If you are interested in a faithful depiction of the legend of Sweeney Todd (the Demon Barber of Fleet Street), look elsewhere--to the 1936 version starring Tod Slaughter, or the much more recent one starring Johnny Depp. The Ben Kingsley-led 1997 TV movie takes the basics of the original story and puts its own spin on it.
From the outset, Todd and neighbor Mrs. Lovett are co-conspirators in robbing and killing barber Sweeney's rich customers and turning them into Mrs. Lovett's meat pies. But there is no Johanna, no sailor who loves her, no wicked judge who Sweeney blames. In the 1936 film, Slaughter makes Todd seem a deranged human being--quite mad. In the Stephen Sondheim musical (and Johnny Depp film based on it) Todd is driven mad by being framed for a crime and shipped off to an Australian penal colony just so the judge could seduce Todd's wife. Here there is no apparent reason for Kingsley's Sweeney (and Lovett) to commit these heinous crimes other than greed, besides Sweeney years earlier being "forced" to result to cannibalism when in Africa during wartime. I guess he developed a taste for it and assumes (correctly it seems) that others will too.
Campbell Scott plays an American who crosses paths with Todd and will eventually be his downfall, although he is not the one who ultimately kills him--a young boy will do that since Sweeney for some reason locks him up instead of killing him when the boy finds out what's been going on. I can think of no reason why the Scott character is American. That fact doesn't seem to be important in any way.
Despite all this, the story is a pretty good one, with good acting and some good lines, but it is visually a mess. We know how grimy and germy 19th century London was and it may be important to show some of that, but director John Schlesinger is unrelenting in scene after scene of meat being butchered on dirty tables, people (including Mrs. Lovett) with gross teeth, rats eating corpses, etc.
I would not recommend this as your first exposure to the tale of Sweeney Todd, but if having already seen one of the other versions, you might find this alternate take interesting enough.
From the outset, Todd and neighbor Mrs. Lovett are co-conspirators in robbing and killing barber Sweeney's rich customers and turning them into Mrs. Lovett's meat pies. But there is no Johanna, no sailor who loves her, no wicked judge who Sweeney blames. In the 1936 film, Slaughter makes Todd seem a deranged human being--quite mad. In the Stephen Sondheim musical (and Johnny Depp film based on it) Todd is driven mad by being framed for a crime and shipped off to an Australian penal colony just so the judge could seduce Todd's wife. Here there is no apparent reason for Kingsley's Sweeney (and Lovett) to commit these heinous crimes other than greed, besides Sweeney years earlier being "forced" to result to cannibalism when in Africa during wartime. I guess he developed a taste for it and assumes (correctly it seems) that others will too.
Campbell Scott plays an American who crosses paths with Todd and will eventually be his downfall, although he is not the one who ultimately kills him--a young boy will do that since Sweeney for some reason locks him up instead of killing him when the boy finds out what's been going on. I can think of no reason why the Scott character is American. That fact doesn't seem to be important in any way.
Despite all this, the story is a pretty good one, with good acting and some good lines, but it is visually a mess. We know how grimy and germy 19th century London was and it may be important to show some of that, but director John Schlesinger is unrelenting in scene after scene of meat being butchered on dirty tables, people (including Mrs. Lovett) with gross teeth, rats eating corpses, etc.
I would not recommend this as your first exposure to the tale of Sweeney Todd, but if having already seen one of the other versions, you might find this alternate take interesting enough.