Movie Sweeney Todd
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Movie Sweeney Todd
Strange Bedfellows: the Blood & Ballads of Sweeney Todd
Johnny Depp’s celebrated, Oscar-nominated performance in Tim Burton’s eye-popping adaptation of “Sweeney Todd” has done more than introduce the music and lyrics of Steven Sondheim to a new generation of moviegoers. This deliriously unhinged story of obsession and revenge blends two cinematic genres that could hardly be less similar: the musical and the gore movie.
Most shocking of all, perhaps, is how Burton has managed to mix these two genres together as smoothy as flesh and bone in one of Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies. Surely, this represents some kind of cinematic benchmark.
The primary credit for the unlikely pairing of styles must of course go to Sondheim and lyricist Hugh Wheeler, who in 1979 transformed a previously produced stage thriller called "The String of Pearls" into a compelling mash-up of blood and ballads the likes of which Broadway had never seen. “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” was an instant smash, raising the curtain 557 times in its initial run and paving the way for countless revivals.
The challenge Burton and Co. faced in transforming the iconic play to the big screen had multiple facets. Primary among these was how to handle the unabashedly gruesome nature of this tale about a maniacal barber who returns to London after years in exile to exact bloody revenge on those who have wronged him. Over the years, most stage versions chose to represent the gore in a minimalist or strictly symbolic way.
Burton took a different approach, opting to turn his film into a stylized phantasmagoria reminiscent of 1920s German Expressionist classics like “Nosferatu” and “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,” then exploding his monochromatic canvas with gushing fountains of neon-red blood. Absolutely nothing is left to the viewer’s imagination as Sweeney hacks open one throat after another with his trusty razors.
It’s not too much of a stretch to label “Sweeney Todd” the most expensive gore movie ever made (and certainly the most exquisitely photographed, written, acted, and scored.) Imagine if back in the 1960s, Herschell Gordon Lewis were given a $50 million budget and a massive infusion of talent, and you start to get an idea of what this film is like.
Speaking of the Golden Age of Gore, a much-hyped new novel is reshaping the history of that bizarre slice of American pop culture. “Crimson Orgy” by Austin Williams ($12.95 trade paper, Borderlands) has garnered broad acclaim for its fiendishly imaginative take on what might happen if the filming of a slasher movie went horribly wrong. This debut novel is selling now briskly on Amazon and in bookstores across the country.
Perhaps a big-screen adaptation of “Crimson Orgy” is not far away. But for the moment, lovers of high class theater who also have a weakness for bloodstained cinema will have to satisfy themselves with repeated viewings of Burton & Co.’s smashing “Sweeney.”
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