There’s proof all around that films undergo mutations over time. The idea, once impossible to argue, that the changes come with a certain authorial control is now trivial – not all films are tied to their authors, many of them have proclaimed their independence. Remakes appear as a business initiative, after all, as an occasional solution when American film studios hit a dry spell – the remake/double would be a version that doesn’t necessarily make justice to the original, usually a foreign-language film; while, narratively speaking, things can remain just about the same, the only changes that might occur are related to acting and the spoken language. Thus, the film would invariably benefit from the success of its predecessor, would feed on it like a leech, turning it into a decent, albeit modest, hook for spectators. Over time, remakes have become a common practice, which can easily defy the stereotype that the original is better anyway, that there is no comparing between the two. First of all, the remake points out the modern technical possibilities (no matter how outrageous, transnational Ghost in the Shell, 2017 – the live-action version of Mamoru Oshii’s anime from 1995 – is, it succeeds in reproducing in CGI the cyberpunk from the original material), sets two authorial visions side by side (Luca Guadagnino’s take on Suspiria is totally different from Dario Argento’s giallo) and takes the narrative into a completely meteoric sphere to the original (like turning an otherwise serious film into pornography; or trying to recreate Shrek into a parody by leaving 200 authors to edit, amateur-style, the film’s moments, frame by frame). In general, the films that have undergone the greatest number of remakes are themselves adaptations from the literature (Dracula, for example, is primarily Bram Stoker’s legacy). Going through so many versions, altering the original more and more, it becomes like a game of “broken telephone” over time, and by the end of the loop, you are left with nothing of the original message.

There’s a certain type of remake that I’m interested in, which comes as a particular mutation, going beyond the so-called tributes, pastiches, innuendos – it’s an exact replica of the original. Many would say it’s just a parasite, others see it as a revival of the source material. While many of such experiments are amateurish, made by students trying to copy their favorite authors (the most famous example would be Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, 1981), a good chunk of this niche is represented by self-cinema (George Sluizer and Michael Haneke make shot-for-shot remakes of their own previous films). In general, critics are fascinated by this phenomenon. Jonathan Rosenbaum adores both Spoorloos, Sluizer’s original, and The Vanishing, his 1993 remake; the first is in Dutch and the action takes place in France, the second is set in the USA and is in English. Others actually see in them a self-cannibalization, a narcissistic exercise through which the author adds a few touches to their work, which is different from the original commercial purpose of remakes. I decided to go through the most famous experiments of the kind, which are few in number anyway, and compare them to the original movies – from Psycho to Wicker Man, they’re all remakes made in the US in the 90’s-early 2000s, right at the peak of the remake movement.

Psycho (dir. Gus Van Sant, 1998) vs Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Gus van Sant’s remake was part of the studios’ marketing initiative to dig up classic films and remake them; at least that’s what the producers had in mind. Van Sant, however, saw the opportunity for a cosmic joke – remaking Hitchcock’s best-known film, Psycho (1960), shot-for-shot, a movie that made people leave the room at the premiere and gave nightmares to children, can only be something of a blasphemy, a subversive act. Van Sant remakes the film in color, of course, using Christopher Doyle’s pearly-saturated image – and while the original monochrome was part of the Bates motel’s mystery touch, at Gus Van Sant, things are too obvious, too vulgar (Marion’s orange blood as she takes her last breath, for example, looks more artificial than the chocolate syrup used by Hitchcock). The actors are part of the problem: Vince Vaughn is not a convincing Norman Bates; Anne Heche is miles away from Janet Leigh’s conservative approach to her character, Marion Crane – Van Sant makes (intentionally or not) some unfortunate choices throughout the film – if this is an updated version of Psycho, where’s the novelty? Van Sant inserts in two key moments of his film some shots that originally did not exist – in the shower scene, before she dies, Crane seems to see two images, a timelapse of some clouds and a pupil dilating; in Detective Arbogast’s killing scene, the image of a naked woman looking straight into the camera and the image of a cow on the roadside overlap the primary image. While they have no connection with the narrative whatsoever, they seem to be put there only to arouse over-interpretations (in this video essay, Leigh Singer sees these glitches as self-references to Van Sant’s previous films). The remake is shorter than the original, Marion Crane’s outfits are a bit more naughty, and the film as a whole gives you the feeling of a failed time capsule – the characters evoke the ’60s, but look very much like the ’90s. If it weren’t for Bernard Herrmann’s music, how much of this adaptation would actually remind of Psycho?

P.S.: My favorite part is the way Van Sant replaces Hitchcock’s cameo from the beginning of the original movie – he takes an actor who looks like him from behind and has him standing in the same spot.

Funny Games (dir. Michael Haneke, 2007) vs Funny Games (dir. Michael Haneke, 1997)

Michael Haneke manages to take the shot-for-shot self-remake experiment quite far, probably the farthest of them all – his 1997 film is remade in its entirety in 2007, a project that accurately reproduces even the original house and, at least as I could notice, it has the exact same framing and camera movement as the original. The story is simple, two strangers dressed in white, wearing white gloves – polite, but extremely nosy – enter the vacation home of a family, right after they arrive, asking to borrow some eggs; it’s only a matter of time before the guests take the family hostage, forcing them into all sorts of macabre games and bets (first of all, the bet that, by the end of the film, all family members will be killed one by one). If the first movie was shot in Austria, with Austrian actors, the second is of course an American replica. But unlike the titles I’ve mentioned before, Haneke’s 1997 film explores the relationship between violence used in media and the viewer, which was clearly meant as criticism towards American cinema. Both films are patched with intertextual pieces that discuss the nature of violence, how empathy can shift from victim to aggressor. As expected, the film starring Michael Pitt, Naomi Watts, and Tim Roth seems a bit more meta-aggressive than the original, just because this trio does more than the original cast (Pitt is monstrous, cynical, alienating; Watts is literally transfigured); everything else is about the same (Pitt breaks the fourth wall by addressing the camera at the same times as in the original film). Obviously, the American film enjoys more popularity (and rightly so, as I must admit that this time the remake is more effective than the source material), and the reason should be simple: no other country in the world is more fascinated by serial killers than the US.

