An Introduction to Film

6 CHAPTER 1LOOKING AT MOVIES

1 2

3 4

5 6
The expressive agility of moviesEven the best seats in
the house offer a viewer of a theatrical production like Stephen
Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
only one unchanging view of the action. The stage provides the
audience a single wide-angle view of the scene in which the
title character is reintroduced to the set of razors he will use in
his bloody quest for revenge [1]. In contrast, cinema’s spatial
dexterity allows viewers of Tim Burton’s 2007 film adaptation
to experience the same scene as a sequence of fifty-nine

viewpoints, each of which isolate and emphasize distinct

meanings and perspectives, including Sweeney Todd’s (Johnny

Depp’s) point of view as he gets his first glimpse of his long-lost

tools of the trade [2]; his emotional reaction as he

contemplates righteous murder [3]; the razor replacing Mrs.

Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) as the focus of his attention

[4]; and a dizzying simulated camera move that starts with the

vengeful antihero [5], then pulls back to reveal the morally

corrupt city he (and his razors) will soon terrorize [6].