The Maltese Falcon: Three film versions

A classic example of Hollywood's ongoing struggle to be creative, imaginative, and original is the remake. A great film comes out, or at least one that does very well at the box office, and in a frenzy of creative energy, remakes appear, or, if not remakes, then at least a host of films that strongly resemble their progenitor. In most cases, therefore, the remake is a pale copy of the original. Only rarely does the opposite occur: the remake is actually the superior version. I am aware of only two cases in which this has happened. However, I'm sure that this has happened more often; I'm just not aware of them, and I would appreciate hearing about other examples.



The two cases I'm familiar with and have viewed are the two versions of Gaslight (see my post of August 26, 2008) and the three versions of The Maltese Falcon. The Maltese Falcon has long been a favorite of mine, so I was surprised and intrigued when I recently discovered the two previous attempts at film versions of Dashiell Hammet's fine novel. The two earlier versions are The Maltese Falcon which came out in 1931 and Satan Met a Lady, which appeared in 1936. The classic or best known version with Humphrey Bogart appeared in 1941.






Satan Met a Lady is quite different from the other versions for it is a comedic adaptation of Hammett's novel. Most of the basic plot elements are present, although in a modified form. The black bird becomes a ram's horn, specifically the horn Roland the Brave finally sounded to bring back Charlemagne, although too late to save him and the rear guard from annihilation. (See Le Chanson de Roland, an epic poem of some 4000 words written probably around the early 12 century.) The horn is, of course, stuffed with jewels. Along with various plot element changes, the characters were renamed:



Actor Character Hammett's character



Warren William -- Ted Shane (Sam Spade)
Bette Davis -- Valerie Purvis (Ruth Wonderly/Brigid O'Shaughnessy
Alison Skipworth -- Madame Barabbas (Casper Gutman)
Marie Wilson -- Miss Murgatroyd (Effie)
Porter Hall -- Milton Ames (Miles Archer)
Arthur Treacher  -- Anthony Travers (Joel Cairo?)
Maynard Holmes -- Kenneth (Wilmer Cook--young gunman)



Imdb.com gives the complete cast for those who are interested.



The film opens with Ted Shane being kicked out of a small town. He then returns to rejoin his former partner Milton Ames. The Woman appears, and the plot loosely follows the novel, more or less, mostly less. Although I watched the movie last week, I've forgotten most of it.



Warren William makes Shane a bit of a dunderhead, always tripping over his own feet, metaphorically speaking. Bette Davis clearly is the Class Act as Valerie Purvis. She is too strong for the rest of the cast. Alison Skipworth's Madame Barabbas was also quite good. I wonder if Greenstreet had watched her performance. Marie Wilson played Effie as a ditsy blond, much like her later roles as the ditsy blond in several Dean Martin--Jerry Lewis comedies. Maynard Holmes' Kenneth (the young gunsel) becomes a schoolyard bully who spends considerable time scowling and whining.



The title isn't as weird as it sounds, for Hammett in the first paragraph of the novel describes Spade:



"Sam Spade's jaw was long and bony; his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan." So, the satan met a lady.









The 1931 version, the first version, plays it straight. As far as I could tell, the only significant plot difference between it and the 1941 version is the ending. The 1931 version kept Hammett's original ending in which Wilmer kills Gutman. Aside from that, there are only a few differences between it and the Classic 1941 version. The secondary characters seem to have less onscreen time in comparison to the Classic version. This perhaps may partially be the cause for what I see as the most significant difference between the two.



It's hard to describe the difference, but the closest I can come to it is to say that the characters in the first version were thin in comparison to those in 1941. They seemed to be surface characters only while the characters in the 1941 film had depth to them. Moreover, the choice of Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade is bewildering. Why it was decided to cast someone who appears to be the Latin lover--Ramon Navarro or Valentino--is beyond me. Perhaps that type of leading man was the rage at that time.



Cortez is not convincing as Spade. For example, when Ruth Wonderly is doing her helpless heroine bit, Cortez has this big wide grin on him--this is all fun and games. Bogart, on the other hand, has just the slightest grin, and it's not an all fun and games grin. It is a tired, cynical grin; he has been lied to by his clients in the past and it always made his job harder, and now he's hearing more lies again.



