Sweeney Todd - The Director's Cut
by Dave Moore
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Bradley (IV), David Foxxe, Essie Davis, Ingo Gottwald, Roger FrostDirector: Dave Moore
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: ACORN MEDIA
Movie Reviews of Sweeney Todd - The Director's Cut
Movie Review: An Engrossing Variation on a Dark Legend of Love and Murder
Summary: 5 Stars
"Sweeney Todd: The Director's Cut," a 2006 television production of the classic horror story for the British Broadcasting Corporation, reached these shores as a DVD in 2007. It stars Ray Winstone in the title role; was written by Joshua St. Johnston and directed by David Moore. As a director's cut, it includes footage not seen in the broadcast - beware, sensitive souls, it's intensely violent. It also boasts a Sweeney Todd background essay, cast filmographies, and, thank goodness, unadvertised closed captioning: characters in this movie are doing their best to speak early London English. The movie is set in eighteenth century London, where the first, Victorian treatment of this famous horror tale placed it; it runs about an hour and a half.
The award-winning actor Ray Winstone, ("Sexy Beast," "The Departed"), who is of cockney origins himself, and a former boxer, succeeds in making the demon barber of Fleet Street a believable human being. Essie Davis ("Girl with a Pearl Earring") makes Mrs. Lovett into a lusty young woman, more sinned-against than sinning. And the veteran David Warner ("Titanic") makes his blind police chief Fielding quite credible, and moving.
The basic plot, of course, is known to all: in filthy, teeming, unsanitary, unhealthy eighteenth century London, Todd, the expert barber, murders the odd customer, whose flesh turns up in his neighbor Mrs. Lovett's meat pies, making them the delicious toast of London. In this treatment of the material, a substantial backstory has been given Todd, making his actions more explicable: he works and lives in the shadow of the hellhole London prison Newgate, where he grew up as a child, spending twenty years of his life there for a murder committed by his father - it's where he learned his trade. Upon his release, the advent of a brutal Newgate prison guard in his barber's chair sets loose his anger, and murderous impulses. And soon carved up bodies begin appearing in what remains of the once sparkling, pristine Fleet River, now known as the Fleet Ditch. Another quite interesting innovation of the script is to remind us that, in those days, barbers doubled as surgeons: the blood of that trade is what the red stood for in all those old-fashioned barber's red and white striped poles that we occasionally see. As a surgeon, Todd does, of course, see plenty of blood; he also must have a rough and ready knowledge of the human body, sufficient to operate, or to butcher.
The plot also gives us a brief homage to the earliest substantial literary treatment of Sweeney Todd, "The String of Pearls," an anonymously authored tale told in serial form in early Victorian days. We have a Mr. Thornhill with a string of beautiful pearls, a major actor in the first treatment. Todd's young boy apprentice continues to be called Tobias, as he first was, and generally still is. Praises be the icky star-crossed young lovers, major, and weakest ingredient of the original tale, are gone. The Sweeney Todd tale may be based on an urban myth, or there may, or may not be a real inspiration to it. Robert L. Mack, in his excellent book on the subject, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," reviewed by me on its subject page, cites to an eighteenth century French newspaper.
What is certainly true is the fascinating, sad history of the Fleet River, treated by me, at greater length, in reviewing the Johnny Depp "Sweeney." We see the river here, narrowed to the width of a street, hemmed in by structures on both sides; and, briefly, at low tide, displaying a filthy, gruesome river bed. It is bridged here, but it was to be entirely bridged over, covered in wood so that it could be built over, and was so polluted it burst into flames, burning all around it. When the area was eventually rebuilt, the river's legacy was to be all those subterranean tunnels that proved so handy to Todd.
Winstone's powerful performance hoists this film well above the ordinary TV movie, though it does lack some of the richness of a film made for theatrical release. But it's an engrossing, and haunting variation on a dark legend of love and murder.
Summary of Sweeney Todd - The Director's Cut
This gripping version of the notorious legend of a murderous barber throws out all the melodrama of the popular Sondheim musical. Instead, this BBC drama of Sweeney Todd treats the antihero as realistically as possible, with compelling results. After spending most of his childhood in the brutal Newgate prison, Sweeney Todd (Ray Winstone, Sexy Beast) becomes a reputable barber--but when he finds a vicious prison guard in his barber's chair, Todd can't keep himself from slitting the man's throat. From there, his bloodthirst grows compulsive, particularly after his life becomes entangled with a younger married woman, Mrs. Lovett (buxom Essie Davis, Girl with a Pearl Earring), whose pie shop begins receiving gifts of unspecified meat... Sweeney Todd skillfully weaves the most popular elements of the legend into a plausible story, adding in sardonic humor, nihilistic philosophy, and a few gruesome twists that will be appreciated by anyone with a taste for the macabre. Winstone's performance turns Todd into a sympathetic figure--without excusing or lessening his crimes. All in all, an excellent version of the story, well-produced, cleverly written, and cleanly directed. (The Director's Cut apparently includes a bit more gore than was in the original broadcast.) Also featuring David Warner (who played Jack the Ripper in Time After Time). --Bret FetzerDrama DVD Video
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