I must admit my heart sank when I heard that a remake of the classic, and creepy UK film, The Wicker Man, was coming out. We seem to have a lot of remakes at the moment, prompting thoughts that Hollywood has run dry on creative ideas. I sympathise up to a point with this. The remake of the old Michael Caine/Noel Coward caper, the Italian Job, was an amusing piece of film but not a patch on the original. Flight of the Phoenix was good, but not as good as the original, etc. And yet and yet….the Thomas Crown Affair, starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo and Denis Leary, was excellent, in fact an improvement in certain ways on the original, which starred the great Steve McQueen.
I suspect the problem is that when we first see a film, or read a novel, we intend to invest a certain amount emotionally in the experience if is a good one. I can imagine the howls of outrage if someone tries to remake Casablanca, or the African Queen, say. One of the problems of course is that remakes can remove elements deemed politically incorrect. The original Italian Job, for example, took a poke at the older incarnation of the EU, known at the time as the Common Market; it also made fun of Italian crooks and security services, while it also celebrated a sort of camp Britishness and had the wonderful character, Professer Peach, as played by Benny Hill (his character had a penchant for very large women).
Even so, I resist the urge if I can to get snooty about remakes. Peter Jackson, the maestro behind Lord of the Rings, is planning to bring out a new version of the classic war movie, The Dambusters, using modern computer technology to portray how 617 Squadron breached a number of German dams during the war. Jackson is no PC bore and seems determined to pay his respects to the heroisim of the RAF. I am definitely looking forward to the film when it comes out.
In the original movie, the RAF leader Guy Gibson has a black labrador, called Nigger. I will be interested to know if that rather un-PC fact is airbrushed out. Also, it being the 1940s, most of the aircrew should smoke cigarettes like chimneys. Will they be forced to stub out the habit to preserve the sensibilities of 21st Century viewers?
Well shall see.
Considering that Jackson did not flinch from either smoking or drinking in LotR, I doubt if the ciggies and pipes will be absent.
At least Jackson now prevents that arch-revisionist Mel Gibson from directing and starring in a remake, which he had planned to do. God knows what truths would have been butchered on his ego-altar by the axe he constantly grinds.
Jonathan,
You make the same point that I made several years ago to my girlfriend. I said that there was no way they could remake Dambusters without Guy Gibson’s dog and as it was at least quasi-historical they’d be damned if they changed the hound’s original name and seeing as this is the C21st they’d be damned if they stuck with it.
The great irony is 100s or 1000s of civilians and aircrew died but the name of a dog that was run over in the 1940s seems the potential deal-breaker.
PS The remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair” is a very good and entertaining film. For me it’s Rene Russo who makes it.
Gibson’s dog, N Word, is one of Britain’s more famous animal ghosts, by the way–allegedly appeared in a photograph some months after his death, and sited more than once around Woodhall Spa.
Remember that horror remakes aren’t all bad, either – Richard Carpenter’s The Thing and David Cronenburg’s The Fly are better than the originals.
The key point about “Nigger” is not just that this was the name of Guy Gibson’s dog, but also that it was the call sign that the Mohne Dam had been destroyed. “It’s Nigger sir! It’s gone!” This is a fact that can either be faced or falsified. It cannot just be glided around, and not mentioned.
I fear falsification. But, at least a remake will be a chance to get the explosions when the dams went looking vaguely like explosions. The original Dam Busters dam explosions are the absolutely most embarrassingly god awful special effects – i.e. not special at all – there have ever been. Well, maybe not ever, but certainly among the worst in an otherwise good movie.
That depends on how “Hollywood” it is. I figure there’s a very good chance that we’ll end up with the typical totally unrealistic giant orange balls of flame.
I’ve noticed that in recent years Hollywood has moved from doing remakes of old movies to copying very recent foreign films, even going so far as to use some of the same people who made the foreign version. Ju-on/The Grudge (same director), Abre los Ojos/Vanilla Sky (same lead actress), and Ring (didn’t even bother to change the name) stand out as particularly obvious examples.
Wanted to add Nightwatch to this list. Same writer/director. Danish original inexplicably vastly better, despite striking surface similarity.
Even “Snakes on a Plane” is a remake of an obscure Belgian movie.
You’re right, Tim. If Gibson made “The Dambusters” it would likely show the RAF deliberately bombing hospitals and orphanages.
Here are all the modern day sins seen in the original Dambusters film without even mentioning Wng Cmdr Guy Gibson VC’s dog.
Other recent shocking remakes of British classics: The Ladykillers, Bedazzled and soon School For Scoundrels. I have hopes that The Dambsters will be a cut above however.
