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Dear Rosenmans,
I think it's safe to surmise that the Rozsa music, or anything else associated with the '59 film, is not ingrained in any of the brains of the young demographic movie-goers at whom this new BEN-HUR is obviously aimed. (Have you seen the TV trailer with its MTV editing? I even wonder how much of the story will be "the same.")
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You are, of course, aware that the '59 BEN HUR was also a remake?
Come on. A black and white/tinted silent film and then decades later we get a widescreen, 70mm, Eastmancolor film with people talking, horses neighing....you really see Wyler's film as a remake of that silent film?
And, yes, technically this new BEN-HUR is not a remake either. There is a rather famous novel as source material.
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You keep intriguing me with your reasoning. Where is it written that only a silent film can be considered a remake of another silent film? And who says a movie has not been remade if it was first a book? Ever since movies acquired sound, the history of Hollywood has been one damn remake after another, (and yes, some of them were in Technicolor, and many were originally books or plays before they became films): THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE SEA HAWK, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, ANNA KARENINA, THE LOST WORLD, DRACULA, PETER PAN... Do I really have to go on?
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Posted: |
Aug 1, 2016 - 4:19 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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......Ever since movies acquired sound, the history of Hollywood has been one damn remake after another, (and yes, some of them were in Technicolor, and many were originally books or plays before they became films): THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE SEA HAWK, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, ANNA KARENINA, THE LOST WORLD, DRACULA, PETER PAN... Do I really have to go on?.....
Yes!!! 
.......THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE, SMILIN' THROUGH, HOUSE OF STRANGERS/BROKEN LANCE/THE BIG SHOW, CIMARRON, BACK STREET, IMITATION OF LIFE, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT/EVE KNEW HER APPLES/YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM IT, LOVE AFFAIR/AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, LADY FOR A DAY/POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES, KIND LADY, THREE BLIND MICE/MOON OVER MIAMI/THREE LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE, THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR IT/HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, GOOD NEWS, ROSE MARIE........
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Ever since movies acquired sound, the history of Hollywood has been one damn remake after another,....THE SEA HAWK, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, ANNA KARENINA, THE LOST WORLD, DRACULA, PETER PAN... Do I really have to go on?
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To be honest, those films really can't be considered remakes. What exactly are they remaking? The previous film? No. Those films (and countless others) are simply a case of a producer getting the rights to a famous book and producing a film based on that book. Doesn't matter if a film had already been made based upon the same book. Is this new BEN-HUR a remake of the silent film or Chuck Heston's film? No. It is simply another version of Lew Wallace's novel. I used the word "remake" in my thread title simply because it was shorter than writing "a newer version of source material that had already been turned into a film."
A remake is this: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. It's source material was another film, thus it is a remake of that film.
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"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means exactly what I choose it to mean -- nothing more, nothing less."
-- Lewis Carroll, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
By YOUR definition, there have been only two remakes in the history of cinema, because they slavishly duplicated the first movie, shot for shot: MGM's THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, and Luc Besson's PSYCHO.
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By YOUR definition, there have been only two remakes in the history of cinema, because they slavishly duplicated the first movie, shot for shot: MGM's THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, and Luc Besson's PSYCHO.
Luc Besson's Psycho? I'd like to see that. Is it available on blu ray? Is it better than Gus Van Sant's shot for shot remake?
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Posted: |
Aug 1, 2016 - 9:50 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means exactly what I choose it to mean -- nothing more, nothing less."
-- Lewis Carroll, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
By YOUR definition, there have been only two remakes in the history of cinema, because they slavishly duplicated the first movie, shot for shot: MGM's THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, and Luc Besson's PSYCHO.
Never saw the PSYCHO remake, but if you actually look very carefully at the two sound ZENDAS (discounting the first silent version), the 1952 doesn't slavishly duplicate the 1937.
There are occasional extra shots or dropped shots in 1952.....and because the sets are different, slightly different actor blocking moves cause different timings to the shots, the different sets cause different camera compositions, and the actors have different line reading timings---so it doesn't seem like an exact copy when you view it.
Though in the case of ZENDA it may well be that the producer had a moviola on the set to run the original film (as legend has it), the exigencies of blocking and shooting any film cause changes on the set every day, from moment-to-moment, for creative or physical reasons previously unplanned.
The key arguments in this thread seem to come down to the idea that a film cannot qualify as a remake unless it is exactly the same as the original as you have pointed out PNJ.
To me, the only films that might conceivably qualify as near identical remakes are the double-shot films of the 1950s like OKLAHOMA, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, BRIGADOON, THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH, SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, MOONFLEET, THE STUDENT PRINCE and others which were done that way (with most shots done simultaneously, albeit from very slightly different angles---but with identical casts, identical sets, identical costumes, and identical scoring) to enable wider theatrical physical distribution.
