SLEEPY HOLLOW (FILM)

'''Sleepy Hollow''' (1999) is an historical horror film directed by Tim Burton, interpreting the legend of The Headless Horseman and based loosely around the Washington Irving story ''The Legend of Sleepy Hollow''. The film was written by Andrew Kevin Walker (based on the Washington Irving story) and retooled by Tom Stoppard. It starred Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci, and was scored by Tim Burton stalwart, Danny Elfman. Principal photography took place at Leavesden Film Studios in the UK, although portions of the film's opening (featuring a dialogue-free Martin Landau cameo) were actually shot in New York State, not far from the actual town of Sleepy Hollow.
Though not a critical smash, the film opened to generally positive reviews and was a [1] reasonable financial success, leading Warner Brothers executives to offer Burton the ''Planet of the Apes'' remake in its wake. ''Sleepy Hollow'' received the 1999 Academy Award for Best Art Direction.

★ 'Tagline': ''Heads Will Roll''

Contents

Synopsis

Behind the Scenes

Cast

Music

External links

Synopsis

In 1799, young constable Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is sent from New York City to the fledgling settlement of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of ghoulish murders. On Ichabod's arrival, Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon) and the town council inform him that the three/four victims, Dirk and Peter Van Garrett, the widow Emily Winship, and the widow's unborn child to Peter Van Garrett, were killed on open ground, and their severed heads are believed to have been taken by a headless ghost. Ichabod is skeptical, but proceeds to learn more about the ghostly Headless Horseman: it is the ghost of a Hessian mercenary (Christopher Walken), a horseman who rode a great black stallion named Daredevil. He and other mercenaries were sent by German princes during the Revolutionary War. The Hessian came because of his love of killing and battle—he was renowned for cutting off heads at full gallop. The Horseman was killed in the winter of 1779 in the woods west of Sleepy Hollow where a group of soldiers overpowered him, decapitating him with his own sword. Although Ichabod is initially spooked by the story, he maintains the killer must be of flesh and blood, and will be found. That night, a man named Jonathan Masbath is killed by the Horseman.
When Ichabod sees the ghost kill one of the town council members, Magistrate Philips, his skepticism evaporates, overwhelmed by superstition. He soon discovers that the Horseman's ghost seems to have a connection to Baltus Van Tassel, a wealthy farmer and Sleepy Hollow's last remaining plutocrat (following the death of Van Garret in the film's opening sequence). Ichabod also find himself falling in love with Van Tassel's daughter, Katrina (Christina Ricci). Katrina is intelligent and sweet yet eccentric, and refers to herself as a "good witch", having studied a book about white witchcraft.
Meanwhile, Ichabod's childhood is recalled through a series of vivid dreams. His beautiful mother, whom he loved very much, was Pagan, and was condemned by a strict church. Young Ichabod watched as she was dragged by his father, a fundamentalist Christian, to a church's back room filled with interrogation and torture devices. Cautiously examining the devices, young Ichabod discovers his mother's mutilated corpse locked inside an Iron Maiden. (The film takes place in 1799 and the first iron maiden was not seen until 1793. Unless the adult Ichabod is meant to be considerably younger than he appears, this detail is historically inaccurate.) Horrified, he steps back, accidentally grabbing the arms of a chair covered in spikes. Both his hands are pierced with multiple puncture wounds, which remain there through adulthood, reminding him of his mother's death and reinforcing his belief that procedure and deduction is superior to faith in the supernatural.
Ichabod, Katrina, and Young Masbath (Ichabod's self-assigned assistant) eventually discover the Horseman's grave at the foot of the gnarled Tree of the Dead. The Horseman soon kills four people afterwards, the Kilian family and local boy Brom, who is killed trying to kill the Horseman. Crane surmises, he rises to cut off heads "'til his own is restored to him," and that he is in the service of a living villain. Ichabod summises that it is Baltus who is controlling the Horseman, in order to gain complete control of Sleepy Hollow, but Baltus is later killed by the Horseman in a bloodbath at the local church. It is eventually revealed that Lady Van Tassel (Miranda Richardson), Katrina's stepmother, stole the Horseman's head and is using it to control him.
She sought to gain revenge against the people of Sleepy Hollow, who, after accusing her mother of witchcraft, banished her family from the town. As a child she met the Hessian Horseman in the woods west of Sleepy Hollow. It was she who betrayed him to the troupe of soldiers that killed him. Watching him die, she offered her soul to Satan if he would give her power to raise the warrior from his grave. She took his skull and used it to summon him. Lady Van Tassel summons the Horseman to get her revenge upon the landlords who evicted her family, and to gain an inheritance by killing Katrina.
After a lengthy chase, Ichabod returns the Horseman's head to its rightful owner, rescuing Katrina in the process. The Horseman, head returned, grabs Lady Van Tassel, kisses her violently, and dives back into the Tree of the Dead, dragging his one-time captor back to the netherworld with him.
Victorious, Ichabod, Katrina, and Masbath return to New York to prepare for a new century. The final line of the movie, "The Bronx is up, the Battery's down," quotes the lyric for Leonard Bernstein's song, "New York, New York" from On the Town.

