Cycle Remake

A look back at six film duos/duels that oscillate between the best and the worst of cinema. Remakes. Because the original is considered a failure, not fully realized in terms of its screenplay potential. Just as a pulp novel can make a very good film, while a literary masterpiece generally makes a mediocre film, or at best, a pompous one. So why not remake a minor film with more substantial resources and artistic ambition? Remake it again. To make a commercial splash. Take a proven screenplay formula and reproduce it, adapting it to current tastes and/or its audience.

In the art of reproduction, which is a veritable obsession in cinema, there is only one rule: you don't remake a masterpiece. You copy it more or less skillfully, that's the law of exploitation, but you don't remake a masterpiece. And like any rule worth its salt, this one will of course be broken. But we are not here to give an exhaustive overview of remakes in all their forms and guises, whether proclaimed or unspoken. In fact, offering a series devoted to remakes is something of a challenge. Is it really reasonable to show an original film and its remake in quick succession? Will the audience want to watch two films with the same plot back to back? Who would be interested in this apart from film researchers and students?

But ultimately, it doesn't matter. What interests us here is that we are in a contemporary art museum and that through these few film duos/duels, we can bring the remake closer to the ready-made. Art that isn't really art. Where the work is not unique, but is born in the replica. Like a mirror is a reflective surface. Or what makes art is the way we look at an object that, at first glance, has nothing artistic about it. Watching a film or looking at a urinal is the same thing. It's what we project onto it that counts. Our youthfulness.

Programming:

Blow Up
Michelangelo Antonioni
1966. UK/Italy. 111 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

A brilliant reflection on what we see or should see. Antonioni stops time, and that's where the plot unfolds. A few hours in the life of a London fashion photographer who glimpses the possibility of murder in an image. He investigates. A work about the multiplicity of points of view, appearances, and the illusion of reality. But also a document about 1960s London, where the sexual revolution was taking place. Still modern, fascinating, and inexhaustible. Fifteen years later, maestro Brian De Palma would give it a remarkable variation.

> Saturday, October 4 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Sunday, October 26 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs

Blow Out
Brian De Palma
1981. USA. 107 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

A tribute from one maestro to another. In 1966, in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, a photographer believes he has witnessed a murder when he discovers a disturbing detail in one of his photographs. Fifteen years later, in Blow Out, the photographer has become a sound engineer, and De Palma connects sound and image against the backdrop of political assassination. Complex camera movements, circular tracking shots, split screens, exemplary editing, and a melancholy that we didn't know the filmmaker was capable of. A work that is uncompromising right up to its traumatic and heartbreaking ending.

> Saturday, October 18 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Saturday, November 22 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs

Yojimbo
Akira Kurosawa
1961. Japan. 110 min. B&W. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

In a world devoid of honor, the story of a masterless samurai who arrives in a small village embroiled in a bloody struggle between two clans. First, a sword film in which Akira Kurosawa perfectly masters the codes. Then, a meticulous deconstruction of the genre. The chivalrous ideal gives way here to biting irony. Jealousy, envy, stupidity, and comical misunderstandings. A flawless demonstration of the futility of conflict, from which Sergio Leone would draw inspiration for his remarkable Italian remake, A Fistful of Dollars.

> Saturday, September 27 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Sunday, November 2 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs

For a Few Dollars More
(Per un pugno di dollari)
Sergio Leone
1964. Italy/Spain/West Germany. 99 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

The first installment of Sergio Leone's “Dollar Trilogy,” but also an unacknowledged, cynical, and violent remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. A stranger, dressed in a poncho, arrives on muleback in a small town in the West and gets involved between two rival gangs. Clint Eastwood's charismatic performance, Ennio Morricone's sumptuous music, and Sergio Leone's powerful direction (here under the pseudonym Bob Robertson). The Italian Western was born. It's hard to say more than that this is truly great popular cinema.

> Saturday, October 11 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Sunday, November 9 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs

La Chienne (The Bitch)
Jean Renoir
1931. France. 100 min. B&W. DCP.

Legrand, a modest and honest cashier in an unhappy marriage, meets Lulu, a beautiful streetwalker, one fine day. Lulu is a prostitute, and to rescue her from her pimp, Legrand sets her up in a small furnished apartment. This is where the illusions begin. “Neither a comedy nor a drama,” announces the prologue. And for good reason, La Chienne is a film noir with a deep noir tone, where everyone deceives everyone else. The downtrodden petit bourgeois transforms himself into a lovesick lover, then a murderer, and finally a man freed from all constraints. Morality will not be saved, since there is none.

