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Post by gerald424 on Dec 16, 2022 4:27:28 GMT
Actually, the first films that came to mind were Red Dust (1932)  and Mogambo (1953) 
Not only same film but, same male lead.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 16, 2022 17:34:39 GMT
I was catching up on this fun thread and remembered that, several years ago, I had written a brief comparison of 1931's "The Front Page" with its 1940 remake "His Girl Friday."
To JamesJazzGuitar's excellent point, these films were only made nine years apart, but still, many things had change in Hollywood, movie-making technology and style and in the world in the time between the two movies.
The movie was remade again in 1974, going back to its original title, "The Front page." I've included my comments from a few years back on that film at the bottom of this post.
"The Front Page" - "His Girl Friday"
1931's "The Front Page"
1940s "His Girl Friday"
- "His Girl Friday" is possibly the worst, most-misleading name ever for an outstanding movie
I watched these back to back to compare the original and remake, but there is no comparison as the remake took everything that was good in the first one and amped it up and everything that was boring in it and got rid of it
The machine-gun dialogue between reporter Hildy Johnson and newspaper owner Burns is no longer a side show in HGF as it was in TFP, but is the core. And they set that core on fire - and piqued it with sexual tension - as the Johnson role changes gender from Pat O'Brien to Roslind Russell
HGF is Russell's movie as she creates a gives-better-than-she-gets strong-woman role in code-land Hollywood driving over milquetoast fiancee (Ralph Bellamy), out reporting the men while delivering more blows than Cary Grant (playing the newspaper owner and her ex-husband) does when they stand toe to toe (which they do in every scene they share)
The stories are about the same, but the movies aren't, as TFP, only a few years into the talkies, is uneven in speed and unfocused at times; but HGF is a fully confident movie centered on a love triangle - Russell, fiancee Ralph Bellamy and ex-husband Grant - that Bellamy doesn't see, Russell wants not to see and Grant manipulates as flagrantly as he can
Bellamy comes off as a nice guy so outmatched in brains and personalty by Russell that you pray every minute she doesn't marry him - a life battling with uber-rapscallion Grant would at least keep her spirit alit
HGF is all about smart dialogue - one dig after another - delivered faster (by nearly every actor in nearly every scene) than anyone in real life talks and pre-dating Tarantino by fifty plus years / you need to see it more than once to catch all the good lines / as in a Hitchcock film, the story exists only to give us an excuse to watch the actors
The male world might be divided into two types of men, those who can't image a world without Hildy Johnsons in it and those who don't understand the Hildy Johnsons of the world
In both movies, not subtly, but also, not in you face, the "Red Scare" plays on in the background with both implying it was not so much a real threat but a marginal one used by the entrenched political machine to drum up votes - interesting perspective on '30s politics [attempted objective reflection of the movie, not a personal opinion on the politics]
One of the few times the remake of a movie tops the very good original in almost every way
Comments on 1974's The Front Page
1974's "The Front Page"
The Front Page from 1974 with Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Susan Sarandon and a ton of sitcom and movie character actors from the '50s-'70s
This is Hollywood's third go at the same story as the movie was made in 1931 as The Front Page with Pat O'Brien and Adolphe Menjou and in 1940 as His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. The '31 version is very good if you can deal with its early talky clunkiness, but the '40 version is, IMHO, one of the top-five- or ten-best movies ever made.
The basic story is the same in all three: an unscrupulous, hard-driving editor tries to prevent his best reporter from quitting to get married right in the middle of a sensational death-row hanging story he (or she) is covering. The '40 movie flipped the star reporter's sex from male to female, amping up this key reporter-editor relationship with sexual tension, which Grant and Russell - with rapid-fire dialogue and incredible chemistry - exploit to its fullest.
But for some reason, this 1974 version flips the reporter's sex back to male, which took much of the spark out of the leads' relationship. A remake should do one of two things: one, simply be a superior movie to the first as the '40 version of The Front Page is to the very good '31 version or, two, doing something interesting or fun with the remake as High Society does as a star-studded musical remake of The Philadelphia Story.