I'm afraid I can't get too worked up over filmed remakes. The world moves on, some of the remakes are better and more carefully conceived and written than the originals, and some are worse---often much worse---and some are simply equally good approaches to the same material.
In the end, I think the original poster's question of what remake films utilized the same scores was an interesting one (and brought up some thoughtful responses), but I don't think the issue of same scores has any relevance beyond that of an interesting oddity and statement on how an artist decides to build and finish his creation.
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Dear Cinemascope Cat --
Thank you for a very necessary correction. I was having a senior moment blanking on the director's name, I did some Googling but (obviously, but don't ask me how) still managed to come up with the wrong name. (Isn't Luc the same as Gus? They both have a "u" in the middle.)
Mr. Manderley --
Thanks for setting the record straight on MGM's ZENDA. I'm sure I read somewhere that it was shot-for-shot, but if I read you right, it was sort of shot-for-shot but not perfectly and totally shot-for-shot. Guess you can't believe perfectly and totally everything you read, (such as the name of the director of the PSYCHO remake.) To be fair, at least they were TRYING pretty damn much to make it a complete replica. Actors can always be expected to give their own line-readings. A shot-for-shot remake never implied (to me, at least) it was a performance-for-performance remake. How could it be, with different actors? And if you think it's disqualified as a "slavish" remake, then for my money the same can be said of the PSYCHO remake by -- who was it? Oh yes, Gus Van Sant. How can Norman Bates be the same as before when instead of a skinny, boyish guy playing him you've cast a big, hulking lug? And that's just for openers.
Certainly, what you say about remakes in general is true. John Huston once said that it's not the great films that should be remade, it's the ones that left room for improvement which should be done-over. And if anybody was in a position to make that statement, it certainly was Huston: THE MALTESE FALCON, as I'm sure you're well aware, was a remake, (in fact, a second remake).
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With the remake of BEN-HUR coming out it got me wondering why didn't the filmmakers just use Rozsa's original score? This remake is going to be tough to watch without hearing in our heads the iconic Rozsa score.
Question: Has a remake ever used the score from the original film?
Mr Pyramid (and I actually DO love your trademark way of ending absolutely every film you ever did with that thrilling, ascending tone-overlap device - even in your remakes!), I have gone back to your original post simply because I think that some of us are getting a bit sidetracked. not that that's bad in itself, but it would make my response a bit irrelevant.
I think your second question has been answered, although we got a bit bogged down with definitions.
As for your first question, I think that the filmmakers didn't just use Rózsa's original score because it would sound really out of place in a film which is going to be about as different from the '59 BEN-HUR as..., ooh, the silent BEN-HUR?
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The Prisoner of Zenda is a classic example... Alfred Newman.
(Said James, beaten to it by Tack the Cobbler whilst typing!)
Also, LITTLE WOMEN was remade by MGM and used Max Steiner's music from the original. Conrad Salinger was the adaptor on that one too.
Laurence Rosenthal also used Max Steiner's thematic material for his TV movie THE LETTER in 1982.
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Certainly, what you say about remakes in general is true. John Huston once said that it's not the great films that should be remade, it's the ones that left room for improvement which should be done-over.
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Yes, why remake a good film? Remake a film that has flaws and I am all for it.
I know John Carpenter's THE THING comes from short story source material, but just for the sake of this thread, let's call it a remake of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD. Now what makes Carpenter's film probably the best remake of them all is that the original 1951 film is good but there was room for improvement. Carpenter injected the paranoia elements of the original short story, added today's horror/gore, and took enough of the character of the original film to create a masterpiece. The best remake of them all. That's how you do a remake. Take a film that could be improved. Why take BEN-HUR? Eleven Oscars. What are they trying for, 12?
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Probably. 12 or 14. If they got 13, that would be bad luck.
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Why take BEN-HUR? Eleven Oscars. What are they trying for, 12?
I don't think they're out to top William Wyler, actually. They'd much rather top Mel Gibson's achievement. (So would Gibson himself, incidentally, with the "Passion" sequel.) "The Passion of the Christ" showed how you can make an unholy amount of money taking busloads of Christians to see a spectacularly violent passion play at completely sold out multiplexes showing it on every screen. "Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ" has a similar potential for blood & guts. I don't know if the new film can exploit anti-Semitism, which the target audience enjoys, in quite the same way "Passion" did. --But hey, you've still got leprosy, a good substitute.
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The "new" Ben-Hur was on TV several months ago and now will be released to theaters. A really terrible movie sub-standard even for TV, so why a theatrical release of something so atrocious.
You are presumably confusing the new 2016 feature film of BEN-HUR, which of course has not been on TV, with the 2010 made for TV film.
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