MovieChat Forums > Ray
Ray (33)
Posts
"We can even have dinner... but respectably"
Watching the Remake with an Open Mind
Thank you, ecarle!
View all posts >
Replies
Makes perfect sense.
[quote]If i recall he made the first move by striking out with his sword ![/quote]
Yes, but it was her who announced it's finally time to start a fight -- by saying "You and I have unfinished business" and getting her sword ready. And at this moment she was perfectly ready and waiting for him to attack her -- and he knew she was ready. So he knew she would certainly deflect his first strike.
Bill obviously didn't want to fight -- that's why he was deliberately drinking booze in order to be defeated by the Bride as soon as possible.
Sounds like a good idea for a YouTube video: "VENERAL DESEASE prank GONE WRONG!!!".
And they really ended up spending some quality time together.
And just like the Psycho 1998 experiment, the remake of Funny Games was also a failure. It failed to emulate the feeling of the original -- the chemistry was different, that elusive "movie magic" was gone despite re-creating the original film practically shot-for-shot.
[quote]On the DVD of Van Sant's Psycho -- released in 1999 (the movie was from 1998), there is a documentary in which a debate is taken up as whether or not it was a good thing to remake Psycho. Some older film scholars think the idea is terrible ("Why do you re-paint the Mona Lisa?")[/quote]
If I were to compare Psycho to Mona Lisa, then I would say the 1998 version looks like Mona Lisa with unnecessary colorful makeup applied to her face, red nail polish and breast implants... with orange umbrella in her hands.
But despite my endless critisisms towards Van Sant's film, I totally get your fascination with it, ecarle -- because I'm fascinated with the remake as well! Yes, I hate it. Yes, it's sort of painful to watch it. But I keep rewatching it -- because it's a fascinating experiment. This movie is not good -- but it makes the original look even more powerful than it seemed before.
It's a rare cinematic failure that makes me want to analyze it shot by shot, line by line.
And the more I analyze it, the less I want to call it a "shot-for-shot" remake. It's not really. What makes me keep saying that? It's the fact that Psycho 1998 is not the only "shot-for-shot" remake in film history -- there are other films like that, so we can compare Van Sant's daring experiment to other movies of this kind.
The finest example of a shot-for-shot remake ever made is probably the 2007 film Funny Games starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. It's an American remake of a highly-controversial Austrian film of the same name from 1997. What's interesting is that the American version was made by the same director -- and it does seem to be a 100% shot-for-shot remake.
You don't have to try hard in order to find differences between the two Psychos (they are too obvious and too many to count) -- whereas the two versions of Funny Games are very identical. They are like twin brothers. Psycho 1960 and Psycho 1998 are half-siblings at best.
[quote] ... many lines were cut, a few lines were changed, a grand total of TWO lines cut from Stefano's original 1960 screenplay were restored ("Bed? Only playground that beats Las Vegas") and ...well, something Norman says to Marion in Cabin One, I can't remember it now.[/quote]
Yes, the remake features an extra piece of dialogue between Norman and Marion in Cabin One:
- You have something that most girls don't have.
- I have?
- There's not a name for it, but, uh, it's something that puts a person at ease.
- Well, thank you again.
This piece of dialogue comes right between Norman asking her to call him "Norman Bates" instead of "Mr. Bates" -- and him offering her to have dinner with him.
[quote]So he made his version in color, but tried in every other regard to match the original "shot for shot, line for line."[/quote]
ecarle, I'm curious to ask you something. Do you ever feel that it's not exactly accurate to call Van Sant's version "a shot-for-shot" remake? The more I hear people calling it that -- the more differences I notice every time I watch the remake.
My point is, if Van Sant's main intention really was to make an identical film, a "carbon copy" -- then he probably could have done much better, because the two films are simply not very identical, they are too different from each other. Right now I'm talking purely about technical differences like mise-en-scene, editing, camera movements, camera positions. In some of the scenes it feels as if Van Sant was purposefully avoiding to match the shot to Hitchcock's vision. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but the problem is that every such difference that I happen to notice -- is disappointing, i. e. pales in comparison.
You probably would think that I also must take issue with those infamous inserts (involving a sheep and a naked woman), but that's not the case surprisingly -- I don't mind them really. As well as the scene where Mr. Bates masturbates -- sure, the movie could have done without that, but I believe many viewers blew that out of proportion. The film has way more outrageous issues -- such as Anne Heche's acting in numerous scenes for example. Seriously, it often looks as if she's hugely delighted and thrilled to have committed a crime -- without having concerns about possible consequences. She seems to be taking it as a silly little adventure. Is she meant to actually have some mental disorder, is she supposed to be a psycho of some sort? Well, then it makes sense.
It's interesting how people still collect VHS releases.
View all replies >