No sooner did the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp film of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd go into production than it became the subject of excited talk in American theater circles. Only one movie of a Broadway musical, Rob Marshall’s Oscar-winning 2002 version of Chicago, has performed well at the box office in recent years. Thus, the fact that a well-known director like Burton should have collaborated with a popular actor like Depp on a screen adaptation of the most critically acclaimed musical of the past half-century was bound to pique the interest of artists and audience members for whom the musical theater is still very much a living genre. As I write these words, it is too soon to know whether Sweeney Todd, released throughout the U.S. in January, will find a mass audience. But no matter how well it does, it is a safe bet that few Hollywood directors will choose to follow in Burton’s footsteps. As David Parkinson explains in the newly published Rough Guide to Film Musicals,1 the social and cultural conditions that drove the popularity of the genre up through the late 50’s ceased to exist thereafter: [R]ock ’n’ roll, pop, disco, and hip-hop refused to fit neatly into Hollywood’s conventional musical template. They also fragmented the audience and, with family trips to the cinema to see the latest musical spectacular becoming a thing of the past, the studios failed to capture a new generation of fans. As a result, the musical slipped down the film-genre hierarchy until it became a risky curio rather than a box-office staple. Yet Sweeney Todd suggests that even now, the last word has still to be said about the Hollywood musical. Whether or not it succeeds commercially, and despite certain flaws, it is easily the most innovative movie of its kind to be made since Bob Fosse’s 1972 Cabaret. It is also one in which many of the underlying problems of the genre have been not only re-thought but solved.

© 2008 Commentary Inc.