And again, when Cortez explains to Wonderly at the end why he's going to turn her in to the police, it seemed to be just someone reading lines. Bogart looks directly and her, and then turns away, looks down at the floor because he can't face her. He may be in love with her, but other considerations are more important--loyalty to a dead partner being one of them.



The same holds true for the rest of the cast: there really is no comparison between Greenstreet, Lorre, and Elisha Cook and their counterparts in the 1931 version. The dialogue and the encounters among them are similar, but the difference is between real people and one-dimensional cardboard cutouts.



There's always the debate as to whether it's the director or the cast that's most important. Would Roy Del Ruth, director of the 1931 film, have produced the same film if he had the 1941 cast? What would John Huston have done with the 1931 cast? Intriguing questions. I don't have an answer, except the perhaps too obvious suggestion that it is the combination of director and cast that creates a forgettable film in 1931 and a classic some ten years later.



Overall Rating: Have some fun and see all three. Read the novel too.

KING KONG . . . Kong . . . kong

Hollywood again exercises its creative powers by remaking a classic film. This time it’s one of the best monster films ever made—King Kong. So far there have been two remakes since the original came out in 1933--one in 1976 and the latest, so far, in 2005.

Warning: I shall reveal significant plot events and the ending.

The plot, to summarize, is thus: “civilized” people are on their way to exploit the “savages” of an uncharted island in the south Pacific. The inhabitants of the island worship a giant ape and decide the female aboard the ship would be a perfect sacrifice. So they kidnap her one dark and stormy night. The giant ape, King Kong, is pleased with her and takes her off to his lair. Those aboard the ship get up a rescue party, and the hero single-handedly rescues her from her large, hairy admirer. Enraged, Kong follows, is captured, and is brought back to New York. Put on display for the entertainment of the depression era citizenry, Kong breaks free, grabs the heroine, and climbs the highest building around, where he is attacked by aircraft and ultimately plunges to his death.

King Kong I (1933): According to imdb.com, the original King Kong has two directors (both unaccredited), Merian Cooper and Ernest B. Schoesack. This version is characterized by its setting—dark, moody, threatening. The landscape is bleak and ominous. The film is in black-and-white which adds to the darkness of the story and its setting. Its special effects, while primitive compared to today’s technology, still are very effective. Moreover, they do not distract from the story so that the viewer spends more time marveling over the effects and forgets about the story.

King Kong II (1976) John Guillerman is the director of the second version. He attempts to update it by changing the purpose of the voyage to an oil exploration expedition. It is in color, so it lacks that dark grim tone that characterized the first version. He also changed the site of Kong’s death by moving it from the Empire State Building to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The male lead also has long hair, an obvious attempt to play to the young crowd. Guillerman also brought into the open the sexual undertone that lurked beneath the surface in the first version, especially the celebrated scene by the waterfall. The special effects, as to be expected, were superior to the first version, but really added little to the overall effect of the film which has become just another action-oriented film, one among many..

King Kong III (2005) Peter Jackson directed this version, and based on what he did to King Kong, I fear for the fate of The Hobbit, which he is, no doubt, busy improving on what JRR Tolkien had written. It’s due in 2012. This version of King Kong is a farce, a mockery of both versions, but especially the first. It lacks both the dark undertone of the first or the overt sexuality of the second.

In this version, the story seems to be mostly an excuse for the special effects, which ultimately become ludicrous. The fight dangling amidst the vines strains the imagination to its limit. The dinosaur stampede, while technically well done, is a joke. How could humans on foot escape being trampled by the lumbering dinosaurs in that narrow area bordered by high walls? Rather than inducing tension and fear in me, I laughed throughout both episodes. Moreover, Kong, throughout the film, hops about like a squirrel monkey or a young chimp, rather than a huge ponderous gorilla. To add to the farcical nature of the film, Jackson adds a chase scene at the end with Kong chasing the hero who’s driving a car--a car chase scene! It ain’t Bullitt, that’s for sure.