Behind the Scenes

Sleepy Hollow began life as a script by Andrew Kevin Walker. The original draft contained a number of elements that didn't make the final cut, including a mystical Lenape Indian character and a fierce two-headed wolf. When Tim Burton joined the project, a number of rewrites were commissioned. Tom Stoppard's draft eliminated some of Walker's darker elements, streamlined the dialogue and added a more playful, Burton-esque tone to the story. Burton envisioned Sleepy Hollow as a stylistic homage to the films of Hammer Film Productions, and wanted to play up the Gothic / grand guignol elements inherent to the story. Burton also intended to pay homage (if only slightly) to the Walt Disney telling of Sleepy Hollow. The scene where Ichabod crosses the bridge pursued by Brom, pretending to be the Horseman, is an homage to the Disney's The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, most notably the frog's anthropomorphized croak and the flaming pumpkin. Still, the film would not be without its share of R-rated darkness. The scene in which the Horseman kills off the entire Killian family was originally going to be cut out of the film, but Burton fought for it to remain in. The director claimed that, in his own youth, he hated horror films where children were consistently spared.
Sleepy Hollow was cast with a combination of Burton veterans (Johnny Depp, Christopher Walken, Jeffery Jones, Lisa Marie, Michael Gough) and newcomers to his productions. Hammer Film staple Christopher Lee (here making his Burton debut) once again tied the film to the classic horror pictures of yesteryear. Likewise, Christopher Walken claims that his inspiration for his scenes was Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man.
Burton and cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, shot Sleepy Hollow with highly stylized visuals that deemphasized certain colors while highlighting others. The film was shot almost entirely using a blue camera filter. Therefore, for blood to appear startlingly red, the substance used was actually bright orange.
The majority of the film was shot in England. The entire Village of Sleepy Hollow set was built specifically for the film in the middle of a hunting ground. By the request of the locals, the church wasn't torn down after the film's production--it still stands today. The architecture of the film's church is similar to the real Sleepy Hollow Old Dutch Church. Even the nearby bridge remains, (though it is less significant to this telling of the story than it was in Irving's writing).
Sleepy Hollow and Bringing Out the Dead were the last films released in America on Laserdisc, though Sleepy Hollow was among the first titles released on Blu-ray.

Cast

★ Johnny Depp - Constable Ichabod Crane

★ Christina Ricci - Katrina Anne Van Tassel

★ Miranda Richardson - Lady Mary Van Tassel

★ Michael Gambon - Baltus Van Tassel

★ Christopher Walken - The Headless Horseman

★ Richard Griffiths - Magistrate Philipse

★ Casper Van Dien - Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt

★ Marc Pickering - 'Young' Masbath

★ Jeffrey Jones - Reverend Steenwyck

★ Christopher Lee - Burgomaster

★ Ian McDiarmid - Dr. Thomas Lancaster

★ Michael Gough - Notary James Hardenbrook

★ Lisa Marie - Ichabod's Mother

★ Claire Skinner - Midwife Elizabeth 'Beth' Killian

Music

Danny Elfman composed one of his most densely detailed scores for ''Sleepy Hollow''. The music, though essentially mono-thematic, is inventively developed and ornately orchestrated. Different orchestrations and harmonizations of a single, principle theme represents both the dark and light story elements in the film, though each comes with a handful of related secondary material.
However, save for the delicately light flashback scenes featuring Young Ichabod and his mother, the score is almost oppressively dark and heavily reliant on the low end of the orchestra. The score calls for extensive use of low woodwinds (contrabass clarinet, contrabassoon, etc.) and low brass (including Wagner tuba and cimbasso).

External links

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★ Washington Irving's Original Short Story at LibriVox

★ Keith Short - Film Sculptor Sculpted the Tree of the Dead for this film