Amazing film!! Very happy to have gotten it for cheap!! Disk is in good condition, box is a little hard to close and the disk is a bit hard to get out but nothing serious! Actual dvd is good quality!
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
The best version of this musical I have ever seen
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
This DVD is of the 1982 film of the theatrical production of Sweeney Todd shows the vision of Stephen Sondheim in make a "horror" musical about a legendary sensational character from English literature. Hearns' performance as Todd is well-acted, but two-dimensional in feel. He is either 'on' as the demon barber or merely standing about like scenery. Lansbury, in 1982, at 57, gives a great performance which often overshadows Hearn's. She is engergetic and loud, as I gather she would think a cockney Mrs Lovett would act. Yet, there's something somewhat "off" in her performance, as if she were playing a precocious teenager rather than a mature, but addled widowed woman left alone and penniless in the world. The Alms woman provides Cassandra-like pronouncements throughout the show, which keeps the sense of foreboding alive. The side story of the two lovers, Johanna and Anthony, while integral to the overall plot, often gets cumbersome and overly melodramatic as it threatens to engulf itself in convoluted plot and scene changes. The villains of the piece, the Judge and his Beadle, are played with relish by the actors, but again merely as two-dimensional characters. The character of Toby seems to provide some complex acting within the plot, and his song to Lovett, "Nothing's Going to Harm You Now," defines this character far more as a real human being than all other characters combined. Don't buy this DVD if you want the Depp version - this is a stage version of the show, which means the intense close-ups of movie film just do not exist, which means the expression of feeling must be _overacted_ and, as I suspect, what Sondheim specifically wanted of his characters at the time. So, enjoy this version of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd for what it is - a first attempt by a director/writer to produce a play in the "penny-dreadful" style, which later he modified to a dark a brooding commentary on what life can do to create a monster, as seen in the Burton/Depp version (2007).Read full review
The DVD is beautiful, it was still packed. I bought this dvd because I love Angela Lansbury, and I wanted to see this play, also was cheap.
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