The endings of the three, surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), demonstrated some significant differences. One is the length of the time that lapses from Kong’s escape from the chains to his death. In the first version, this took approximately twelve minutes while the second and third versions stretched it out to over 25 minutes. In the first and third versions, Kong clearly is shot and, as a result, falls from the top of the Empire State Building. The films ends with Denham’s last line—“It was beauty that killed the beast.” In the second, the ending, to me anyway, is bit ambiguous. Did Kong fall from the World Trade Center tower because he was shot or did he simply give up and let go, thus committing suicide? Guillerman dropped the last line.

In the first version, Ann Darrow clearly fears Kong, while in the later versions, she attempts to save his life, even at the risk of her own in the third version. In fact, instead of avoiding him, she goes to meet him in the Jackson version (2005), and the viewer is treated to a comic interlude with Kong doing pratfalls on the ice. Well, at least Jackson didn't have them racing in slow-motion across a flower bedecked field to meet each other.

One other difference concerns the relationship between the Ann Darrow character and the male lead. In the first and third versions, there’s the sense they will be together, while the second version is far more ambiguous. She is surrounded by the press and the crowd; she has become a celebrity which can’t help but be seducing since she, in this version, is a starving actress who had gotten in trouble for stealing a loaf of bread to ease her hunger. He, at the same, time, is struggling to get to her but can’t because of the crowd of admirers and the press. I can easily see this as symbolic of their future relationship, if any.

As you may have guessed, I definitely prefer the first version and will choose that one when I choose to see it again. If I’m interested in a more erotic version, then I will go for the second. I see no reason to see the third unless I encounter some disagreement about what I think I saw in it, and then it will be only to double-check my memory.

P.S. A thought just occurred to me. During the ‘30s, ‘40’s, and ‘50’s, heroines were wont to refer to significant males, especially at tender moments, as “you big lug,” or “you big galoot,” or “you big ape.” I wonder. . . No, probably just a coincidence.

Blade Runner: Five film versions

Blade Runner is one of my favorite SF films, but it has taken multiple viewings to get me to the point where I begin to understand why. The story is a classic SF/Police procedural mix with a film noir atmosphere. Only recently have I been able to spend time away from the central action and concentrate on the background. It is this, the imaginative and painstaking attention to the setting, that makes Blade Runner the outstanding film that it is: the various people on the streets, the clothing, the introduction of animals in an urban environment, the stores, the various small and unique businesses (snakes and owls and llamas? made to order), and the dark and brooding atmosphere so reminiscent of films of the 40s and 50s.

Of course, when I heard of the Director's Cut, I had to see what Riddley Scott, the director, now thought should be in the film, and then when the Final Cut came out, I decided to run my own Blade Runner film festival. I started by renting them or getting them from the public library, which had the theatrical version. I then learned there was a collector's edition out and decided that this was something I should have in my own private collection of DVDs, of which I now have six. I investigated and found the 5 Disc Collectors' Edition at a reasonable price.

What really sold me on it was that it claimed to have five versions of Blade Runner. Now this I had to see. It arrived with five DVDs: three with the various versions of the film, but also two DVDs with extras-- Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner and The Enhancement Archive. This was in addition to the Special and Bonus Features found with the various film versions. To be honest, I haven't watched the two DVDs yet. I keep getting distracted by the films, but one of these days . . .

I will not be writing about Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was published in 1958. The changes are so significant that it would take a book to adequately discuss them.


I shall discuss significant events and the endings of the film versions.


The Five Faces of Blade Runner

THE WORKPRINT: this version has never been released for viewing in the theaters. It is, as the label suggests, a working version of the film, made prior to the release of the theatrical versions. Aside from a few minor technical problems with color and the sound track, it is a version that is very acceptable. When I saw it, I thought that if I had seen this in a theatre, I would have guessed that it was an older version that had become a bit tired over the three decades since its release.


THE THEATRICAL RELEASE: US Version, 1982. This is the first release of the film, and frankly, it is still my favorite. It bombed when it came out. Film-goers weren't ready for it; I wonder if there's an audience for it today, some three decades later.


THE THEATRICAL RELEASE: International Version, 1982. This version was for theaters outside of the US. The only differences I can see are minimal: in the International version, some of the fight scenes are a few seconds longer and the violence more explicit, and some brief nudity in the dressing room of Zhora, the snake dancer. These differences are included in the Director's Cut and the Final Cut.

