I have been wondering about the American tradition of remaking films, very often the original films are French, I have collected quite a lot of those and watched, sadly in my opinion I usually find the original better.
I would love to hear of more films if you know of any and if you have seen some examples where the remake is in your opinion the better one.
Here are some examples:
Nikita (French) – The assassin
Cyrano De Bergerac (French) – Roxanne
Nattenvakten – Nightwatch
Shichinin no samurai (japan) – The Magnificent Seven
(though Akira Kurosawa wrote both scripts as far as I know)
It could also be fun to hear of some strange or good ideas of re-makes.
Clouzot’s “The Wages of Fear” was remade by William Friedken as “Sorcerer.” The remake wasn’t better than the original, but it was pretty damn good, IMHO.
[nitpick] The Nikita remake was Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda. The first Cyrano movie that I remember was made in the fifty, with Jose Ferrer and it was an American movie. As far as Roxanne is concerned, I wouldn’t call it a remake, but an adaptation[/nitpick].
There was also a recent remake of the French (again) movie Les Visiteurs, I can’t remember the title though.
Other remade movies :
Nosferatu
The Vanishing
King Kong
Several horror movies (Phantom of the Opera, Dr Jekyll, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy…)
Godzilla
Barb Wire (remake of Casablanca :eek:)
And I can’t remember a remake that was equal or superior to the original (but I am ready to be corrected).
Oh my well “Point of no return” is titled “The Assassin” in video stores in Iceland (us icelanders being a bit slow, catchy title and all), but thanks for the right title, The first Cyrano thing was TV( 1938) Cyrano played by Leslie Banks made in the UK, Then come the French movie in 1945 directed by Fernand rivers Cyrano played by Claude Dauphin. I didn’t know of the fifties on though thanks for the info since I am a bit of a Cyrano fan I will try to find it.
The French spy comedy La Totale was remade by James Cameron as True Lies, which was fine with me as I can’t stand Thierry Lhermitte.
Not sure the remake was a better film, exactly, but it was certainly a lot bigger.
Wings of Desire, which I liked, was remade into some god-awful thing with Nic Cage that I hated. Oh yeah, City of Angels.
How about when directors essentially remake their own films, like Hitchcock with two versions of the The Man Who Knew too Much, or Howard Hawks, with Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo and El Dorado?
I’m sure I’ll think of others as soon as I post this.
Wow, Unbeliever, did you get a chance to actually see the 1938 BBC version? I bow to your greater age then. IIRC there is no recorded version of that production. I envy you. By the way, to complete your collection, you may want the 1925 French version by Augusto Genina. In any case, I think calling Cyrano a remake is a real stretch, but I can understand, considering your special attachment to the story.
On the topic of remakes, aren’t most horror movies essentially remakes? The plot is the same…some sociopath terrorizes a pleasant community unti they have to kill him, then he keeps coming back to life and they have to kill them again. I don’t know if that fits your definition of remake, but I agree that remakes are rarely as interesting as the originals.
“Three Men and a Baby”
“The Birdcage” (from “La Cage au Folles”)
“Jungle to Jungle” (from “Indian in the City”)
“Last Man Standing” was a remake of “Yojimbo”
Then there’s van Sandt’s pointless remake of “Psycho.”
No I’m afraid I haven’t seen the BBC version, never claimed I did, I would of course like to see it but it is not an easy thing to find, at least I have not found it to be.
Considering calling it a stretch, the manuscript is titled Roxanne an adaptation of the story of Cyrano de Bergerac.
The setting of the story is very orientated toward romantics of the time period of the story, I will not go into arguments about the personality of the character and individual opinions of the story, I’ve stated my opinion and that should be it.
Well, many remakes are superior to the original; it’s just that, in those cases, the original is forgotten, so you don’t realize the remake was a remake. Example: the 1941 version of THE MALTESE FALCON. And the plot for the 1945 THE BIG SLEEP had been used for one of the FALCON movies years earlier.
As for the so-called horror movie remakes, many of them are at least debatable. They tend to be adapted from source movels, so in a sense the film isn’t being remake; rather, we’re seeing a new adaptation of the book. Maybe this is a nitpicky distinction, but I see a clear difference between Hammer Films’ 1958 DRACULA (HORROR OF DRACULA in the US) and their 1959 THE MUMMY. The former was derived from the Bram Stoker novel (albeit loosely) and bears little resemblance to the Universal film of 1931. THE MUMMY on the other hand was an offical remake of Universal’s 1932 production and included many plot elements from that film and subsequent Universal MUMMY movies.
