant who later joins Todd and Lovett. He spent his early years in a workhouse before being taken in by Pirelli.
Production
Development
Tim Burton first saw Stephen Sondheim's 1979 stage musical, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, as a CalArts student in London in 1980. Although not a fan of the musical genre, Burton was struck by how cinematic the musical was, and repeatedly attended subsequent performances. He described it as a silent film with music, and was "dazzled both by the music and its sense of the macabre." When his directing career took off in the late 1980s, Burton approached Sondheim with a view to making a cinematic adaptation, but nothing came of it. In Sondheim's words, "[Burton] went off and did other things."
Meanwhile, director Sam Mendes had been working on a film version of the story for several years, and in June 2003 Sondheim was approached to write the script. Although he turned down the offer, Mendes and producer Walter Parkes obtained his approval to use writer John Logan instead. Logan had previously collaborated with Parkes on Gladiator, and claimed his biggest challenge in adapting the Sondheim stageplay "was taking a sprawling, magnificent Broadway musical and making it cinematic, and an emotionally honest film. Onstage, you can have a chorus sing as the people of London, but I think that would be alienating in a movie." Mendes left to direct the 2005 film Jarhead, and Burton leaped at taking over the direction after his project, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, fell apart due to its excessive budget.
DreamWorks announced Burton's appointment in August 2006, and Johnny Depp was cast as Todd. On Burton's hiring, he and Logan reworked the screenplay; Logan felt they agreed over the film's tone due to "share[d] stunted childhoods watching Amicus movies". Turning a 3-hour stage musical into a 2-hour film required some changes. Some songs were shortened, while others were completely removed. Christopher Lee, Peter Bowles, Anthony Stewart Head, and five other actors were set to play the ghost narrators, but their roles were cut. According to Lee, these elisions were due to time constraints caused by a break in filming during March 2007, while Depp's daughter recovered from an illness. Burton and Logan also reduced the prominence of other secondary elements, such as the romance between Todd's daughter Johanna and Anthony, to allow them to focus on the triangular relationship between Todd, Mrs. Lovett, and Toby.
Filming
Filming began on February 5, 2007 at Pinewood Studios, and was completed by May 11, despite a brief interruption when Depp's daughter was taken seriously ill. Burton opted to film in London, where he had felt "very much at home" since his work on Batman in 1989. Production designer Dante Ferretti created a darker, more frightening London by adapting Fleet Street and its surrounding area. Burton initially planned to use minimal sets and film in front of a green screen, but decided against it, stating that physical sets helped actors get into a musical frame of mind: "Just having people singing in front of a green screen seemed more disconnected". Depp created his own image of Todd. Heavy purple and brown make-up was applied around his eyes to suggest fatigue and rage, as if "he's never slept".
Burton insisted that the film be bloody, as he felt stage versions of the play which cut back on the bloodshed robbed it of its power. For him, "everything is so internal with Sweeney that [the blood] is like his emotional release. It's more about catharsis than it is a literal thing." Producer Richard D. Zanuck said that "[Burton] had a very clear plan that he wanted to lift that up into a surreal, almost Kill Bill kind of stylization. We had done tests and experiments with the neck slashing, with the blood popping out. I remember saying to Tim, 'My god, do we dare do this?'" On set, the fake blood was colored orange to render correctly on the desaturated color film used, and crew members wore bin liners to avoid getting stained while filming. This macabre tone made some studios nervous, and it was not until Warner Bros., DreamWorks and Paramount had signed up for the project that the film's $50 million budget was covered. Burton said "the studio was cool about it and they accepted it because they knew what the show was. Any movie is a risk, but it is nice to be able to do something like that that doesn't fit into the musical or slasher movie categories."
Music
| Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street OST | ||
|---|---|---|
 | ||
| Soundtrack by Various Artists | ||
| Released | December 18 2007 | |
| Recorded | 2007 | |
| Genre | Soundtrack | |
| Length | 71:26 | |
| Label | Nonesuch Records | |
| Producer | Stephen Sondheim | |
Sweeney Todd has joined Ed Wood to become only the second film in Burton's career with music not composed by Danny Elfman. Burton wanted to avoid the traditional approach of patches of dialogue interrupted by song. He cut the show's famous opening number, "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", explaining, "Why have a chorus singing about 'attending the tale of Sweeney Todd' when you could just go ahead and attend it?" Sondheim acknowledged that, in adapting a musical to film, the plot has to be kept moving, and was sent MP3 files of his shortened songs by Mike Higham, the film's music producer, for approval. Several other songs were also cut, and Sondheim noted that there were "many changes, additions and deletions... [though]... if you just go along with it, I think you'll have a spectacular time." To create a larger, more cinematic feel, the score was reorchestrated by the stage musical's original orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick, who increased the orchestra from twenty-seven musicians to seventy-eight.
The Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Deluxe Complete Edition soundtrack was released on December 18 2007. Johnny Depp's singing was described by a New York Times reviewer as "harsh and thin, but amazingly forceful". Another critic adds that, though Depp's voice "does not have much heft or power", "his ear is obviously excellent, because his pitch is dead-on accurate... Beyond his good pitch and phrasing, the expressive colorings of his singing are crucial to the portrayal. Beneath this Sweeney’s vacant, sullen exterior is a man consumed with a murderous rage that threatens to burst forth every time he slowly takes a breath and is poised to speak. Yet when he sings, his voice crackles and breaks with sadness."
Track listing
All music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim
- "Opening Title" - 3:30
- "No Place Like London" - Jamie Campbell Bower and Johnny Depp - 5:31 **
- "The Worst Pies in London" - Helena Bonham Carter - 2:23
- "Poor Thing" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 3:09 **
- "My Friends" - Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter - 3:48
- "Green Finch and Linnett Bird" - Jayne Wisener - 2:16
- "Alms! Alms!" - Laura Michelle Kelly and Jamie Campbell Bower - 1:16 * ***
- "Johanna" - Jamie Campbell Bower - 1:57
- "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir" - Edward Sanders, Johnny Depp, and Helena Bonham Carter - 2:00
- "The Contest" - Sacha Baron Cohen, Johnny Depp, and Timothy Spall - 3:39 **
- "Wait" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 2:38
- "Ladies in Their Sensitivities" - Timothy Spall and Alan Rickman - 1:23 *
- "Pretty Women" - Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp - 4:27 **
- "Epiphany" - Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Jamie Campbell Bower - 3:16
- "A Little Priest" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 5:15 **
- "Johanna" (Reprise) - Jamie Campbell Bower, Johnny Depp, and Laura Michelle Kelly - 5:42
- "God, That's Good!" - Edward Sanders and Helena Bonham Carter - 2:46
- "By the Sea" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 2:19
- "Not While I'm Around" - Edward Sanders and Helena Bonham Carter - 4:11 **
- "Final Scene" - Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Laura Michelle Kelly, Alan Rickman, Jamie Campbell Bower, and Jayne Wisener - 10:21 * ***
* Missing from the Highlights version of the soundtrack.
** Tracks that are significantly longer than their Highlights counterparts.
*** Song is either written specially or adapted for the film.
Release
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street officially opened at the US box office on December 21, 2007 in 1,249 theaters, and took $9,300,805 in its opening weekend. Worldwide releases followed during January and February 2008, with the film performing well in the United Kingdom and Japan. Sweeney Todd grossed $52.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $99.62 million in other markets, accumulating a worldwide total of $152.52 million. In the United States, the Marcus Theaters Corporation was not initially planning to screen the movie after its premiere, because it was unable to reach a pricing agreement with Paramount. However, the dispute was resolved in time for the official release.
Critical reception
Although Stephen Sondheim was cautious of a cinematic adaptation of his musical, he was largely impressed by the results. Public reaction was very favourable—as of September 16, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 192 reviews, and Metacritic gave the film an average score of 83 out of 100, based on 39 reviews. Sweeney Todd appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.
Of the reviewers, Time magazine rated it an A-minus and added, "Burton and Depp infuse the brilliant cold steel of Stephen Sondheim's score with a burning passion. Helena Bonham Carter and a superb supporting cast bring focused fury to this musical nightmare. It's bloody great." Time's Richard Corliss named the film one of its top ten movies of 2007, placing it fifth. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it four stars out of four, lauding Burton's visual style. In his review in Variety, Todd McCarthy called it "both sharp and fleet" and "a satisfying screen version of Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1979 theatrical musical ... things have turned out uniformly right thanks to highly focused direction by Tim Burton, expert screw-tightening by scenarist John Logan, and haunted and musically adept lead performances from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Assembled artistic combo assures the film will reap by far the biggest audience to see a pure Sondheim musical, although just how big depends on the upscale crowd’s tolerance for buckets of blood, and the degree to which the masses stay away due to the whiff of the highbrow." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B-plus on the Movie Reviews section and stated, "To stage a proper Sweeney Todd, necks must be slit, human flesh must be squished into pastries, and blood ought to spurt in fountains and rivers of death. Enter Tim Burton, who ... has tenderly art-directed soup-thick, tomato-red, fake-gore blood with the zest of a Hollywood-funded Jackson Pollock." She went on to refer to the piece as "opulent, attentive ... so finely minced a mixture of Sondheim's original melodrama and Burton's signature spicing that it's difficult to think of any other filmmaker so naturally suited for the job."