THE DIRECTOR'S CUT: 1992. This appeared a decade after the theatrical release. Generally a re-release such as this would include some scenes that weren't in the first release and possibly the editing or even the outright deletion of scenes that the director now felt didn't work. The major differences, that I can see, are the loss of the voice-overs (a serious error by Riddley Scott, as far as I'm concerned), the bewildering introduction of the unicorn scene, and the truncated ending. My opinion is that Scott's changes weakened the film.


THE FINAL CUT: 2007. This version came out some fifteen years after the Director's Cut. The changes in this version had to do with several technical flaws and didn't introduce anything new to or take anything out of the Director's Cut.

1. In the scene when Deckard talks to the creator of the snake for Zhora, the sound track didn't match up exactly with the visual scene. Since Ford was busy, they got his son to come in and reshoot the scene. They filmed Ford's son as he lipsync'd (is there such a word?) to the audio track and then inserted that into the film.

2. The second reshooting took place in the scene where Deckard shoots Zhora as she goes crashing through the plate glass in the store. Apparently, Scott? felt that the face of the double for Zhora was too noticeable. To solve this problem, Joanna Cassidy came in and they filmed her face as she twisted and turned to match the positions of the double's face in the film. This was then inserted into the film, so that it is now Joanna Cassidy's face one sees crashing through all that plate glass.

3. At the end of the film, at the point when Roy dies, he releases the white bird which then flies up into the sky. As the camera follows it up into the clear blue sky, I wondered what had happened to the rain. Had it suddenly stopped? Well, that doesn't happen in the Final Cut. That bird now flies upward into the rain falling from a dark sky (it was a dark and stormy night--sorry, couldn't resist that).

The white bird: Scott said that it originally was just a sign that Roy had died and had let go of the bird, but everybody else took the bird as symbolic of the freedom that Roy finally achieved. For many viewers, the white bird is Roy's soul ascending to heaven. He had developed a soul and was now human.


This has been just a brief overview of the five films. Following is a discussion of some of the major differences that appear among the five versions, or at least I see them as major. There may be other differences equally important, but they've escaped me so far. Perhaps I'll finally see them in subsequent viewings.



The Voice-overs: these appear only in the initial theatrical releases. They are not found in the Workprint (with one interesting exception which I will bring up later), and were removed from the Director's Cut and were not restored in the Final Cut. This is a major error in judgment on Scott's part, for, in my opinion, it weakens the film. One of the film's strengths is its dark, gloomy atmosphere, for many scenes take place at night and in the rain. Harrison Ford's first scene is outside on the street on a drizzly night. Take a close look at Rachel's clothing, hairstyle, and makeup, and then look at photos of women taken during the 1940's and 1950's. Rachel's appearance puts her much closer to that period then to the 1980's or the early 21st century when the story takes place. The voice-over is a powerful reminder of the noir films that appeared after WWII, many of which were crime films in which one man was depicted on the trail of criminals or on a mission of revenge. Blade Runner clearly fits in with these films.

Reaction: removing the voice-over was a mistake. I think it weakens the film It is the single most important reason why I rate the theatrical version higher than the Director's Cut and the Final Cut.


The Unicorn: the unicorn appears only in the Director's Cut and the Final Cut. Rachel has just left Deckard's apartment (her first visit in which she argues that she isn't a replicant). After she leaves, Deckard is shown sitting at the piano, picking out a few notes when he suddenly and inexplicably thinks of a unicorn running through the woods. He then gets up and begins to use his computer to work on one of Leon's photos.

In one of the bonus features, I learned that the brief appearance was actually shot especially for the film and wasn't borrowed from another film. I also learned that it supposedly supports Scott's idea that Deckard is a replicant. It's intended to tie in with the unicorn origami (I think that's what it is) that Gaff leaves by Deckard's apartment at the end of the film. How else would Gaff know about Deckard's unicorn daydream if a unicorn hadn't been placed in Deckard's memory? Huh!

I gather that this was an afterthought on Scott's part because people weren't getting Scott's idea that Deckard is human. Frankly, I don't get it either. There are too many other ways for a unicorn to appear in Deckard's memory without the need for a memory implant. A unicorn traditionally is a symbol of virginity, for only a virgin could capture one. Rachel certainly comes across as innocent and naive and perhaps virginal? OK, it's a stretch, but no more so than the "official" interpretation.