This discussion about nigger seems to occur on samizdata about once every year or so.
I’ll bet they rename the dog “Blackie” even tho the word isn’t that much less offensive.
Canine of colour?
The film Pearl Harbor had many, many absurd elements in it, but certainly the fact that three young men and three young women could have a night out in WWII in New York without anybody lighting up a cigarette is one off the more absurd ones.
Hollywood seems to have generated a formula for films set in the past (it’s hard to actually call them “historical films” when they are so anachronistic) whereby certain elements are meticulosly researched (e.g., the uniforms in Pearl Harbor) but others (like the absence of cigarettes) are grossly untrue to the time and place. Other things are wrong because they just don’t seem to ever have been researched at all — steam locomotives never operated out of Grand Central or Pennsylvania stations in New York, for example — they were banned in the city before either structure was built.
It may get me shouted down, but I hold that Peter Jackson is not good at making convincing military scenes. The battle scenes were (to me) the weakest part of his otherwise excellent Lord of the Rings films.
True Tolkien plays up the role of the heroic individual in combat (partly as part of the tradition of myth, and partly as a reaction to his own experience in the meat grinder of the Somme in World War I) – but Mr Jackson takes things to the point of absurdity (for example compare what Tolkien writes about the escape from Moria with what Jackson shows – with orcs swarming on the ceiling and all).
Peter Jackson has the flaw that is common in horror film makers of multiplying “the bad things” – actually I think that is bad not just from a battle scene (military) point of view, but even from a horror point of view.
One bad thing is scary – vast numbers of bad things all round the main characters and the characters get out (just like the last time they were in such a situation) and the thought “this is silly” makes it impossible to suspend disbelief.
I have a fear that a Peter Jackson “Dambusters” would have millions of German aircraft filling the sky (if C.G.I. can give us a few, why not a lot……).
As for the “Thomas Crown Affair” – I have not seen the remake, but I found the origninal film deeply disturbing.
The character organized armed robberies in which people could be injured or killed – for kicks.
And this character was presented (and very well presented) as an attractive figure. The film showed that evil (and this character was evil) can be attractive -which is true, but disturbing.
The truth is that Mr Crown should have had a couple of bullets fired into his head.
Perhaps the above will be dismissed as a security guard’s bias (although I am not in that line of work any more – I will not play along with government license schemes), but it is the truth.
“It’s Canine of Colour Sir, it’s gone”
Well it would be sort of amusing.
The trouble with the word “nigger” was that in some people’s usage it was always an insult, and in some other people’s usage it was not (for example the paint catalogues including the colour “nigger brown”). It goes back to the difficulty that English speakers (especially lower class English speakers) has with correctly saying the word “niger” (pronounced “nyger” I believe, Latin for black) and the word “negro” (try saying that word with, say, a London accent).
In the American South the use of the word “nigger” was associated with the lower class whites (“crackers”, “red necks” or whatever) – who (of course) had never owned slaves, but tended to dislike blacks more that the people who had owned slaves (or whose forefathers had).
Of course for Kipling’s soldier characters “nigger” was a general term of abuse ever for people who were not black.
But then for Kipling’s soldier characters almost any word was a word of abuse (someone from London, like someone like from New York, can even make “good morning” sound like “fuck off and burn in hell” – and, indeed, normally sounds aggressive even when they have aggressive intent – “you old bastard”, said with a savage snarl, can be meant and recieved as a friendly greeting).
As for Area Bombing (not the specific dam busters raid -although civilians died in that to).
Sadly Mr Gibson would not have to tell lies about it – one of the main objectives of Area Bombing (the destruction of German towns and cities) was to “break morale” by killing as many civilians as possible.
It was deliberate – not just a side effect of trying to destroy factories.
Ken Hagler wrote:
That’s nothing new; Ingrid Bergman’s first Amreican movie, Intermezzo: A Love Story is a remake of a movie she made in 1936
Hollywood running out of ideas? The versions of The Wizard of Oz, The Maltese Falcon, and Ben Hur that are talked about as “classics” were all remakes. If a remake can be better, and it can, then I say go for it. I’m glad Peter Jackson didn’t say, “Hrrm, that Ralph Bashki and Rankin/Bass have already done Lord of the Rings, maybe I’ll not make a giant ape picture.”
Hollywood is always running out of ideas, and somehow it manages to produce some good stuff now and then, and again.
The Wicker Man remake is one I cannot fathom. The original was so tied into the period and the conflict between Christianity and paganism.
