Just came from a SAG screening of SWEENEY TODD.
it was a terrific adaptation and I doubt anyone who knows the stage piece will be disappointed.
L O V E D the film. Glorious all the way through and B L O O D Y an d funny at the same time.
Depp & Carter are sublime but the Beadle was my favorite. Rickman was terrific as were all in the piece. I was least enamoured of the Anthony he was a pretty fellow which is fine, but his Heroism is not as abundant as I would have liked.
The ensemble numbers are gone and the piece doesn't suffer but it would have been interesting if the ensemble was more than a background /victim scenic device.
There is so little that is off mark that it is silly to dicuss..but the overall film is engrossing and great dark fun!
Be prepared for the blood and the rather hard hitting blundgeoning of graphic violence. All doen with great style and verve.
They held none of that back..NOR should they have.
It will be a solid hit..and what I loved was that it is ALL sung as it was onstage. Just different intents and motivations...and ovf course more conversational where appropriate.
And Burton's use of the camera and the film medium is in evidence all the time and NEVER boring or slow!
Cinematically lush and well Tim Burton!
SO there you have it.
I missed the transition for Pirelli intot eh blackmailer..He just sort of Slips out of the ITALIAN accent into Cockney and there was no moment for the audience to get that. THAT was my favorite thing about playing that character. I had to do it iin Irish dialect because that is what Hal Prince wanted. It is writtne in cockey in the script.
Anyway..it is lush and very entertaining and musically beautiful even without the Ballads and other suff.
It should win many awards for its artistry adn performances.
I was most pleased t see Richard Barr & Charles (Chuck) Woodward's names at the credits as they were the original Producers and good friends of mine. THey are both gone now but between them gave us Edward Albee,,,and many high end classy shows..including SWEENEY, WHOS AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and BOYS IN THE BAND to name only a few.
I recommedn seeing thsi wonderful piece and hope that the score, although truncated and slashed by Sondheim himself. I know we should all celebrate the new beginning of what I consider Sondheim's PORGY & BESS.
Let me know what you think.
XXXX
Keyboard
Here is the NY TIMES article :
December 16, 2007
Sondheim Dismembers ‘Sweeney’
By JESSE GREEN
FOR months now, in anticipation of the Dec. 21 release of Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” theater buffs have been worrying themselves sick about what would happen to “their” masterpiece when it was remade as a film. Would it still be alive despite drastic cutting? Would it still sing, despite the casting of stars not known for their voices? (Johnny Depp plays the murderous barber, Helena Bonham Carter his accomplice.) Or would commercial pressures and Hollywood habit leave it just another corpse on the heap of butchered theatrical translations?
Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the score, might almost have been among the worriers. “The only kind of movie I didn’t like as a kid were musicals,” he said. Everyone who has attempted to translate a stage musical to film, he added, “has underestimated the distance between the languages.” The movie musicals he enjoys — ”Love Me Tonight,” “Under the Roofs of Paris,” “The Smiling Lieutenant” and a couple of the MGMs — are those that were originally conceived for the screen. The rest, he said, are “either stodgy or rely on flash.”
He understood, then, that remaking “Sweeney” would be risky and involve major surgery. Still, he eagerly wielded the razor on perhaps his greatest work. “I’m hoping people will just forget what they know,” he said, “and enjoy the movie or not. But if they go in counting the things that are missing, they’re going to be very distracted.”
Below, a look at Mr. Sondheim’s process of elimination.
Back Story
Of Mr. Sondheim’s 17 major musicals, only 4 had been made into films before “Sweeney.” The two for which he wrote both music and lyrics (“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “A Little Night Music”) were heavily rewritten and are much reviled for desecrating excellent material; the two for which he wrote lyrics only (“West Side Story,” right, and “Gypsy”) were mostly faithful but have many critics. Does he find any of the movies satisfying?
“None of them. In ‘West Side Story’ you see a gang dancing down a real New York street in color-coordinated sneakers, and you just don’t believe it. And then there are the songs themselves. The problem is, what do you shoot in something like ‘Tonight’? You get a close-up of him, a close-up of her, a medium shot of the fire escape. It’s the same problem with so many of those other movies. The director has to fill out three or four minutes of what is essentially a static song, which holds your attention on the stage because that’s part of the theatrical convention. Whereas for me, as a movie buff, I want the action to move forward constantly, and it doesn’t. They may have little camera diversions and a trick here or there, but they’re just filming a stage musical, and that’s not for me.”
The Ballad of Johnny Depp
“Sweeney Todd” has been produced by opera companies, and even on Broadway it has generally been cast with accomplished singers. When Mr. Depp was announced for the title role, and especially when Ms. Bonham Carter was announced for Mrs. Lovett, purists groaned.
