Original and extra crispy

There are many instances where the copy is better than the original. Jimi Hendrix's cover of the Bob Dylan (lifted?) tune All Along the Watchtower is more famous and filled with a fury that makes the original sound like a demo. While many will disagree with me on this, I would contend that Sorcerer is more exciting than Wages of Fear. But, there are also "spiritual" remakes, of sorts. Is The Man with No Name trilogy really a remake of Yojimbo and Sanjuro? Legally, probably not. However, the similarities are too hard to ignore and many people feel like Leone did ape Kurosawa's films almost to a shameful level.

This weekend I was able to watch two movies that in so many ways trace their roots to specific films. In 1977, Woody Allen made what many consider to be his first masterpiece, Annie Hall. (Note, I enjoy Annie Hall, but I prefer much more Hannah and Her Sisters and the crime thriller Crimes and Misdemeanors). I know a lot of people who hate Annie Hall because it beat Star Wars for Best Picture, but that's a silly rationale to have; Dances With Wolves is a great film even though it beat Goodfellas and so on. Regardless, the happy romantic movie ends on a sour note with Woody Allen not getting the girl.

This all gets fixed in Rob Reiner's movie When Harry Met Sally. Both have a neurotic Jew chasing a girl out of his league with funny dialogue and hip friends. There's also moments with "real" couples inter-spliced during the film talking about their love lives. They speak directly into the camera and appear to be somewhat documentary in their feel. Remember how Annie Hall begins and ends? Woody Allen is talking directly into the camera in a sort of confessional. When Harry Met Sally is Annie Hall if Woody Allen and Diane Keaton got together at the end.

But, Woody Allen is not without his emulation. Throughout his career, Woody Allen has openly confessed his admiration for Ingmar Bergman. Love and Death ends with the dancing at the end of The Seventh Seal. The unsettling scene in Cries and Whispers where two characters talk with their mouths intersecting is also used to comic effect in a Woody Allen film. But, the one that bothers me most is Husbands and Wives. The movie is really trying to be like my favorite Bergman film (miniseries) Scenes from a Marriage. Maybe it is because that is my favorite Bergman movie and one of my favorite movies of all time, but Allen is trying too hard in Husband and Wives that it falls flat and false. There are no quiet moments. And the worst scene takes place in a taxi cab where the young (barely legal) women confesses her ulterior motives in a type of dime store Freudian interpretation, except it isn't played for laughs.

Many other examples can be made, and perhaps these are tenuous connections, but fresh in my mind are these two movies. Heck, I'm sure you could say Che is a spiritual brother to The Battle for Algiers. If you enjoyed When Harry Met Sally or Husbands and Wives, seek out their originals - not that I want to be preachy in recommendations.

And then there's Brothers. I was lucky enough to see the original Danish version back in 2003 when the Iraq War was in its infancy. It was also before I seriously started to study film. However, I have vivid memories of the movie to this day. I write this portion as the credits roll for the new English version in 2009. While my memory from 2003 is sparse, I can recall the ending with great clarity. However, the 2009 English version isn't as good, despite being fresh. I think this is part of the issue with remakes/re-imaginations. The story to Brothers is very good, and I'm glad the idea for it can reach new audiences with the star names of Natalie Portman et all, but while I can't name a single person from the original Dutch version off the top of my head, I have more memories of it than I do of the version I just watched. Sometimes, it is better to seek out the originals. We should just be thankful that other versions can call attention to the original works.

Drinking the sand

When I was in sixth grade, I plagiarized the hell out of The American President, an underrated film, when creating a fake political campaign for the election of Plato into the US Congress (don't ask). So while I picked wonderful lines from the movie to add to my campaign speech, there's one sequence I couldn't quite shoehorn into it. It goes as follows:

Lewis Rothschild: You have a deeper love of this country than any man I've ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism. 
President Andrew Shepherd: Look, if the people want to listen to-... 
Lewis Rothschild: They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand. 
President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

James Cameron had a quote recently about people who watch his movies, specifically Avatar, on small screens like the iPhone: "I think it's dumb, when you have characters that are so small in the frame that they're not visible." He's right. It's dumb.

But sometimes, that's all you got. I have Lawrence of Arabia on DVD and I've watched it probably a dozen times on television or my notebook computer. However,  in a snobbish way, I've really only seen the movie once. If you recall, I was lucky enough to catch a 70mm print in Silver Spring, MD at the AFI theater. Watching the scenes were Lawrence appears as a speck on the horizon and rides toward the camera are more powerful and evocative when viewed in a theater with a large screen. I've had so many people comment that The Apartment is a great widescreen movie, but I've probably seen it more times on television as a pan and scan distortion than as a widescreen movie, let alone in a theater on a large screen that adds to its widescreen effect. As a result, a lot of the enjoyment that film scholars get from that movie are lost on me. Does that mean the movie doesn't work for me? Well, it's my favorite Billy Wilder movie.

Right now as I write this, on a 24in screen two feet from my face is a heavily compressed (mp4 artifacts and such) of Peeping Tom, the haunting film by Michael Powell. Are the artifacts distracting in some of the dimly light scenes? Sure. Does some of the irony of the camera work with the movie theater setups not work quite as well since I'm not watching this in a movie theater myself? Absolutely. However, this is the only way I'll probably ever get to watch the movie.

Ultimately, we have to make do with our circumstances. I don't go to the movies that often because I don't like going to them alone. I wasn't alive to see some of the great Technicolor and widescreen movies. So, I watch them at home, in 700mb files, on computer monitors with a less than devoted attention. For some, they don't notice these issues or consider them hinderances on the movies themselves. For example, a former girlfriend gave me for my birthday a pan and scan version of a movie. She had no idea what "pan and scan" is, probably wouldn't notice too much of a difference in picture quality from DVD to blu-ray, or realize that her television is distorted because she's stretching 4:3 images into a 16:9 screen. Sometimes, we drink the sand because we don't know the difference. Sometimes, it's all we got.