Reaction: I see no reason for this scene. It doesn't convince me that Deckard is a replicant, which is why it was inserted in the last two releases. It doesn't work. To be honest, when a friend mentioned the unicorn in the film, I didn't remember it, even though I had just seen the film a few weeks earlier. I either wasn't watching the film those few seconds it was on or I considered it irrelevant and simply forgot about it.



Roy's Death: the scene of Roy's death is the same for the four releases. It differs only in the workprint version. It is also the only example of a voice-over other than in the initial theatrical releases. In the workprint, Roy doesn't die when he says "Time to die," ironically using the same words Leon used when he was about to kill Deckard, and when the white bird flies upward, but he struggles against death for several hours afterwards. Deckard in the voice-over comments that Roy's death took hours. He also thinks about why Roy saved his life. Perhaps Roy, his own death so imminent, realizes how important life is, even a blade runner's life.



The Escape at the End: The theatrical versions are the only ones that have the final scene out in the countryside. The others end with the closing of the elevator doors. I guess that the prejudice against a possibly happy ending is responsible here. If so, then somebody has forgotten a short but significant conversation between Deckard and Rachel. They are back in his apartment, now for the second time. Deckard is cleaning up when Rachel mentions leaving the city and heading north. She asks him if he would come after her, would hunt her down. Deckard replies that he wouldn't for he owes her one. . . but that somebody would.

Have they really escaped? I doubt it, for all they have done by leaving the city is to delay being tracked down. If Deckard also is a replicant, then surely the authorities would go after them, especially since Rachel, an experimental model, has no termination date. She could live for decades. They are too dangerous to allow to live free. Other blade runners will soon be on their trail, if they weren't already on their way.



Is Deckard a replicant? This is probably the point that is most controversial. I've seen numerous commentaries that argue both sides. I've come to the conclusion that there is no concrete evidence clearly and unambiguously supporting either position. Riddley Scott, the director, says that Deckard is a replicant. While he says Deckard is a replicant, his film suggest something quite other than that.

If Deckard is a replicant, then he must be the most incompetent replicant in existence. He can't be a Nexus, the same type as Roy and his friends are, for there is no comparison between them. He is slower than them, clearly weaker than them, and is always caught by surprise by them.


Zhora: in the dressing room, she catches him by surprise, even though he knows she's a replicant, and is about to kill him when others walk into the dressing room. She flees, and Deckard then shoots her in the back as she flees through the store. He fires and misses several times before he finally hits her.

Leon: Deckard has just killed Zhora and is leaving the scene when Leon catches him offguard. Deckard pulls his gun, but Leon merely flicks it away, says "Time to Die," and is just about to kill him when Rachel appears, picks up Deckard's gun and shoots Leon in the head from a distance of twenty or thirty yards, hitting him with one shot. Of course, she's a Nexus model and functions competently in this situation. It's Rachel who kills Leon, not Deckard, who is the best blade runner in the city, according to Bryan, his boss.

Pris: Deckard is wandering around Stevenson's apartment looking for replicants, his gun still in its holster. He gets suspicious of one of the large dolls and goes over there without pulling his gun. Pris jumps him and is about to kill him when she decides to have some fun. This gives Deckard a chance to finally get his gun out and kill her as she tries to stomp him to death.

Roy: Deckard has the gun and Roy has no weapon. Deckard becomes the prey, even if he is armed, and at the end, Roy has to save Deckard's life. Roy dies because he has reached his termination date and not because Deckard kills him.

All four Nexus replicants are superior to Deckard. All four could have killed him, but three were prevented by chance, and the fourth chooses to save Deckard's life instead. What kind of replicant is Deckard? Surely not a Nexus.

Deckard is told that the Tyrell Corporation is determined to build replicants that become more and more human. Perhaps Deckard is a Nexus 7, next year's model that is so human that it is as incompetent as the average human.

Riddley Scott says Deckard is a replicant; his film says no, Deckard is human.

Overall Reaction: the theatrical versions get a 5 on a five point scale; the others a 4.

Sorcerer: a film commentary

Warning: I reveal significant events and the ending for the following work.

