Films

A PROPOS DE REMAKES- ABOUT REMAKES EN GENERAL
Commentaires Américains Commentaires Français

Kathy Bishop, "Deja Vu" Elle, Mars 1989. 100-102.

In the past, the greatest problem facing American directors who attempted a remake was their tendency to overdo it with more gags, rnore plot, more characterizations, enfin, more garbage [....]

Says Swaim. "Film is not a science, it's an art form - at least to the French. To Americans it's an industry, and like any industry you can go out and learn the craft. But that doesn't mean you'll become a great artist."

Another source of Franco-American contrast is our opposite attitudes about laughter. Perhaps that's why we're so compelled by Gallic comedies. "During the previews of Three Fugitives, I was quite surprised by the questions the audience posed," Veber says. "For instance, the wife of one of the characters was killed three years earlier. People wanted to know why and how. In France, even if the audience noticed, they wouldn't care. As soon as people laugh, they suspend their realism. In the U.S., there's either burlesque or nothing." Agent Bookman, who is currently involved with several remake projects, also highlights American rationality: "In this country, we must have a resolution. In France it's unnecessary."

[.......]

Says producer Avnet. "To me, the insouciance, the happy-go-lucky attitude of the French makes them so charming. Put this in an American cultural setting and some of these things are obnoxious. In the same way, if you look at Lelouche's camera work in Happy New Year - it's brilliant and unbelievable; in America it would be considered pretentious and clunky. Any film that depends on that specialness, I just can't imagine translating. I wouldn't know how."

[....]

A quintessentially French light farce glorifying adultery, Cousin, Cousine exalted the "wonderful French arrogance about sleeping with someone else's wife," explains Danson. In the original, a good 10 minutes are devoted to the adulterous couple's first sexual encounter. Not so in the new version. "Basically it's the same story, but they're in America, so they don't take adultery as a way of life," says actor William Peterson.

[.....] The new version concentrates on Hollywood acceptables: life, love, and family.

Michael Raby, "I lost it at the movies": Teaching culture through cinematic doublets" The French Review. Vol 68, No. 5, Avril 1995. 837-845

About Le Grand Chemin (1987) and its American remake Paradise (1991)

First, the transposition of the rabbit to the chicken was apparently necessary to suit the preconceptions of an American audience. In a culture that flocks to Disney World, how can you even suggest killing and eating the Easter Bunny or Bugs Bunny?America's youth was raised to expect the Warner Brothers charactee as a regular visitor to the home on Saturday morning television. Many enjoyed films like Black Beauty and National Velvet which anthropomorphize horses.

No such human-horse transfer occurs in French popular culture. The horse has no symbolic value to French people. Instead, it is eaten like any other domestic animal whereas in American culture it represents nobility and courage as the cowboy's friend. The chicken, on the other hand, which holds no symbolic value in American society, has to be killed, plucked, and cleaned to be eaten, just like the rabbit. Yet this scene was omitted in the American version because Americans do not want to be reminded of the necessary unpleasant preliminaries of killing and butchering. They seem to need to be reassured that meats and fish, to be accepted as edible, must have an appearance which does not remind them too much of their animal origins or their involontary death. This cultural bias explains the tendency in American culture to eliminate as much as possible everything that is considered"gross,"dirty,"smelly". The French accept such things more easily. Rather than changing the nature of physical reality, they adapt or try to adapt to it. If they are not always successful, reason and analysis will be used to calm their anxieties and repugnance.

Vincent Canby, "Francophobia? No! ", The New York Times, pg 264-265, May 14, 1997

[....] If Three Men and a Cradle exemplifies France's current culture, sophistication, taste and subtlety, then it may be time to bring back the Bourbons.

[....] The only French films that have been comparatively successful at the box office have been second-rank comedies on the order of Three Men and a Cradle" and La Chèvre. It isn't politics that's hurting French movies. It's French movies.

Catherine LaPorte, "Deux Fois sur le métier" 119-120.

[........} un scénario original à Hollywood coûte, de nos jours, entre un million et un million et demi de dollars. Et il est rare de trouver dans les tiroirs des scénaristes un bon sujet de comédie. "Là encore, deux solutions, dit Franck Yablans, nouveau patron de M.G.M.. Artistes associés: soit puiser dans le patrimoine américain [.......] soit acheter un scénario étranger, français par exemple, pour une bouchée de pain. ª

• Raymonde Carroll (auteur de "Les Evidences Invisibles"), "Film et Analyse Culturelle: Le Remake", Contemporary French Civilization. Oberlin College. 346-359.

On peut en effet considérer le film comme une sorte de concentré de vie quotidienne non pas par son contenu mais par les implicites sur lesquels il repose.

[......]

Ainsi, revenons aux deux filmsTrois Hommes et un couffin et le remake américain Three Men and a Baby. Nous savons que l'intention du remake est de rester aussi près que possible de l'original parce que des phrases entières du dialogue sont presque littéralement traduites chaque fois que c'est possible. Cela suggère donc que quand il y a des différences, elles sont dues tantôt à un but artistique (le remake ne peut être identique à l'original), tantôt à une nécessité de logique culturelle.

[.....]

C'est ma fille, dont le domaine est le cinéma, qui m'a fait observer que les films français et américains ne débutaient en général pas de la même manière (quel que soit le sujet). Le film français commence par une situation, un problème à résoudre peut-être, et nous apprenons à connaître les personnages par la manière dont ils font face à cette situation. Le film américain commence par nous faire connaître le personnage, ses habitudes, son environnement, son caractère, etc., avant de le confronter à une situation.

[......]

La façon de Pierre d'agir envers Michel est une expression d'amitié dans le contexte français, mais constituerait une "invasionª de la vie de Michael: elle exige donc une transformation. Cette façon de faire française est confirmée plus tard dans le film: quand Jacques est déprimé, Michel vient dans

sa chambre (sans frapper) pour lui annoncer qu'il lui a préparé un bon dîner, le force littéralement à sortir du lit en le tirant par le bras.

[......]

Ce ralenti partiel permet déjà d'entrevoir les différences d'implicites français et américains dans plusieurs sortes de rapports inter-personnels: dans les rapports d'amitié; dans les rapports parents/ enfants; dans les rapports adulte/bébé; dans les rapports de couple; dans les rapports hommes/femmes.

Nous pouvons aussi commencer à soulever des questions sur la signification du contact physique ou de l'absence de contact; sur les rapports entre émotion/bruit et émotion/silence; émotion/mouvement et émotion/immobilité.