Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007 film)

Director Tim Burton (left), screenwriter and co-producer John Logan and co-producer Richard D. Zanuck

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.[6] Burton recalled his experience of seeing the show, saying, "I was still a student, I didn't know if I would be making movies or working in a restaurant, I had no idea what I would be doing. I just wandered into the theatre and it just blew me away because I'd never really seen anything that had the mixture of all those elements. I actually went three nights in a row because I loved it so much."[7] Burton was not a fan of the musical genre but was struck by how cinematic the musical was, and repeatedly attended subsequent performances.[8][9] He described it as a silent film with music,[9] and was "dazzled both by the music and its sense of the macabre."[6] 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. Sondheim said, "[Burton] went off and did other things."[9]

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.[8][10] Although he turned down the offer, Mendes and producer Walter F. 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 stage play "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."[11] Mendes left to direct the 2005 film Jarhead, and Burton took over as director after his project, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, fell apart due to its excessive budget.[8][12]

When Burton was hired, he reworked the screenplay with Logan.[11] Logan felt they agreed over the film's tone due to "share[d] stunted childhoods watching Amicus movies".[6] Turning a three-hour stage musical into a two-hour film required some changes. Some songs were shortened, while others were completely removed.[13] Burton said, "In terms of the show, it was three hours long, but we weren't out to film the Broadway show, we were out to make a movie, so we tried to keep the pace like those old melodramas. Sondheim himself is not a real big fan of movie musicals, so he was really open to honing it down to a more pacey shape."[7] 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.[13][14]

Top row: Johnny Depp (left), Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman.
Middle row: Timothy Spall (left), Sacha Baron Cohen and Jamie Campbell Bower.
Bottom row: Laura Michelle Kelly (left), Jayne Wisener and Ed Sanders.

DreamWorks announced Burton's appointment in August 2006, and Johnny Depp was cast as Todd.[15] Christopher Lee, Peter Bowles, Anthony Head, and five other actors were set to play the ghost narrators, but their roles were cut (Head does appear in an uncredited cameo as a gentleman who congratulates Depp after the shaving contest). According to Lee, these deletions were due to time constraints caused by a break in filming during March 2007, while Depp's daughter recovered from an illness.[16] Burton's domestic partner Helena Bonham Carter was cast in October 2006, as well as Sacha Baron Cohen.[17][18] In December 2006, Alan Rickman was cast.[19] In January 2007, Laura Michelle Kelly was cast as Lucy Barker.[20] Timothy Spall was added to the cast, and said he was urged to audition by his daughter, who wanted him to work with Depp. He recalled, "I really wanted this one – I knew Tim was directing and that Johnny Depp was going to be in it. My daughter, my youngest daughter, really wanted me to do it for that reason – Johnny Depp was in it. (She came on set to meet Depp) and he was really delightful to her, she had a great time. Then, I took her to the junket – and (Depp) greeted her like an old pal when he saw her. I've got plenty of brownie points at the moment."[21]

Three members of the cast had never been in a film before: Ed Sanders was cast as Toby, Jayne Wisener as Johanna, and Jamie Campbell Bower, who auditioned, and after four days got the part of Anthony said, "I think I weed myself. I was out shopping at the time and I got this call on my mobile. I was just like, 'OH MY GOD!' Honestly, I was like a little girl running around this shop like oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god."[22]

Filming began on 5 February 2007 at Pinewood Studios, and was completed by 11 May, despite a brief interruption when Depp's daughter was taken seriously ill.[23] Burton opted to film in London, where he had felt "very much at home" since his work on Batman in 1989.[6] Production designer Dante Ferretti created a darker, more sinister 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".[9]

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".[24] Burton said of the character Sweeney Todd, "We always saw him as a sad character, not a tragic villain or anything. He's basically a dead person when you meet him; the only thing that's keeping him going is the one single minded thing which is tragic. You don't see anything else around him."[25] Depp said of the character, "He makes Sid Vicious look like the innocent paper boy. He's beyond dark. He's already dead. He's been dead for years."[26] Depp also commented on the streak of white in Todd's hair, saying, "The idea was that he'd had this hideous trauma, from being sent away, locked away. That streak of white hair became the shock of that rage. It represented his rage over what had happened. It's certainly not the first time anyone's used it. But it's effective. It tells a story all by itself. My brother had a white spot growing up, and his son has this kind of shock of white in his hair."[27]