Sorcerer is the classic example of what happens when Hollywood decides to remake a highly successful film: the result is a film usually considerably less than the original, which makes me wonder why it was remade. So far, I have found only one remake that is superior to the original version--Gaslight. I have heard that two versions of The Maltese Falcon came out before the one starring Bogart, and that all comments I have heard suggest the Bogart version is superior to the first two. I have them in my queue and will shortly view them. There probably are others that I haven't seen or heard of, and I would be interested in hearing about them.

This remake takes a highly successful and one of the most tension-filled and suspenseful films I have ever seen, Wages of Fear, and improves it into a slightly above average action film. About two weeks ago, I posted some commentary on this film and ended by remarking that I was curious about the remake. Unfortunately Sorcerer was no better than one could expect of a remake.

The cast, of whom I'm familiar only with Roy Scheider, who, along with the rest, gives us more than adequate performances.

The plot of Sorcerer remains essentially the same. Those fighting an oil field fire need explosives to bring the fire under control. The only explosives are several hundred miles away and must be transported by trucks over back country roads that most four-wheel drive vehicles would have some problems with. The explosives have aged and therefore are apt to go off if jarred or shaken. Four drivers, attracted by the large wages, in two trucks leave on what is essentially a suicide mission.

There are several problems with this remake. One of them involves the background of the characters who end up in this small poverty-stricken village somewhere in South America. In the beginning of the original, Wages of Fear, we meet a number of the inhabitants of this village and gradually four, who are obviously foreigners, begin to stand out among the rest. We don't know how they got there or even much about them or their past history; that is left up to our imaginations.

The first "improvement" consists of giving the viewer specific incidents in the pasts of each of the four characters that forced them to go flee in order to prevent being killed or imprisoned for a variety of crimes. This, however leaves gap between the time they flee and their appearance in this small out-of-the-way village. How did they get here? In one case, a character's appearance is extremely puzzling. He was apparently a Palestinian who was captured by Israeli forces in Jerusalem after setting off a bomb. Since he was captured, it seems highly unlikely that he would end up in a small village in South America. This struck me as unrealistic or improbable, and that carried through, unfortunately, for the rest of the film.

The second problem and most serious problem was the nature of the crises the drivers faced.
In Wages of Fear, the problems the drivers encountered were those one might reasonably expect to face on a poorly maintained road: construction areas making it difficult to maneuver, a washboard road, and a large boulder blocking the road on a mountainous stretch, among others. None of these would be considered an especially hazardous situation except for the highly unstable explosives.

Unfortunately, this wasn't enough, so the director, William Friedkin decided improvements were needed here. Driving over ten or more miles of a washboard road with unstable explosives wasn't considered sufficiently hazardous, so that was dropped. It was replaced by crossing over a flood-swollen stream on a cable bridge. That both trucks got over the stream on this bridge that shouldn't have supported a motorcycle simply was beyond belief. I read science fiction and some fantasy, so I can willingly suspend my disbelief, but this was going too far.

The second crisis "improvement" consisted of an encounter with the cliche of cliches--the bandits. The truck was stopped by bandits who were going to kill Scheider and his partner, but in true Hollywood fashion, all four were killed by the drivers who had only one pistol while all four were armed, some with what appeared to be semi-automatic weapons.

The third improvement was the elimination of the original film's focus on the drivers. In Wages of Fear, the director spent considerable showing the viewers how this dangerous trip affected each of the four drivers--each driver attempting to deal with his fear in a different way. In Sorcerer, this almost completely disappeared as the director focused on the events rather than on the characters. I think this also was a major factor in the reduction of the film to a rather mundane action film. Viewers get their cues about what to feel and how to respond from many sources in the film--from the music for one, from the events for another, and very importantly from the characters' responses to the events. Ultimately, eliminating the characters' responses from the film significantly reduces the emotional impact on the viewers.

Not being content with this, Friedkin decided to improve the ending also. What is wrong with a truck slowly creeping in to its destination with a driver desperately trying to stay awake, accompanied by the body of the other driver? Instead, we find the driver stopping and leaving the body on the side of the road. The engine dies, and the driver tries to start it once or twice. In the beginning of the film we learn that the Scheider character is not only an experienced truck driver but also a mechanic. Perhaps I missed something here, yet we don't see him even lift the hood to discover the problem. Having him run out of gas two miles from his destination is really weak. In any case, he takes one of the cases of explosives and staggers the last two miles to the oil field--waving and shaking the volatile explosives as he goes. Regardless of the problem, why didn't he just leave the truck and the explosives and walk to the oil field and let them know where it was?