But Mr. Sondheim, who said he generally leans toward actors who sing rather than the other way around, had no qualms. “I knew Johnny was musical because he’s been in a rock band, but I also knew that he wouldn’t take this part unless he thought he could sing it. And that was good enough for me. I accepted him unheard.” As for Ms. Bonham Carter, the “big shocker” for “Sweeney” fans won’t be her voice, Mr. Sondheim said, as much as her interpretation. Unlike the blowzy musical-hall character created by Angela Lansbury, the movie’s Mrs. Lovett is almost as internal and intense as Sweeney. “Which is right for the movie,” Mr. Sondheim said, “but not how I’d cast it onstage.” (Above, from left, Ms. Lansbury; Patti LuPone, the most recent Mrs. Lovett on Broadway; and Ms. Bonham-Carter.)
Slashing the Score
What Mr. Sondheim called his cynicism about movies made from stage shows only whetted his appetite when the director Tim Burton expressed interest in adapting “Sweeney.” “Obviously one of the most enticing things in the world is to say, ‘That’s impossible to do,’” Mr. Sondheim recalled. “‘So let’s do it.’”
After 20 years of directors and deals falling by the wayside, Mr. Burton and the screenwriter John Logan came along with an idea for retelling the story in more cinematic terms. First, there would be no chorus commenting on the action in song; the singing would be done entirely by the principals. This meant cutting or truncating all ensemble numbers, a major element of the stage production, which had a chorus of 18. Out went “The Letter,” “City on Fire” and two-thirds of “God, That’s Good!” Even the show’s opening number and recurrent theme, “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” which was to be sung by the ghosts of Sweeney’s victims as the movie progressed, was dropped just before filming. (Above, from the 2005 Broadway production; left, the movie’s opening.) Happily, the song’s “Dies Irae” climax and creepy, buzzing string figures — Mr. Sondheim’s tribute to the film composer Bernard Herrmann — remain as underscoring.
The filmmakers also suggested cutting most of the sunnier songs that offered relief onstage but would be hard to film interestingly or would dissipate the desired atmosphere of unrelenting dread. Out went “Ah, Miss,” “Kiss Me” and “Parlor Songs.” To keep the movie under two hours (the stage show lasts about three) most of the songs that did remain were trimmed by about 20 percent, Mr. Sondheim estimated. In all fewer than 10 of the stage show’s 25 major numbers survived substantially intact.
No Remorse
Mr. Sondheim not only approved every change, as his contract required, but also did the musical reworking himself. Though he was at first shocked by the suggested elimination of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” Mr. Sondheim said that when he put on his “movie-buff hat,” he “completely agreed,” because it would keep holding up the action. The loss of the Judge’s version of “Johanna” — part of a brilliantly conceived triptych of “Johanna” numbers that look at the girl from various perspectives — was more troubling. It is the only time the Judge is characterized in song. (Below left, the Judge and Johanna in the 2002 Kennedy Center production.) But Mr. Logan had written a new scene that covered similar material visually. (The Judge, played by Alan Rickman, above left, fondles albums of exotic pornography.) So out it went. Did Mr. Sondheim not mind so much butchery of his score?
“Come on, you’ve got to be ruthless. I learned that from Oscar Hammerstein. He and Richard Rodgers cut their big hit song out of ‘Oklahoma!’ because it interfered with the storytelling. A song like ‘Kiss Me’ has its delights onstage if it’s played well, because it’s funny and silly, and I’ve always meant it to be suspenseful, because you worry if the Judge is going to discover the lovers. But that’s just not how the sequence in the movie is written, and if you don’t have that, then you’re stuck in the parlor with the lovers singing and singing and singing and singing and — nothing. So there’s no point. Now, if I had my druthers, would I put the Judge’s song back in? Yes, but it might hold the story up. And anybody who wants to know what the whole thing sounds like can still listen to the record of the show.”
Another Stab?
Among Mr. Sondheim’s shows “Sweeney Todd” may be what he calls “a one-off” in lending itself to this sort of translation. Most stage musicals remove huge hunks of plot in order to make room for song, so when they are adapted, there’s too little of the thing that movies do well and too much of what they do poorly. But “Sweeney,” even onstage, is heavily plotted and much of that plot is told in the songs. In remaking it for film, there was less staginess to overcome.
Even so, Mr. Sondheim said he thought some of his other shows could make the leap, especially “Company” and “Follies,” which is already in development with the director Sam Mendes and the writer Aaron Sorkin. When asked if he was willing to tear apart those great scores too, Mr. Sondheim said, “Oh yeah,” and described a gift from the librettist Peter Stone that now sits on his desk. It is in fact a slab of stone; carved into it are the words “Nothing is written in stone.”
