Since the introduction of sound to film in the late 1920’s and early 1930s, the musical has remained a constant force in the industry; called “Hollywood’s most durable product” (p 314). From the extravagance and excess of Busby Burkley’s art deco musicals in the 1930s to Arthur Freed’s ‘stable of stars’ including Judy Garland, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, the musical has often made an appeal to a wide range of audiences. As we move from the past to the present however, Sweeney Todd released in 2007 gives an almost bastardized version of what one would call a ‘classical’ musical. 
 Stylistically, Sweeney Todd fits into several genres of film besides just musicals, including: german expressionism, horror, and exploitation films. Director Tim …show more content…
In Sweeney Todd characters wear pale makeup with reddened and blackened eyes to exaggerate their features and to reflect the madness and despair of their mental states. Actor Timothy Spall fits into his often type-cast character as an oily, weasel-like assistant to the main villain. Although set in Victorian London, the film still emphasizes the darker side of city living with lines like “There's a hole in the world like a great black pit/ and the vermin of the world inhabit it/ and its morals aren't worth what a pig can spit/ and it goes by the name of London”, also reminiscent of German films’s focus on the challenges of modern life post World War I. Sets are heavily stylized to look dark, muted and grungy and with the assistance of CGI even the wide shots are altered to fit the macabre ambience of the film. Shattered reflections in mirrors, razors and puddles lend to the distortion of figures- another Expressionist …show more content…
America in the 1920s was going through its ‘Jazz Age’ and Art Deco movement of luxury, excess, ornamentation, geometric designs and celebration of the new. Thus, the musicals done at this time under Busby Burkley played heavily on the audiences’ desire for big, over-the-top musical numbers and sets. As these films were coming out, the Depression struck- which made them more of a distraction and escape from the grim reality of poverty. Conversely Sweeney Todd points out the problems and injustice in society: offering a dark critique instead of a happy retreat. At the time Busby Burkley’s musicals were coming out, America had just gotten out of World War I and there was a general air of celebration that the horrors of The Great World War were over. At the time Sweeney Todd was made, America was fully entrenched in the Iraq war with no end in sight- thus a not-so happy general public and a dark and depressing film. In the mid 2000s there also existed an ‘emo’ and ‘scene’ teen counter-culture whose tastes ran to the more dark and eccentric. As a favored director of the movement, Tim Burton’s films pandered to the outside culture instead of trying to appeal to the general family-fare audiences, much like post-television Hollywood’s appeal to the beatnik/car culture of teen audiences in the late 50s and 60s. 
 Implicitly, similarities can be drawn across both classic musical and Sweeney Todd. The Wizard of Oz (1939)