> Sunday, September 28 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Saturday, November 8 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs

Scarlet Street
(Scarlet Street)
Fritz Lang
1945. USA. 102 min. B&W. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

A modest cashier, Cross (Edward G. Robinson), who paints in his spare time, comes to the aid of a young woman, Kitty (Joan Bennett), with whom he falls in love. It is love at first sight, but only on one side. With the complicity of her lover Johnny, Kitty manipulates Cross, selling his paintings under her own name. The American version of Jean Renoir's La Chienne. Or rather, its adaptation (based on a novel by Georges de La Fouchardière) by Fritz Lang, who explored the themes addressed in his previous film, The Woman in the Window. Deception and manipulation, the ordeal of a murderer by a Lang more pessimistic than ever.

> Saturday, October 18 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs

The Beguiled
(Les Proies)
Don Siegel
1971. USA. 105 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

During the American Civil War, a wounded Union soldier is taken in by a Southern boarding school for young girls. When a man uses and abuses his power of seduction (to avoid being denounced) and when that same power ends up turning against him. Clint Eastwood, the object of everyone's attention, faces a small group of women who are willing to do anything. A stifling and baroque closed-door drama set in a sultry South that Tennessee Williams would not have disowned. Here, the law of desire prevails. A film steeped in disillusionment, fantasy, and frustration, constantly on a knife edge, brought up to date by Sofia Coppola's 2017 remake.

> Saturday, October 4 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Saturday, November 15 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs

The Beguiled
(Les Proies)
Sofia Coppola
2017. USA. 93 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

A heady, poisonous, and sensual thriller! A remake of Don Siegel's The Beguiled. An almost symmetrical remake with an identical story (a wounded Union soldier is taken in by a Southern boarding school for young girls) for two complementary films. While Don Siegel focused on a man watching the women around him, Sofia Coppola takes on the perspective of the women observing a man. Colin Farrell takes over from Clint Eastwood and faces Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning, relentless hunters in crinoline.

> Sunday, October 19 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Saturday, November 22 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs

Doctor Jerry and Mister Love
(The Nutty Professor)
Jerry Lewis
1963. USA / France. 107 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

When shy and ungainly Professor Kelp swallows an elixir of his own invention that transforms him into Buddy Love, a seductive crooner. Certainly not a remake, but a particularly welcome reversal of values for a hilarious alternative to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here, beauty is no longer synonymous with intelligence and virtue, but with egocentricity and machismo. And the brilliant Jerry Lewis pokes fun at seductive singers such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Dean Martin, who was his partner for more than fifteen years.

> Sunday, October 5 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
(Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde)
Roy Ward Baker
1971. UK. 97 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

Two historical elements from British history, Jack the Ripper and the murders of the body snatchers Burke and Hare, are used for a new transgender variation on Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A crazy gamble taken on by screenwriter Brian Clemens, creator of the series The Avengers, and of course Hammer Studios. Searching for a miracle elixir and discovering oneself as a woman. A fascinating film, sexually remarkable from start to finish, if only for the performances of Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick.

> Saturday, October 25 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs
Film prohibited to minors under 12 years of age upon its release.

Driver
(The Driver)
Walter Hill
1977. USA. 91 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive owes a lot to this film, right down to Ryan Gosling's performance, which follows in the footsteps of Ryan O'Neal like a shadow. Refn's film is a postmodern thriller that won the Best Director Award at Cannes. Walter Hill's film is a dry, solemn crime thriller that borrows heavily from Melville, with real car chases thrown in. The rev counter is reset. Because that's where it all began. While he is being targeted by the sadistic Detective (the characters are named after their jobs), the Driver hatches a daring plan with the Gambler...

> Saturday, October 11 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Saturday, November 15 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs

Drive
Nicolas Winding Refn
2011. USA. 100 min. Color. DCP. Original version with French subtitles.

The driver is a lonely young man. He drives during the day as a stuntman and at night as a criminal. He is extremely professional, doesn't talk much, and doesn't take part in the crime other than by driving. And behind the wheel, he's the best! With his second Hollywood film, Nicolas Winding Refn brilliantly revisits the 1990s thriller genre, made famous by Michael Mann and William Friedkin, and borrows heavily from Walter Hill's Driver. Better still, this twilight, electric, and romantic ride reinterprets it with infinite class, while revealing all of Ryan Gosling's charisma.

> Saturday, October 25 at 6 p.m. Les Abattoirs
> Sunday, November 23 at 4 p.m. Les Abattoirs
Film prohibited to minors under 12 years of age upon release