Transnational Film Remakes

249 Pages·2017·6.625 MB·English

by  Iain Robert Smith and Constantine Verevis

TRANSNATIONAL FILM REMAKES
EDITED BY IAIN ROBERT SMITH AND CONSTANTINE VEREVIS
TRANSNATIONAL FILM REMAKES
Traditions in World Cinema
General Editors Italian Post-Neorealist Cinema
Linda Badley (Middle Tennessee State by Luca Barattoni
University)
Spanish Horror Film
R. Barton Palmer (Clemson University)
by Antonio Lázaro-Reboll
Founding Editor Post-beur Cinema
Steven Jay Schneider (New York by Will Higbee
University)
New Taiwanese Cinema in Focus
by Flannery Wilson
Titles in the series include:
International Noir
Traditions in World Cinema by Homer B. Pettey and R. Barton Palmer
by Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer and (eds)
Steven Jay Schneider (eds)
Films on Ice
Japanese Horror Cinema by Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl
by Jay McRoy (ed.) Stenport (eds)
New Punk Cinema Nordic Genre Film
by Nicholas Rombes (ed.) by Tommy Gustafsson and Pietari Kääpä
(eds)
African Filmmaking
by Roy Armes Contemporary Japanese Cinema Since
Hana-Bi
Palestinian Cinema
by Adam Bingham
by Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi
Chinese Martial Arts Cinema 2nd edn
Czech and Slovak Cinema
by Stephen Teo
by Peter Hames
Expressionism in Cinema
The New Neapolitan Cinema
by Olaf Brill and Gary D. Rhodes (eds)
by Alex Marlow-Mann
French-language Road Cinema: Borders,
American Smart Cinema
Diasporas, Migration and ‘New
by Claire Perkins
Europe’
The International Film Musical by Michael Gott
by Corey Creekmur and Linda Mokdad
Slow Cinema
(eds)
by Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas
Italian Neorealist Cinema Jorge (eds)
by Torunn Haaland
Transnational Film Remakes
Magic Realist Cinema in East Central by Iain Robert Smith and Constantine
Europe Verevis (eds)
by Aga Skrodzka
www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/tiwc
TRANSNATIONAL FILM REMAKES
Edited by Iain Robert Smith
and Constantine Verevis
For mum, who let me stay up late and watch Godzilla films at an
impressionable age
IRS
For Mia, my SCMS buddy
CV
We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the
humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial
and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more
information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© editorial matter and organisation Iain Robert Smith and Constantine Verevis, 2017
© the chapters their several authors, 2017
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 10/12.5 pt Sabon by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 0723 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0724 3 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0725 0 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0726 7 (epub)
The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright
and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Traditions in World Cinema viii
Introduction: Transnational Film Remakes 1
Iain Robert Smith and Constantine Verevis
PART I GENRES AND TRADITIONS
1. Disrupting the Remake: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21
Lucy Mazdon
2. Fritz Lang Remakes Jean Renoir for Hollywood: Film Noir in
Three National Voices 36
R. Barton Palmer
3. The Cultural Politics of Remaking Spanish Horror Films in the
Twenty-first Century: Quarantine and Come Out and Play 54
Andy Willis
4. ‘For the Dead Travel Fast’: The Transnational Afterlives of
Dracula 66
Iain Robert Smith
contents
PART II GENDER AND PERFORMANCE
5. The Chinese Cinematic Remake as Transnational Appeal: Zhang
Yimou’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop 87
Kenneth Chan
6. Transformation and Glamour in the Cross-Cultural Makeover:
Return to Eden, Khoon Bhari Maang and the Avenging Woman
in Popular Hindi Cinema 103
Michael Lawrence
7. Translating Cool: Cinematic Exchange between Hong Kong,
Hollywood and Bollywood 118
Rashna Wadia Richards
8. Trading Places: Das doppelte Lottchen and The Parent Trap 130
Constantine Verevis
PART III AUTEURS AND CRITICS
9. A Tale of Two Balloons: Intercultural Cinema and Transnational
Nostalgia in Le voyage du ballon rouge 147
David Scott Diffrient and Carl R. Burgchardt
10. ‘Crazed Heat’: Nakahira Ko and the Transnational Self-remake 164
David Desser