How can you do it seriously in an age where there are authorised versions of celebrity sex videos?
I’m totally in favour with the majority of these remakes if only that it means people will look at the latest attempt and then buy the original on DVD – thus making sure that The Wicker Man comes out on DVD. Prior to Tom Hanks’ commendable attempt at The Ladykillers I could not find this Ealing classic anywhere on DVD, even on a collection series.
I do however draw a line at the latest rumour that they want to remake Kind Hearts And Coronets with Jim Carrey. There are some noteworthy treasures best left forever as made, and I would also include The Dambusters even with its burning film effect for ‘explosions’ in that. I wonder how long it is going to be before a 20-something producer in Hollywood looks at Zulu again and decides he can do it better …
Julian,
I could not find this Ealing classic anywhere on DVD, even on a collection series.
You must have left it too late. It was out on the “Alec Guiness set” of Ealing Comedy classics, I must have bought mine in the Autumn of 2002, before they started selling them individually.
And while we’re on the subject: a School For Scoundrels remake, like totally dude, with no Alistair Sim, Iain Charmichael or Terry-Thomas. Shocking.
Somebody mentioned The Thomas Crowne Affair. Maybe one reason they remade it was because the original was shot in multi-screen, a Hollywood fashion that lasted about 18 months. In it the frame would close down to show one detail in the scene, leaving the rest of the screen dark, or such a frame would slide across the widescreen while other small frames would appear from varying directions. The style was the signature of the presentations in various Canadian-designed pavillions at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal. It was very forward thinking in its day, when we suddenly discovered that film was ART, but it looks very dated now. About the only other film I remember done in this process was The Boston Strangler with Henry Fonda and a surprising Tony Curtis.
I’m normally against changing historical fact in film, but in this case, I don’t see it as that big a deal. Does the dog’s name make any real difference in the grand scheme of things? Arguably, it doesn’t help to portray the airmen in a good light.
I don’t see it in the same way as a film like The Patriot which showed the British in a terrible light (aren’t we always) and tried to suggest that the US Army was in favour of liberating slaves.
“Arguably, it doesn’t help to portray the airmen in a good light.”
Were our airmen good people? Who says?
I don’t think anyone on this thread, or indeed yours truly, is saying the airmen were “good people”. It is not for me to judge their “goodness” or otherwise.
What I do judge, from reading the history of 617 Squadron, and the accounts of people like Guy Gibson, Cheshire, etc, is that they were incredibly brave people. Cheshire flew more than 100 missions over continental Europe, operating in many cases as a pathfinder, flying very low in a Mosquito, dropping flares over the target. He did this night after night. Think about that.
Now, one can debate the morality of “area bombing” and the likely benefits of said. It is of course very easy to do this with the benefit of hindsight. On another thread, one commenter attacked the dam raids of 1943 as being a waste of time. But the planners of the raid thought that what they were doing would hit the German war effort, hit morale and demonstrate to the Germans that if you start murderous wars, you suffer. The skill involved in that mission was amazing, as was the bravery of the men concerned,.
It really pisses me off when I read snarky comments about the sort of people who put their lives on the line so that we are free to be snarky on a website.
I don’t think anyone on this thread, or indeed yours truly, is saying the airmen were “good people”. It is not for me to judge their “goodness” or otherwise.
What I do judge, from reading the history of 617 Squadron, and the accounts of people like Guy Gibson, Cheshire, etc, is that they were incredibly brave people. Cheshire flew more than 100 missions over continental Europe, operating in many cases as a pathfinder, flying very low in a Mosquito, dropping flares over the target. He did this night after night. Think about that.
Now, one can debate the morality of “area bombing” and the likely benefits of said. It is of course very easy to do this with the benefit of hindsight. On another thread, one commenter attacked the dam raids of 1943 as being a waste of time. But the planners of the raid thought that what they were doing would hit the German war effort, hit morale and demonstrate to the Germans that if you start murderous wars, you suffer. The skill involved in that mission was amazing, as was the bravery of the men concerned,.
It really pisses me off when I read snarky comments about the sort of people who put their lives on the line so that we are free to be snarky on a website.
I for one am grateful for the opportunity to speak freely. something that (if my vague understanding of WWII history holds up) I would not be free to do without the contribution of those airmen and thousands like them.
I just don’t think would helps anyone to partray the age as anything other than what it was. To explore the example a little further, the dog’s name portrays the innocence of the time, its a cute contrast to current PC tyranny and, if anything, demonstrates for those that agree with that sort of thing how much more respect and care we give the subject today – rightly or otherwise.