Remakes

I was channel surfing the other day and saw that Double Indemnity was on. I was surprised to see it was a 1973 TV remake with Richard Crenna in the Fred MacMurray role, Samantha Eggar as Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis and Lee J. Cobb as Keyes originally portrayed by Edward G. Robinson. This post by Riku tells how EGR made the film http://rikuwrites.blogspot.com/2009/04/busby-b-edward-g-and-woody-makes-three I turned it on in the middle and only caught a few minutes. The scenes I saw seemed to mirror the original movie (later I saw on IMDB that Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues fame worked on the screenplay.) I'm sure the actors relished the chance to play such great characters and they were good in the scenes I saw, but why remake such a classic? Perhaps TPTB in Hollywood thought that remaking films would bring in the audience. It worked for the Maltese Falcon; the third version was the classic everyone knows today. I liked the original Ricardo Cortez version and would like to take a closer look at it. The second version in 1936, Satan Met a Lady, was almost unrecognizable. It was bad, even with my favorite actress, Bette Davis. On the other hand, my favorite film of Bette Davis, The Letter, is a remake. I'd love to see the original from 1929. Herbert Marshall plays the murdered lover in that version and the husband in the 1941 version with Bette. I have to admit that as much as I love Bette, her version of The Letter suffered from restrictions imposed by the censors (though the filmmakers did as well as they could under the arbitrary code.) There are no clear-cut rules for remakes--but please hold off on TV shows for now. For every somewhat enjoyable Brady Bunch, there are dozens of mistakes such as Car 54 (I long to see the original TV shows again) and Rocky and Bullwinkle.