Most remakes aren’t very good because they’re done for the wrong reason. The reasoning usually seems to be, “Hey, this was a hit decades ago, but today’s teenagers are too young to have seen it, so let’s do it again, whether or not there’s any good reason to do it, except box office receipts.” Example: PLANET OF THE APES.
Surprised no one has mentioned Gus van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, usually recognized as the most pointless remake of all time.
Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich made their careers by remaking sci-fi B-movies: Godzilla is the obvious example, but ID4 was basically Earth v. the Flying Saucers.
Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II was basically a remake of Evil Dead. And was better than the first one too, so something in this post finally relates to the OP.
Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys was a remake of a European film, the title of which escapes me. I want to sayUmbrellas of Cherbourg, but I have no idea if that’s correct. I don’t know if it was better than the original (which I obviously haven’t seen) but it’s a damn fine movie in it’s own right.
The Bill Murray vehicle Groundhog’s Day was also based off a foreign film, don’t know which one.
My only point was that it seems odd to consider all adaptations of stories to be remakes of previous adaptations. I really don’t think that Roxanne was a re-make of the 1938 broadcast of the play, any more than Strange Brew is a re-make of Olivier’s Hamlet. (Just trying to determine what we mean here when we talk about remakes, no need to get excited. I promise I won’t start cursing God here.)
I think a lot of what determines whether a remake succeeds (artistically, not commercially) is whether the film is a signigicant revision, or just a glorified colorization. The Psycho remake must have been even more tedious to make than it was to watch. The Planet of the Apes remake, although I didn’t much care for it, at least seemed to have its own energy.
12 Monkeys was a remake of a quirky short film by Chris Marker called La Jetée (1962). I enjoyed both of them, possibly because the vastly different styles given to the same story.
Groundhog Day = Luis Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel (or so says this review)? I haven’t seen that movie in years and I do enjoy Buñuel’s work. I think I’ll see if I can rent it - thank you Miller!
Independence Day is a remake of War of the Worlds – in both cases, the aliens are wiped out by a virus, except in ID4 it’s a computer virus, geddit? In Hollywood, this is considered clever.
I’ve never heard of Groundhog Day being based on a European movie. However, the repeating-time plot device in Groundhog Day has been used in various other places, including either the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits. (Virtually every plot twist known to man was used on those shows.) Groundhog Day gets my vote for the best comedy of the last decade or two.
The IMDB summary for Exterminating Angel is as follows:
"After a lavish dinner party, the guests find themselves mysteriously unable to leave the room… and over the next few days all the elaborate pretenses and facades that they’ve built up by virtue of their position in society collapse completely as they become reduced to living like animals… "
This doesn’t sound too terribly similar to Groundhog Day, though you never know with Bunuel.
According to the page below, both the Twilight Zone episode “Judgement Night” and the Star Trek: TNG episode “Cause and Effect” predated Groundhog Day in the use of the time loop…
IMHO, a remake is a movie adapted directly from a previous movie version. Multiple adaptations from the same source material are not remakes. For example, the short story “Who Goes There” inspired The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien. All originals that come from the same source. Subsequent versions of Body Snatchers were adapted from the first movie version, and so can be considered remakes.
A Fistfull of Dollars and Last Man Standing were both adapted from Yojimbo.
Star Wars is a remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress.
Reservoir Dogs is a greatly expanded version of the last half hour of City on Fire.
Shanghai Noon, with Jackie Chan, is a remake of the Chinese Jet Li movie Once Upon a Time in China and America.
Vanilla Sky, set to open early next year, is a remake of the great Spanish movie Open Your Eyes, with Penelope Cruz reprising her role as the ultimate love interest for Tom Cruise.
Evil Dead 2 is NOT a remake of Evil Dead. It is clearly a continuation of the story, same as Army of Darkness is of the other two. The confusing little “recap” in the beginning confuses people, but it is purely a sequal, NOT A REMAKE!!!
Sorry, big ED fan here, and I just wanted to clear that up.
How come no one’s mentioned the wonderful example of cinematic art that was “Just Visiting” yet? Come on, it had French actors in it, and Christina Applegate. That alone makes it better than the original. If you’re a thirteen year old, at least.
I did, I just didn’t remember the remake’s title. If you look above, you will find the original French title (Les Visiteurs). BTW, since the French version has a sequel, are there plans to make an American sequel also ?
well “Point of no return” is titled “The Assassin” in video stores in Iceland (us icelanders being a bit slow, catchy title and all), but thanks for the right title, The first Cyrano thing was TV( 1938) Cyrano played by Leslie Banks made in the UK, Then come the French movie in 1945 directed by Fernand rivers Cyrano played by Claude Dauphin. I didn’t know of the fifties on though thanks for the info since I am a bit of a Cyrano fan I will try to find it. 
