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date: 05 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, a film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s award-winning musical thriller. In direct opposition to Sondheim’s opinion that this is the best, most filmic film version of a stage musical ever made it argues that Burton’s powerful deployment of the visual possibilities of cinemaalters the grand guignol of the stage musical with its direct address to the audience, to create a more attractive and conventional view of the two psychologically introspective protagonists who fail to evoke the grotesque and demonic force of their more convincingly melodramatic stage counterparts. By analysing Burton’s exploitation of the screen presence of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, the chapteridentifies the contradictions resulting from the director’s attempt to position the film within the genre of such classic screen thrillers as Psycho.

Keywords: Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd, Film, Stephen Sondheim, Musical, Benjamin Barker, Johnny Depp, Voice, Psycho

David Thomson

David Thomson is film critic for The New Republic, and he has written for both the Independent and the Guardian in London. His books include The Biographical Dictionary of Film (now in its fifth edition), Have You Seen...? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films and, most recently, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies and What They Did to Us. He lives in San Francisco where he saw a concert performance of Sweeney Todd as important to him as seeing Into the Woods on Broadway.

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