But nothing is better or more interesting in this 1974 version of The Front Page. Director Billy Wilder seemed to be channeling his inner Woody Allen as the movie's imbued with a New York shtick (despite being set in late 1920s Chicago) that takes itself even less seriously than the other two reasonably lighthearted versions. At points, its slapstick felt almost like intentional parody.
Too often, Wilder also takes the focus off of the editor and reporter's relationship to spend time on the mundane death-row-hanging story with its red-scare overtones. Hitchcock knew that movies like this should use the MacGuffin (the thing advancing the plot) to draw attention to the characters human foibles and challenges and not vice versa.
Leads Jack Lemmon as the reporter and Walter Mathou as the unscrupulous editor do have some good exchanges, but they never rise to a Russell-Grant level of brilliance. Heck, of the three versions, the exchange of dialogue is the slowest in this one - a real surprise as machine-gun repartee is the other versions' stylistic raison d'être.
If those two earlier versions hadn't been made, 1974's would be an okay movie on its own. But with two better cognates already out there, '74's feels hollow and tired. Not helping things was an awful performance by Carol Burnett in the role of the condemned man's hooker friend. Conversely, for a 1970s movie set in the '20s, the period details were above average. There are worse movies, but one's time would be better spent watching either of the two earlier versions.
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Post by dianedebuda on Dec 16, 2022 21:08:57 GMT
I was catching up on this fun thread and remembered that, several years ago, I had written a brief comparison of 1931's "The Front Page" with its 1940 remake "His Girl Friday."
I'm not sure after reading your review of His Girl Friday - did you like the movie? 🤷♀
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 18, 2022 14:00:08 GMT
Love Affair and An Affair to Remember are an interesting example, both done by the same director but for different studios. I've been part of discussions about them before (initiated by you I think, TB, on the old TCM forums) and I have to say that I come down on the side of the black and white original. I grew up as the widescreen era was taking off and was totally captivated by the process, but I don't think it served every story equally well, and An Affair to Remember is a good example. It's basically a very simple story, with more emphasis on character than setting and, although I appreciate the visual attractiveness of the remake, I tend to go back to the original for repeat viewings. Even the beautifully lush island retreat of the grandmother seems to register more in black and white, maybe because it gives it a realistic newsreel quality as opposed to the gorgeous but set-bound look of the color version. It's tough because the actors are terrific in both, but Boyer and Dunne generated more of the feel of an actual intimate love affair, I think. 
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Post by dianedebuda on Dec 18, 2022 16:17:35 GMT
Love Affair and An Affair to Remember are an interesting example, both done by the same director but for different studios.
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Post by sepiatone on Dec 18, 2022 17:05:44 GMT
D.O.A.('49; United Artists) Suffered poor fate as a 1969 remake called COLOR ME DEAD(MGM) with Tom Tryon, Carolyn Jones and Rick Jason. And the also poorly made remake in 1988(Buena Vista) with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. And there's also a 2017 remake(I think) called DEAD ON ARRIVAL. Not sure of the studio/distributor.
Sepiatone
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Post by topbilled on Dec 18, 2022 21:55:15 GMT
Love Affair and An Affair to Remember are an interesting example, both done by the same director but for different studios. I've been part of discussions about them before (initiated by you I think, TB, on the old TCM forums) and I have to say that I come down on the side of the black and white original. I grew up as the widescreen era was taking off and was totally captivated by the process, but I don't think it served every story equally well, and An Affair to Remember is a good example. It's basically a very simple story, with more emphasis on character than setting and, although I appreciate the visual attractiveness of the remake, I tend to go back to the original for repeat viewings. Even the beautifully lush island retreat of the grandmother seems to register more in black and white, maybe because it gives it a realistic newsreel quality as opposed to the gorgeous but set-bound look of the color version. It's tough because the actors are terrific in both, but Boyer and Dunne generated more of the feel of an actual intimate love affair, I think. |
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Post by sepiatone on Dec 19, 2022 16:54:49 GMT
And JUST THIS MORNING TCM showed HELL'S HEROES('29/Universal)with Charles Bickford. Which was remade as THREE GODFATHERS('36/MGM)with Chester Morris, Lewis Stone and Walter Brennan. And again as THREE GODFATHERS('48--also MGM)with John Wayne. Hell's Heroes no doubt a remake of THE THREE GODFATHERS(1916/not sure of studio)starring Harry Carey Sr. I understand there may be a fourth on lost out there, but not positive.