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."[8] 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?'"[9] 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.[24] This macabre tone made some studios nervous, and it was not until Warner Bros. Pictures, DreamWorks and Paramount had signed up for the project that the film's $50 million budget was covered.[6] 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."[28]

After the filming, Burton said of the cast, "All I can say is this is one of the best casts I've ever worked with. These people are not professional singers, so to do a musical like this which I think is one of the most difficult musicals, they all went for it. Every day on the set was a very, very special thing for me. Hearing all these guys sing, I don't know if I can ever have an experience like that again."[7] Burton said of the singing, "You can't just lip synch, you'd see the throat and the breath, every take they all had to belt it out. It was very enjoyable for me to see, with music on the set everybody just moved differently. I'd seen Johnny (Depp) act in a way I'd never seen before, walking across the room or sitting in the chair, picking up a razor or making a pie, whatever. They all did it in a way that you could sense."[25]

Depp said of working with Baron Cohen, when asked what he was like in real life (meaning, not doing one of his trademark characters), "He's not what I expected. I didn't look at those characters and think, 'This will be the sweetest guy in the world'. He's incredibly nice. A real gentleman, kind of elegant. I was impressed with him. He's kind of today's equivalent of Peter Sellers."[29]

Depp's performance as Sweeney Todd received praise from critics and he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor

Although Sondheim was cautious of a cinematic adaptation of his musical, he was largely impressed by the results.[6] Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street received critical acclaim, and the performances, visuals, production design, costume design and faithfulness to its source material were praised. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 232 reviews and an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Full of pith and Grand Guignol grossness, this macabre musical is perfectly helmed and highly entertaining. Tim Burton masterfully stages the musical in a way that will make you think he has done this many times before."[39] Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 83 out of 100, based on 39 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[40] Sweeney Todd appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.[41]

Of the reviewers, Time 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.[42] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it four stars out of four, lauding Burton's visual style.[43] 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."[44] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B-plus in its 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."[45]

In its 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."[46] 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."[47] As with Time, the critic ranked it fifth on his list of the best movies of 2007.[48] 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."[49] 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.[50]

Since its release, the film has been widely assessed as one of the greatest musical films of the 21st century. It was listed as number 490 on Empire's 500 Greatest films of all time in 2008 and it appeared at number 88 on its list of the 100 Greatest Movies Of The 21st Century in 2020. In 2018, Den of Geek included it on its list of the "Best Movie Musicals of the 21st Century," with David Crow calling it "an ingenious work that Burton contemplated for decades. That's also probably why it's his last great film too. Leaning into the horrific conceit of a musical that is about a vengeful barber murdering any loner who steps into his shop, and letting the landlady downstairs, Mrs. Lovett, bake them into meat pies, the film version of Sweeney Todd more closely resembles 1930s Universal horror movies or '40s Val Lewton chillers than it does traditional stagecraft." Next Best Picture ranked it number 10 on its list of "The Top Movie Musicals of the 21st Century So Far," with Daniel Howat writing "While many film musicals rely on bright colors and charming songs, Sweeney Todd dwells in the darkness. It's not without some faults, but it deserves its spot on this list for the variety it provides." In 2020, HuffPost ranked it number 11 on its list of the "20 Best Movie Musicals Of The 21st Century," with Daniel Welsh calling it "An oft-underrated offering from film director Tim Burton that mixes his loves of the macabre and the musical." In 2021, /Film ranked it number 14 on its list of "The 14 Greatest Movie Musicals Of The 21st Century," with Leah Marilla Thomas writing "Don't let anyone tell you that Dear Evan Hansen couldn't be a black comedy because it's a musical and musicals have to be sincere. Sweeney Todd is about a man who murders his clients and has his downstairs neighbor bake them into meat pies she sells to the neighborhood. That's way worse than fabricating emails to manipulate a grieving family. It's not even a little bit sincere, but it's darkly entertaining and a great musical." In 2022, MovieWeb ranked it number 6 on its list of the "Best Movie Musicals of the 21st Century So Far" with Rachel Johnson writing "With many unique songs such as "No Place Like London," "Pretty Women" and "Not While I'm Around," it's no wonder audiences were hooked." In 2023, Collider ranked it number 21 on its list of the "30 Best Musicals of All Time," with Jeremy Urquhart writing "It's incredibly morbid, but might prove to have a very dark sense of humor for those who like their comedy pitch-black. The dark, moody look of the film pairs extremely well with all the memorable songs, and of the many collaborations between director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp, this is easily one of their best."[lower-alpha 2]