9) The remake in French cinema occupies a site of extreme tension. ...
‘The remake is the most explicit gesture of a culture that …cannot express itself through anything but a quote’ (Brashinsky: 163)
Brashinsky suggests in the above quote that it is somewhat impossible for one culture to even attempt to remake a text from another as it simply cannot be remade. There is significant evidence to suggest that in doing this, many problems can be encountered, for example, with reference to remaking a French product in Hollywood, trying to find an equivalent in the remake that will act as an equal to its prior, often raises debate in the subject of high-art Vs low-art. Issues of originality and how faithful a remake has stayed true to its predecessor also come in to question, whereby the French product is often labelled as the ‘original’ and thus the superior source and the Hollywood version as a poor unfaithful ‘copy’ (Grindstaff: 275) Through a consideration of two films, Luc Besson’s Nikita 1990, and John Badham’s remake The Assassin 1993 (UK title), I aim to explore whether the narrow definitions of French film (being the original) and Hollywood (being the copy) are as simple as they suggest. I argue that this subject of the remake is a complex one and requires a historical perspective to pass comment on the matter; one which outlines the ‘feedback loop’ outlined by Shaman, that has occurred between France and Hollywood since cinema evolved, rather than a perspective which simply engages with what has happened more recently. ... This concept has been applied to the remake and constructed two simple definitions: the first being that France is the ‘self’, hence it is the masculine (author and creator) and Hollywood being the ‘other’, hence it is the feminine (the mirror image). ... Serceau’s and Protopopoff’s critique draws on Bazin who suggests that a remake should ‘start over at the source, and follow a natural course in a new historical and social space’ (Grindstaff: 280). Grindstaff interprets this to mean that although the remake may be inclined to alter through changes in time and culture, it should not deny it’s original source. ...
So far in this essay, I have attempted to address some of the many complications that are current in the remake debate which I hope will aid me in writing the next section of this paper. ... However, I am trying to demonstrate through my findings that the debate in question is more complicated than what some have suggested, and that in producing a remake, one is not simply drawing on one source but a whole range of sources, thus the source some may believe it is taken from cannot be called an ‘original’ source. ... The story for example does not change in the remake. ...
On the subject of how each director has remained true to their country, it is interesting to briefly discuss some of the ways in which the remake has departed from its predecessor. ...
In this essay, I have attempted to demonstrate how the remake debate is not as simple as some have suggested, and that every film has borrowed from another source in one way or another, thus making it difficult to categorise anything as an original source.
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