Let's Do It Again!

Some time ago in this blog I mentioned (as part of my infallible rules for moviegoing) that you should never see a film that's a remake of another film.

And then I gave it some thought. While it's still a pretty good rule, surely there have to be exceptions, right? After all, John Huston's 1941 classic "The Maltese Falcon" isn't just a remake of the original film version of Dashiell Hammett's novel -- it's the second remake. The first film was made in 1931 by Roy Del Ruth (after the release of Huston's film it was retitled "Dangerous Female," under which title you can occasionally see it on TCM), and the first remake was called "Satan Met a Lady" from 1936, which might be the single worst motion picture ever release by a major American studio. Huston's classic with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor was number three (Warner Bros. loved to recycle literary properties),

So it got me to thinking: are there films, classic or otherwise, that could stand to be remade? Not just because they'd make money, but because the original film, whether classic or crap, didn't do justice to the original source material? In other words, are there potential "Maltese Falcons" out there ready to be turned from a flawed past film into a future classic?

I think there are. After giving it some thought, I came up with three possible contenders:

• "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie": Now, while it would be difficult for any actress to improve on Maggie Smith's Oscar-winning performance in the 1969 original, I'd like to see Nicole Kidman take a crack at it. And Craig Ferguson, who's really Scottish (although he's from Glasgow, not Edinburgh) would make the perfect Teddy Lloyd, the painter who spends his life pining for Miss Jean Brodie even while he's sleeping with one of her students. But it's not the cast that makes this film cry out for a remake: it's the direction. Ronald Neame admits in his director's commentary on the DVD that there are moments in the film where he just made the wrong decision -- one of them being the climax of the film. It would be nice to see a more restrained director try his hand at Jay Presson Allen's original screenplay (which I would use instead of commissioning a new script). And for God's sake don't let the cinematographer do all the incessant zooming that Ted Moore's camera does in the original -- I don't care what Stanley Kubrick did in "Barry Lyndon," you should never ever use a zoom in a period picture (unless the period is the 1960s).

• "Peyton Place": This is a film that could not have been made in the 1950s, under the Production Code, and still do justice to the source material. But what most people don't know is that the original source material itself was compromised before it was even published. In the original version of the manuscript for Grace Metalious's novel (which, I'm assured by Metalious biographer Emily Toth, no longer exists) Lucas Cross, who molests, rapes and is killed by his stepdaughter, Selena Cross, isn't her stepfather as he is in the published book and in the film, but her biological father. Metalious's publisher, however, made her change it -- a change which, Metalious complained, took a tragedy and turned it into trash. In a more honest adaptation, I would have Lucas Cross portrayed as Selena's father, and I'd love to see Rachel McAdams (easily one of the most gifted young actresses in Hollywood) play Selena Cross.

• "Looking for Mr. Goodbar": This film could have been a classic. It had a great cast: Diane Keaton stunned people who only thought of her as the ditzy Annie Hall, and Richard Gere, although he'd done some small roles in other films, gave one of the great breakout performances as the small-time hood she sleeps with -- it made him a movie star. But Richard Brooks was probably the wrong man to write and direct it (even though he may have seemed a shrewd choice at the time -- after all, he'd directed "In Cold Blood" only nine years earlier), and his choice not to shoot the film in New York, where it was set, was a disaster. If a young Martin Scorsese had made this film on the streets of Manhattan (and in the Upper West Side neighborhood where the actual events on which both the book and film were based really happened) this could have been one of the great films of the 70s. It's to late to do that now, but I could see it being made as a period piece, with a better script. And someone like Laura Breckenridge (from The WB's "Related") would make a wonderful Teresa Dunn.

So those are three films I think could be remade. What are your choices?

Tom Moran