11. Remaking Funny Games: Michael Haneke’s Cross-cultural
Experiment 177
Kathleen Loock
12. Reinterpreting Revenge: Authorship, Excess and the Critical
Reception of Spike Lee’s Oldboy 195
Daniel Martin
13. The Transnational Film Remake in the American Press 210
Daniel Herbert
Notes on the Contributors 224
Index 228
vi
ILLUSTRATIONS
2.1 Chris Cross sees the portrait he painted of his inamorata Kitty
carried out of the gallery, Scarlet Street 48
2.2 Professor Wanley gazes dreamily at the portrait of a beautiful
woman, Woman in the Window 49
4.1 Count Lavud and the iconic Dracula (1931) costume 77
4.2 Professor Tabini evoking Christopher Lee’s incarnation of
Dracula 80
5.1 Oddly coloured outfits and strange Chinese-looking hairdos of the
characters in A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop 97
5.2 The wife screams, ‘I’m not afraid!’ A Woman, a Gun and a
Noodle Shop 99
6.1 Tara strikes a pose during a photo shoot in Return to Eden 108
6.2 Jyoti stares into the camera during the photo shoot in Khoon
Bhari Maang 113
8.1 ‘The Title Makers’, Walt Disney Presents 139
8.2 ‘Let’s Get Together’, The Parent Trap 141
9.1 The titular object floats up alongside a white building, next to
another red balloon, Le voyage du ballon rouge 154
9.2 Seated inside a bus, Simon studies his own reflection, Le voyage
du ballon rouge 156
11.1 and 11.2 Michael Haneke’s shot-by-shot remake of Funny
Games 188
TRADITIONS IN WORLD CINEMA
General editors: Linda Badley and R. Barton Palmer
Founding editor: Steven Jay Schneider
Traditions in World Cinema is a series of textbooks and monographs devoted
to the analysis of currently popular and previously underexamined or under-
valued film movements from around the globe. Also intended for general inter-
est readers, the textbooks in this series offer undergraduate- and graduate-level
film students accessible and comprehensive introductions to diverse traditions
in world cinema. The monographs open up for advanced academic study more
specialised groups of films, including those that require theoretically oriented
approaches. Both textbooks and monographs provide thorough examinations
of the industrial, cultural, and socio-historical conditions of production and
reception.
The flagship textbook for the series includes chapters by noted scholars
on traditions of acknowledged importance (the French New Wave, German
Expressionism), recent and emergent traditions (New Iranian, post-Cinema
Novo), and those whose rightful claim to recognition has yet to be established
(the Israeli persecution film, global found footage cinema). Other volumes
concentrate on individual national, regional or global cinema traditions. As the
introductory chapter to each volume makes clear, the films under discussion
form a coherent group on the basis of substantive and relatively transparent, if
not always obvious, commonalities. These commonalities may be formal, sty-
listic or thematic, and the groupings may, although they need not, be popularly
viii
traditions in world cinema
identified as genres, cycles or movements (Japanese horror, Chinese martial
arts cinema, Italian Neorealism). Indeed, in cases in which a group of films is
not already commonly identified as a tradition, one purpose of the volume is
to establish its claim to importance and make it visible (East Central European
Magical Realist cinema, Palestinian cinema).
Textbooks and monographs include:
• An introduction that clarifies the rationale for the grouping of films
under examination
• A concise history of the regional, national, or transnational cinema in
question
• A summary of previous published work on the tradition
• Contextual analysis of industrial, cultural and socio-historical condi-
tions of production and reception
• Textual analysis of specific and notable films, with clear and judicious
application of relevant film theoretical approaches
• Bibliograph(ies)/filmograph(ies)
Monographs may additionally include:
• Discussion of the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange in light of
current research and thinking about cultural imperialism and glo-
balisation, as well as issues of regional/national cinema or political/
aesthetic movements (such as new waves, postmodernism, or identity
politics)
• Interview(s) with key filmmakers working within the tradition.
ix