Douglas Sirk’s supreme last film, “Imitation of Life,” from 1959, is a remake of John M. Alfred Hitchcock remade, at two decades’ remove, his own “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” and improved on it greatly. Hawks remade “The Front Page,” from 1931, for his classic 1940 comedy “His Girl Friday” and, for that matter, he remade his own films quickly, improving “Ball of Fire,” from 1941, in 1948, as “A Song Is Born,” and wreaking modernist twists on “Rio Bravo” (1959) with “El Dorado” (1967). And, of course, classic-era Hollywood ate its young with extraordinary speed. Kimberly Peirce’s remake of “Carrie,” also from 2013, improved on Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. Peter Bogdanovich remade and honored Hawks’s “Bringing Up Baby” in his 1972 comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” Spike Lee improved on Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” in his 2013 remake of it. Murnau’s 1924 drama, “The Last Laugh,” is one of the supreme ones in the history of film-and the Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2010 remake of it, “A Screaming Man,” marshals the power of the original’s story and themes to illuminate his own place and time. There are enough examples, recent and historical, to dispel any skepticism that this is possible. But it’s reasonable to expect a remake to tell a fuller story, to offer different perspectives on its characters and situations and, in the process, to deliver different pleasures while nonetheless honoring the achievements of the original. Yet far be it from me to gainsay the delight that many viewers take in “The Princess Bride.” The point isn’t to suggest that fans renounce the pleasures, such as they are. It’s a movie of clever banter but little visual wit (beyond the nimble early fencing scenes between Elwes and Mandy Patinkin), and some lumpy lines and performances that appeal to children as they are seen in the condescending eyes of adults. “The Princess Bride” could do with revisions in other ways. Her only recourse in the face of her impending forced marriage to Humperdinck is to plan her suicide-an act from which she is again saved by Westley, who protests, “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world.” It’s worth recalling, too, the severe test to which Westley, disguised by the mask of the Dread Pirate Roberts, subjects her: it involves his bitter and derisive skepticism about the truth-the fidelity-of her love, and culminates in his raising his hand as if to hit her and declaring, “Where I come from, there are penalties when a woman lies.” The one time she raises a hand to her oppressors, she’s utterly incompetent and has to be rescued by Westley, as she is at every turn-protected from flames in the “fire swamp,” pulled from a pit of “lightning sand,” protected from the ROUSes (rodents of unusual size). To begin with, its title character-the princess Buttercup (Robin Wright), who wants to marry a commoner named Westley (Elwes) but is betrothed to the evil Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon)-is written and directed, for the most part, like a sack of gold rather than a sentient person. Much about it is rooted in the dated standards of its times and, thus, is ripe for reimagination. In the case of “The Princess Bride,” which is based on William Goldman’s adaptation of his own novel, I’d say that the door is wide open-not least because it’s far from a perfect movie. That’s why I’d like to make a modest proposal to the film industry in response to the “Princess Bride” outcry: namely, remake everything, or, at least, anything, and see whether a filmmaker, a screenwriter, a producer, and a group of actors have the insight and the imagination to meet the challenges and the inspirations of the classics. They are wrong, of course, but their critical delusions don’t prevent anyone from enjoying the originals. There are people who think that Jim McBride’s 1983 remake of “Breathless” is better than the original some viewers find Brian De Palma’s 1983 “Scarface” superior to Howard Hawks’s 1932 version. It seems self-evident that no film is literally damaged by a remake-and that if any damage results it’s of a psychological, not a cinematic, nature. Among the most over-the-top of the fretters, for instance, was the movie’s co-star Cary Elwes, who tweeted this riff on one of the movie’s famous lines: “There’s a shortage of perfect movies in this world. Judging by the outcry from Hollywood stars over a Sony executive’s vaguely floated notion this week of remaking “The Princess Bride,” you’d think that the idea wasn’t to make a new film but to alter or destroy Rob Reiner’s 1987 original.
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