The ending of Wages of Fear wasn't sufficiently ironic, so that had to be modified also. Instead of getting careless in his joy at surviving and about to have more money in his pocket than he's seen in a long time, the Scheider character returns to the small village and celebrates with the villagers and a few mine officials, shortly before he leaves. As the camera pulls back from the cantina where the celebration is being held, the viewer sees two well dressed men approach the place. They are hit men who have been looking for the Scheider character and just happen to show up at this time.

How ironic!

Overall rating: adequate. The positive rating comes primarily from the cast, who never really got a chance to show what they could do.

Gaslight or Gaslight

The relationship between classic film and remake is clear. A classic film is one which for some inexplicable reason achieves greatness, whatever that may be. All explanations are post hoc and therefore useless for prediction. I've heard a number of discussions and read a number of essays discussing this, but there seems to be little agreement overall. What does seem to happen is that the right combination of director, actors, and story come together and results in something nobody expected.

In any case, people view the classic films for many decades after its first appearance, it is studied in film classes, and its stars frequently find their careers beginning or in some cases resurrected as a result of this film.

Several decades later, someone decides that doing it again might be a good way of making some money. Those who remember and liked the original version would be expected to be curious about what this version is like, thereby insuring at least a fair number of viewers. Doing a remake also insures free advertising since critics, scholars, and knowledgeable fans will, no doubt, debate the wisdom or necessity of "doing it again."

I no longer remember what inspired me, but I decided to view _Gaslight_, a classic that I had never seen. I did the usual online search and discovered there were two films with that title, one in 1940 and one from 1944. I saw two possibilities here: two entirely different films with the same title, or, a remote possibility that the classic already had a remake, some four years later, which made no sense.

I went to the 1940 film and it sounded like the _Gaslight_ I had heard of, a husband who attempts to drive his wife mad, with a murder and jewels all in the mix. But the stars were Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, and it was directed by Thorold Dickinson. This definitely was not the _Gaslight_ I had heard so much about.

I then checked out the 1944 version, which had the same plot. But, the stars were Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotton, Angela Lansbury (who made her screen debut in this film), and it was directed by George Cukor. This was the film I was looking for, but it was the remake.

I don't know if this has ever happened before, (at least I've never heard of it), but the remake of a film became the classic, and the original has disappeared into the film history books. Perhaps those scholars, critics, and knowledgeable viewers knew about this, but they've kept it a secret.

I generally ignore remakes of classic films because I have found that the magic, whatever it was that made the original version a classic, doesn't carry over to the second version. But, since this was an unusual situation, I decided to see, if possible, both versions. In a local video rental store, I found a DVD that had both the 1940 and the 1944 versions.

Both are based on a play by Patrick Hamilton, _Gas Light_, which appeared on stage in 1938 and had a 3-4 year run.

As to be expected, the two films resemble each other, although some significant differences exist, mostly in tone and some involving the characters. The 1940 version focuses strongly on the process by which the husband is attempting to slowly drive his wife mad. In this version, the wife has married a sadist.

The 1944 version concentrates more on the relationship between the husband and wife and the way he uses her almost completely dependent love for him to drive her mad. In this version, the wife loves a sadist.

The plot takes control of the 1940 version, although characterization is adequate. In the 1944 version, characterization is more important, but the plot is still strongly present. I couldn't help but wonder why she loved him, after the way he had treated her.

The one major change in the characters in the story involves the detective who suspects something strange is taking place and investigates. In the 1940 version, the detective is a retired police officer who now owns a livery stable in the neighborhood. In the 1944 version, the detective is a much younger and handsomer man (Joseph Cotton) who is a police officer at Scotland Yard.

There are other changes concerning the major characters, but the basic elements of an unsolved crime in the past involving a murdered woman and jewels are in both.

See both. Which do you think is the classic?

One question has been nagging at me. Which is closest to the play? Hmmm....Another search?