SLEUTH at Venice 2007: To Remake or Not to Remake
by Andre Soares
Agnès Poirier in The Guardian:
"It wasn’t quite as bad as the screening of Christopher Hampton’s Imagining Argentina, which, in 2003, had the Venice Film Festival audience laughing hysterically when it should have been crying. However, the screening of Sleuth, directed by Kenneth Branagh, must have provoked embarrassment for its producers when it left both public and critics sneering. Despite what Martin Wainwright writes in The Guardian today, the feeling, at least among European film critics, was of huge disappointment if not scorn: why on earth remake a masterpiece by [Joseph L.] Mankiewicz, which already was a big screen remake of an award-winning theatre play by Anthony Shaffer?"
Personally, I believe there are some good reasons for remaking films as the same story can take on different angles and interpretations. Think of how many Romeo and Juliet film adaptations have been made in the last century, from straightforward retellings of Shakespeare’s play to West Side Story – about xenophobia, racism, and balletic gangbangers in New York City — and, more recently, The Bubble, in which a Jewish man and Palestinian man must face anti-gay bigotry in addition to the usual Jewish-Palestinian prejudices.
Another case in point: Poirier pooh-poohs Philip Noyce’s 2001 remake of another Joseph L. Mankiewicz drama, The Quiet American. I haven’t seen the original, but I found the remake a well-crafted, intelligent, beautifully acted, and quite timely film.
The new Sleuth, written by Harold Pinter, is supposed to be radically different from the 1972 original, which starred Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier.
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