Remakes aren’t always terrible
AStar is Born will be released in New Zealand cinemas on October 17. Officially, it is fourth ‘‘iteration’’ of one of Hollywood’s perennial stories. Unofficially, it is the fifth. The first A Star is Born, back in 1937, was itself a partial remake of another film made just five years earlier, What Price, Hollywood?
Remakes, reboots and sequels have a bad name these days. They dominate the box office to a depressing extent. If it isn’t this Spiderman it’s that Spiderman. Peter Parker and his alter ego have had more resurrections than Lazarus and Christ combined. The public keeps coming back for more.
The advance word on A Star is Born is that it is exception, not rule. It is that rare remake that complements earlier incarnations, adding fresh elements to the tradition.
What other remakes exceeded expectation? Here is a list of outstandingly unoriginal movies, films that prove that if it’s broke, it’s worth fixing.
1 The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, the tale of private investigator Sam Spade and his involvement with femme fatale Brigid O’shaughnessy, had already been adapted twice for the screen before writer John Huston was given the chance to make his directorial debut with the material.
Storyboarding every setup for the only time in what turned out to be a 46-year career, Huston not only confirmed Humphrey Bogart as an A-list player, he gave Mary Astor the best part of her life and established Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet as Hollywood character actors without peer. He also invented a new genre: film noir.
2 A Star is Born (1954)
George Cukor had directed What Price, Hollywood? back in 1932. It made sense that this renowned ‘‘women’s director’’ was given the responsibility of overseeing Judy Garland’s ambitious musical remake.
That Garland was too old for the part of Esther Blodgett, a minor band singer whose transformation is stage-managed by an alcoholic movie star who has seen better days, is of no matter.
Judged alone on the scene where she sings The Man That Got Away, it’s one of the great performances in all cinema.
Garland infamously missed out on an Oscar, as did co-star James Mason, heartbreaking as the selfloathing Norman Maine. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper have an awful lot to live up to.
3 Ben-hur (1959)
The 1925 version of Ben-hur was the most expensive film of the entire silent era. One hundred horses were slaughtered in the chariot sequence alone.
Director William Wyler had worked on the troubled production as an assistant and was well aware of the pitfalls.
Chariot race direction was handed over to veteran stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt, who delivered something that surpassed even the original, with considerably fewer equine casualties.
Wyler brought sensitivity and restraint to the dramatic scenes, mercifully downplaying the religion. Charlton Heston was never better than in the title role. Ben-hur topped the box office and won best picture.
4 The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, from 1956, is a small masterpiece of Cold War paranoia.
Aliens take over a town, one person at a time, replacing citizens with zombie-like doppelgangers grown in enormous ‘‘pods’’, like so many peas.
It’s an ambiguous metaphor for Mccarthy-era America.
Either the aliens are Communists, confirming Mccarthy’s worst fears, or they are the reactionary Right-wing, Mccarthy’s stooges, suppressing all dissent.
Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake might lack the political context, but it arguably equals Don Siegel’s original for chills, literally beginning where the first film trails off, bringing back lead actor Kevin Mccarthy (no relation to the senator) and casting Leonard Nimoy in his best non-star Trek role. Kaufman’s downbeat, twist ending is truly haunting, surpassing anything the studio would allow in the 1950s.
5 True Grit (2010)
In 1969, John Wayne won a richly deserved Oscar as Rooster Cogburn, the drunken US marshal who helps a teenage girl track down her father’s killer.
The Coen brothers’ version of the same story is less a remake than an alternative adaptation of Charles Portis’ source novel.
Although Jeff Bridges’ gruff, almost inaudible, Cogburn cannot possibly compete with the Duke, in all other aspects the latter True Grit is superior.
Its narrative, free of the extraneous incident that slows down the 1960s film, benefits from a comparative lack of sentiment and restores the book’s ending.
It goes without saying that Matt Damon is a better actor than Glen Campbell and casting an actual teenager as Mattie Ross pays dividends.