FILM REMAKES FILM REMAKES CONSTANTINE VEREVIS ‘A fi ne work of scholarship, Film Remakes promises to change the way we think about the phenomenon of the remake, and indeed about fi lms, culture and intertextuality. This is the most authoritative, subtle and complex work on the cinematic remake that I have encountered.’ Lesley Stern, Professor of Film and Media, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego This is the fi rst book to provide a comprehensive and systematic account of the phenomenon of cinematic remaking. Drawing upon recent theories of genre and intertextuality, Film Remakes describes remaking as both an elastic concept and a complex situation, one enabled and limited by the interrelated roles and practices of industry, critics and audiences. This approach to remaking is developed across three broad sections: the fi rst, remaking as industrial category, deals with issues of VEREVIS CONSTANTINE production, including commerce and authors; the second, remaking as textual category, considers genre, plots and structures; and the third, remaking as critical category, investigates issues of reception, including FILM REMAKES audiences and institutions. The fi lm remake emerges as a particular case of repetition, a function CONSTANTINE VEREVIS of cinematic and discursive fi elds that is maintained by historically specifi c practices, such as copyright law and authorship, canon formation and media literacy, fi lm criticism and re-viewing. These points are made through the lively discussion of numerous historical and contemporary examples, including the remaking of classics (Double Indemnity, All That Heaven Allows, Psycho), foreign art-fi lms (Yojimbo, Solaris, Le Samouraï), cult movies (Gun Crazy, Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Dead), and television properties (Batman, The Addams Family, Charlie’s Angels). Constantine Verevis is Lecturer, School of English, Communications & Performance Studies, Monash University, Australia. ISBN 0-7486-2187-3 Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk 9 780748 621873 Cover photographs: A Bout de Souffl e (1960) [Aquarius Collection], Breathless (1983) [Orion/The Kobal Collection], Cover design: Barrie Tullett Film Remakes ‘In this groundbreaking study, Constantine Verevis explores an aspect of commercial film production interesting to the scholar and movie enthusi- ast alike: remaking. Film Remakes can be profitably viewed from a number of perspectives, and this book provides an intriguing and revealing anatomy of the phenomenon. Verevis writes with verve and insight; an important feature of Film Remakes is the series of individual analyses that sparkle with revealing and intelligent comment as they clarify general points about remaking. Though theoretically informed, this book is won- derfully accessible to the general reader.’ R. Barton Palmer, Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature at Clemson University Film Remakes Constantine Verevis Edinburgh University Press © Constantine Verevis, 2006 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 2186 5 (hardback) ISBN 0 7486 2187 3 (paperback) The right of Constantine Verevis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction: Remaking Film 1 Part I Remaking as Industrial Category 1 Commerce 37 2Authors 58 Part II Remaking as Textual Category 3Texts 81 4 Genres 105 Part III Remaking as Critical Category 5Audiences 129 6 Discourse 151 Conclusion: Remaking Everything 173 References 179 Index 195 Preface I see an endless film with sequences signed by various authors in a complex game of quotations, influences, remakes, variations and references. (Bernardo Bertolucci, in Ungari, 1987) This book seeks to provide a broad and systematic approach to the phe- nomenon of cinematic remaking. Drawing upon recent theories of genre and intertextuality, Film Remakes describes remaking as both an elastic concept and a complex situation, one enabled and limited by the interre- lated roles and practices of industry, critics and audiences. This approach to remaking, outlined in the book’s introduction, is developed across its three parts. The first of these, Remaking as Industrial Category, deals with issues of production, including commerce and authors; the second, Remaking as Textual Category,considers genre, plots and structures; and the third, Remaking as Critical Category,investigates issues of reception, including audiences and institutions. The film remake emerges from this discussion as a particular case of repetition, a function of cinematic and discursive fields that is maintained by historically specific practices, such as copyright law and authorship, canon formation and media literacy, film criticism and re-viewing. That is, while cinematic remaking belongs to the entire history of cinema and can refer to any number of technological, textual and cultural practices, this book contributes to an understanding of how the film remake is maintained as a separate yet connected phenome- non. Film Remakes seeks to address some of the central critical issues around the concept of remaking, striving to deliver a broad theoretical approach to provide both an understanding of the phenomenon of cinematic remaking and of individual film remakes. This book takes an interest primarily in the industrial and institutional conditions of remaking in contemporary Hollywood cinema, and acknowledges that more and different work needs viii to be undertaken through comparative studies that reach across other historical moments, national cultures and cross-cultural transactions. Additionally, this book seeks to introduce a wide readership to the concept of cinematic remaking and to the various issues – industrial, textual and critical – attending it. Accordingly,it works to provide an overview of exist- ing approaches, to simplify theoretical concerns and to make its arguments through well-known and readily available film examples. Finally, the ideas presented in Film Remakes have been developed in a number of places and with the assistance and support of many people. In particular I would like to thank: Paul Coughlin, Sarah Edwards, John Frow, Matt Holden, Sonya Jeffery, Jane Landman, Julie Palmer, Barton Palmer, Lesley Stern and Deane Williams. Acknowledgements Material contributing to this book appeared in earlier versions in the fol- lowing publications and is reprinted here with the permission of the editors. 1. ‘Through the Past Darkly: Noir Remakes of the 1980s’, in Alain Silver and James Ursini (eds), Film Noir Reader 4.New York: Limelight, 2004, pp. 307–22. 2. ‘Remaking Film’, Film Studies,no. 4 (2004), pp. 87–103. 3. ‘Television Features: A Survey’, Metro,no. 123 (2000), pp. 34–41. 4. ‘Re-Viewing Remakes’, Film Criticism,vol. 21, no. 3 (1997), pp. 1–19. For Julie, Zoi and Mia And in memory of Emmanuel and Irene Verevis Introduction: Remaking Film This book provides a broad introduction to some of the issues and con- cerns arising from the concept of film remaking. Although the cinema has been repeating and replaying its own narratives and genres from its very beginnings, film remaking has received little critical attention in the field of cinema studies. What is film remaking? Which films are remakes of other films? How does film remaking differ from other types of repetition, such as quotation, allusion and adaptation? What is the relationship between remakes and other commercial forms such as sequels, cycles and series? How is film remaking different from the cinema’s more general ability to repeat and replay the same film over and again through reissue and redistribution? And how does remaking differ from the way every film is ‘remade’ – dispersed and transformed – in its every new context or re-viewing? These are questions that have seldom been asked, let alone sat- isfactorily answered, in cinema studies. Recent accounts of cinematic remaking have variously defined film remakes as ‘films based on an earlier screenplay’,1 as ‘new versions of exist- ing films’2 and as ‘films that to one degree or another announce to us that they embrace one or more previous movies’.3 Although there may be sufficient cultural agreement on the existence and nature of film remakes to allow for a clear understanding – especially in the case of those remakes which carry a pre-sold title and repeat readily recognisable narrative units – when considered alongside the broader concept of intertextuality, film remaking can refer to ‘the infinite and open-ended possibilities generated by all the discursive practices of a [film] culture’.4 As David Wills points out, ‘what distinguishes the remake is not the fact of its being a repetition, [but] rather the fact of its being a precise institutional form of the structure of repeti- tion, . the citationality or iterability, that exists in and for every film’.5 As in the case of film genre, a fundamental problem for film remaking has arisen from ‘the ever-present desire for a stable and easily identifiable 2 [set of] objects of analysis’, and a related attempt to reduce film remaking to a ‘corpus of texts’ or set of textual structures.6 Such approaches often succumb to the problems of taxonomism and associated difficulties, such as the exclusion of marginal examples and canonisation