The Vanishing (dir. George Sluizer, 1993) vs Spoorloos (dir. George Sluizer, 1988)

The Vanishing is the “almost” shot-for-shot remake of the Dutch film of the same name directed by Sluizer himself in 1988. Like Haneke, Sluizer adapts his own film with an American cast (Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, and Sandra Bullock) and pretty much follows the original narrative (a girl gets separated from her boyfriend at a gas station where a chemistry teacher knocks her out with chloroform and takes her who knows where). However, the differences between the 1988 and 1993 films are obvious, besides the different character names – in the remake, the psychopath’s daughter suspects him of infidelity, she even ends up having fantasies about him leaving home (in the original, the two don’t talk about such a thing, in fact, the father’s absence from home is not even an issue); in the remake, the boyfriend takes a Polaroid at the time of his girlfriend’s disappearance. The very moment of disappearance is given more room to unfold in the original, where Sluizer builds a suffocating sound ambiance (everyone at the gas station is glued to a radio that broadcasts Tour de France, there are buses that stop every minute, queuing up in front of the coffee machines, it’s impossible to distinguish what is happening). The remake keeps it light with this scene, rather focuses on the character of the kidnapper and his preparations. And what’s more, here, Sluizer announces what happened to the missing young woman earlier than he does in the original, and the so-called “thrill” of the game between the kidnapper and the distraught boyfriend is not as exciting. Anyway, the most problematic difference between the two films is the remake’s finale: there is no happy end in the original, and everything is left in the dark (in fact, the golden egg, the kidnapped girl’s dream, was that the two of them would meet again in another dimension, which doesn’t happen in the remake because he is saved at the last minute). In the American version, good prevails, how else? If Haneke’s adaptation is a pastiche of the American viewers’ expectations, Sluizer does the opposite, he gives the viewers a film that spoon-feeds them everything, leaving no room for reflection. From this point of view, but also when it comes to the actors’ performances (Sluizer makes even Sandra Bullock unlikable, and Jeff Bridges is simply wrong), the remake is incredibly thin, a simple commercial spin-off.

Wicker Man (dir. Neil LaBute, 2006) vs Wicker Man (dir. Robin Hardy, 1973)

Neil LaBute’s film is not a shot-for-shot remake per se, although it borrows considerably from the original (the first distinction is that, just like in The Vanishing, LaBute is reluctant to let things end like the original, but rather insists on giving the film that annoying-cliché hint of “to be continued”); the police officer who travels to a Midsummer-like island to investigate a disappearance stumbles upon a Celtic patriarchate, in the original, and a witch matriarchy, in the remake. Both cults are into prayers and offerings, but one is obviously misogynistic and the other is a radical feminist. The cop, Sergeant Howie (originally played by Edward Woodward), is played in the remake by Nicolas Cage, sometimes playful, sometimes hysterical, like every other part Cage has ever played (at least from this point of view, the difference between Cage and Woodward is that the former involuntarily delivers more humor). The reason why LaBute’s film is important, in my opinion, is that, unlike the titles discussed above, its 2006 version really brings something new to the film and frees it from certain harmful habits; the switch to the matriarchy that grows bees is really hilarious, the film is enriched here and there with all sorts of odd lines and camp costumes. Last but not least, the totally awkward way in which Cage saves the girl from burning on the wicker, dressed as a bear, hurtling towards her, is an absolute delight. The parts that are remade shot-for-shot, fragments that LaBute literally takes from the script, are reinterpreted in his own personal way; the tone, sometimes hesitant in the original (between a slight parody and a serious film), here is positive towards parody – outraged fans who completely shut down LaBute’s adaptation have a point, but the 2006 film isn’t nearly that unwatchable.

The first conclusion that emerges is related to a long-standing controversy, namely the presence of a certain transcendental cipher, a gimmick that can not be reproduced in any way, which exists in the gap between shots (a debated point when it came to Ozu or Tarkovsky). In cinema, the idea of reproducing a piece to its smallest detail is impossible, and experiments of this kind are bound to fail, one way or another. Still, you don’t have to go for a shot-for-shot adaptation to borrow from a movie (Brian de Palma did this throughout his filmography, paying homage to/stealing from Hitchcock). And originality (in its classical sense, which gave the pre-existing canons) is no longer something that we can take into consideration, let’s be serious; all we see is, as the character says, the copy of a copy and so on.

Georgiana Mușat

Journalist and film critic, with a master's degree in film critics. Collaborates with Scena9, Acoperișul de Sticlă, FILM and FILM Menu magazines. For Films in Frame, she brings the monthly top of films and writes the monthly editorial Panorama, published on a Thursday. In her spare time, she retires in the woods where she pictures other possible lives and flying foxes.