On the DVD Reviews section, EW's Chris Nashawaty gave the film an A-minus, stating, "Depp's soaring voice makes you wonder what other tricks he's been hiding... Watching Depp's barber wield his razors... it's hard not to be reminded of Edward Scissorhands frantically shaping hedges into animal topiaries 18 years ago... and all of the twisted beauty we would've missed out on had [Burton and Depp] never met." In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers awarded it 3½ out of 4 stars and added, "Sweeney Todd is a thriller-diller from start to finish: scary, monstrously funny and melodically thrilling ... [the film] is a bloody wonder, intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score." As with Time, the critic ranked it fifth on his list of the best movies of 2007. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said, "The blood juxtaposed to the music is highly unsettling. It runs contrary to expectations. Burton pushes this gore into his audiences' faces so as to feel the madness and the destructive fury of Sweeney's obsession. Teaming with Depp, his long-time alter ego, Burton makes Sweeney a smoldering dark pit of fury and hate that consumes itself. With his sturdy acting and surprisingly good voice, Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages." Harry Knowles gave the film a highly positive review, calling it Burton's best film since Ed Wood, his favorite Burton film, and said it was possibly superior. He praised all of the cast and the cinematography, but noted it would probably not appeal to non-musical fans due to the dominance of music in the film.
Not every review was laudatory. Cole Haddon of film.com was critical of Depp's and Bonham Carter's singing voices and the use of CGI. Acknowledging his stance, Haddon stated that his unfavorable review of the film was "contrary to everything you’ve read elsewhere", as well as saying that "I stand alone against the masses," highlighting the enormous critical acclaim the film had received.
Marketing
The film's marketing has been criticized for not advertising it as a musical. Michael Halberstam of the Writers' Theatre said, "By de-emphasizing the score to the extent they did in the trailer, it is possible the producers were condescending to us - a tactic which cannot ultimately end in anything but tears." In the UK, a number of audience members walked out of the film on realizing it was a musical, and complaints that advertisements for the film were deliberately misleading were made to both the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards agency. The studios involved opted for a low-key approach to their marketing. Producer Walter Parkes stated, "All these things that could be described as difficulties could also be the movie's greatest strengths." Warner Bros. felt it should take a similar approach to marketing as with The Departed, with little early exposure and discouraging talk of awards.
Awards and nominations
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street received four Golden Globe nominations for the January 2008 65th Golden Globe Awards, winning two. The film received the award for Best Motion Picture in the Musical or Comedy genre, and Johnny Depp for his performance as Sweeney Todd. Tim Burton was nominated for Best Director, and Helena Bonham Carter was nominated for her performance as Mrs. Lovett. The film has been included in the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures's top ten films of 2007, and Burton was presented with their award for Best Director. The film was also nominated for two BAFTA awards, in the categories of Costume Design and Make Up and Hair. Sweeney Todd further received three Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role for Depp; Best Achievement in Costume Design; and Best Achievement in Art Direction, which it won. Depp won the award for Best Villain at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards. He thanked his fans for "sticking with me on this very obtuse and strange road." He also won the Choice Movie Villain award at the Teen Choice Awards;[50][dead link] and at Spike TV's 2008 Scream Awards (filmed on October 18, 2008, and aired three days later), the film won two awards: Best Horror Movie, and Best Actor in a Horror Movie or TV Show (Depp).
DVD/Blu-ray release
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was released on DVD in North America on April 1, 2008, and the UK on May 19. A Blu-ray Disc version of the film is readily available in Australia, although it was announced on June 25 that the film would be delayed until October 21 for release in North America. An HD DVD release was announced for the same date, but due to the discontinuation of the format, Paramount has since canceled this version in preference for international distribution of the Blu-ray release.
