Remake?
Come on, it's been almost FIFTY years - how come no-one ever remade this movie?
shareThe class system has changed a great deal in Britain since this film. Although it's an excellent film it wouldn't translate as well to modern times and to do it as a period film wouldn't make sense imho.
shareI think I understand your point. I suppose if they were to try and bring it up to date they could use a bunch of celebrities shipwrecked with their entourage... I guess that's what MTV would do... I remember watching an MTV version of Wuthering Heights with Heathcliff as a rock guitarist - ugh!
Anyway, this film was already a period piece when it was made in the 50s. There doesn't have to be any attempt to translate it to modern times. England before World War 1 is still an ideal setting for an excellent period drama but with the added advantage of 21st century filmmaking techniques. I think they could do a wonderful remake with the right personnel.
So I have to disagree, nick
The caste system is alive and well in the USA and elsewhere. The Rich have gotten even richer and have more entitlement issue than ever. This is my way of saying that I'm working on a screenplay that up dates the story, which I think would translate very well. Just watch the movie Pretty Woman, the scen where Julia Roberts goes back to the posh clothing store and sticks it to the snooty snobby sales girl. That dynamic is alive and well in our day and age. Stay tuned.
shareThis movie reminds me of Sabrina--although that movie was self-consciously aware that this lifestyle was over by the mid 1950s. Remaking Sabrina was a horrible mistake. The original was already verging on the ludicrous with a chauffeur who believes in separation of the classes, "There's a front seat and a back seat and a window in between." I'm also reminded of A New Leaf and the line by the gentleman's gentleman to his playboy employer, "You've kept alive traditions that were dead before you were born."
In the US, the idle rich were lampooned in Depression era movies. My Man Godfrey from 1936 was one of many that showed the rich as being ridiculous. While Godfrey wasn't a remake of Crichton, it shows influences from the earlier plot.
If this were remade it would probably work better set in the past, as is done with remakes of The Importance of Being Earnest. Where are you going to find people so utterly helpless today? Multi-millionaires aren't as cocooned as that anymore. Nobody is. Even celebs--once they sober up.
I have to wonder if people watching this in the UK in 1957 thought things were really like that, or if they thought this was a period piece and the war had changed everything. Certainly if Crichton had decided to marry a "lady" it would have only been a few short years until the Swinging Sixties when the issue would have been moot, if it wasn't already when the movie came out. At any rate, they could easily have left Britain for some other country, where at most their relationship would have been a mildly exotic conversation piece. That was radically different from doing it in 1902 when the play was first performed.
"....if they thought this was a period piece ..."
If you watched the first few minutes, it obviously WAS a period piece. Note the suffragette demonstration, and the automobiles on the street.
I think this play is timeless because it is about ideas like big-D Democracy and how those ideas play out in miniature. I agree we don't necessarily need a remake, though if it were remade it ought to be of the period. What we need is this movie released on DVD!
shareI agree with Lisa Kay - it's still good enough to watch now so a remake would be pointless and we need it to be released on DVD. I hope they get round to it eventually...
shareI think it would translate well in todays society. But instead of the upper and lower classes it would be between the technocrats and the practical people. All the money and technology has made the different class system. Think of most modern yuppies and even young people now ending up on a deserted island could they survive no coffee, mobile phone, computer,ipod, etc. Life would not be worth living. But life would go on regardless.
Yes the old traditional class system does not exist but a new class system is emerging to take its place.
I love The Admirable Crichton and I think it could make a great remake.
Michael
That's an interesting point, I am a big user of iPods, my computer & mobile but I would love to live on a desert island for a while. As long as it wasn't the Lost island...
shareThe Downton Abbey people could do one.
share