Sepiatone
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Post by vannorden on Dec 23, 2022 7:41:24 GMT
Another intriguing topic is producers purchasing the rights to a foreign film and then remaking it in the US. For example, Julien Duvivier's Pepe le moko (1937) was bought by Walter Wanger and remade as Algiers (1938)––the much-anticipated Hollywood debut of Hedy Lamarr. Wanger tried purchasing and destroying all prints of Duvivier's original while insisting its director John Cromwell emulate the French version as much as possible. For this reason, Charles Boyer loathed the production, claiming he was directed by Cromwell to "copy" Jean Gabin's Pepe. Thankfully, Wanger was unsuccessful in his quest to eradicate all prints of Duvivier's vastly superior original version. When Duvivier defected to America during WWII, he even got to remake one of his French films, Un carnet de bal (1937), which many here know as Lydia (1941), starring Merle Oberon and Joseph Cotton. Another example is Jean Renoir's La Bête humaine (1938), a VERY loose adaptation of Zola's novel of the same name. Fritz Lang would remake it in a tamer fashion (but aesthetically more pleasing) as Human Desire (1954) with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame.
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Post by sepiatone on Dec 23, 2022 16:51:44 GMT
Anyone notice that yesterday TCM showed BACHELOR MOTHER('39) with GINGER ROGERS and DAVID NIVEN and this morning showed the obvious remake BUNDLE OF JOY('56) as a musical starring EDDIE FISHER and DEBBIE REYNOLDS?
Sepiatone
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 14, 2023 0:15:39 GMT
I'm a fan of the 1962 State Fair, Twentieth Century-Fox's remake of their 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein film, itself a musicalized remake of the 1933 original by Fox Film Corporation, before the merger. I've heard the remake downgraded because it exploited pop stars in key roles, but so did the 1945 version, really, with Dick Haymes and Vivian Blaine. Admittedly, Pat Boone was a Fox contract player and it was a cheap and easy choice to be a vehicle for him and to surround him with other hot young stars to bring in "the youngsters", but I've never bought the idea that it was somehow "lesser" simply because it did so. There was some real talent involved, most notably Alice Faye's return to the screen after 17 years of self-imposed exile. Oscar Hammerstein had just died but Richard Rodgers wrote music and lyrics to a new song for her, as well as several other new songs for Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret. It was Ann-Margret's second film (Pocketful of Miracles was a loan-out to Paramount by Fox), but boy did she step up to the plate, bringing a very unexpected heat out of clean-cut Pat Boone in their steamy duet, "Willing and Eager". Bobby Darin and Pamela Tiffin were the other couple, the reporter and the farm girl. I know Pamela got tagged as being an airhead type, but she came into this project with two Golden Globe nominations to her credit, for Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three and for the film version of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. Tom Ewell played the farmer with a thing for his championship boar, even crooning a lullaby to him. It's by far the most I've ever liked him; I was never convinced that he was the best choice to play the "everyman" counterpart to Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, but in this role he absolutely shined. And there's a classic bit by Wally Cox as the tipsy mincemeat judge, something Donald Meek did equally well in the original version. Jose Ferrer directed and all-told it's a very attractive package.
I don't want to get into the "Which is better?" game because I think it's possible to like both. I'm a huge fan of 1940's style and decor, so that may give the original an edge, but I also like the 1960's pop exuberance of the remake. This may be controversial, but I prefer Pat Boone and Ann-Margret to Dick Haymes and Vivian Blaine, yet I prefer Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain to Bobby Darin and Pamela Tiffin. As for the parents, I think I respond to Fay Bainter and Charles Winninger and Alice Faye and Tom Ewell about equally; they're all entirely charming.
Here's the two hotties:
I couldn't find an excerpt of Alice Faye to post, but there's been an OK widescreen print on YouTube for a couple of years and someone just posted a much better print a couple of months ago. I'm not sure about the rules for posting entire movies here so I'll let people search for it if they're interested.
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