Will I be pretty?

Remakes are a part of Hollywood. So are projects that are announced, but then scrapped. A remake that has been announced, but hopefully won’t be made is The Birds (1963). From what I have read the people involved with the project totally miss the point of the movie. It isn’t about birds attacking people, but families. Anyways, The Birds is a movie that will be talked about sometime in the future. For now, I’ll go back to remakes and those trendy remakes of Alfred Hitchcock movies. Psycho (1998) is a good example of a poor Hitchcock remake. Hitchcock even decided to remake his own movie in 1956 when he redid The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).

Being the most popular director in the world, Hitchcock movies were always in demand. Because of this demand, producers pressured him to come up with stories quickly. It wasn’t his style to rush into anything so at certain points in his career he would take on an easy project just to “recharge the batteries” as he called it. One such project was Dial M For Murder (1953), another The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). Universal came to Hitch and asked him to remake one of his earlier British movies. After much deliberation, Hitch and his associates decided on The Man Who Knew Too Much. The original is fairly good, but could definitely be improved. The remake is in color, which makes it more acceptable to modern audiences and it does feature James Stewart. Other than that, though, there isn’t much that makes this remake special.

Besides asking Hitch to remake one of his films, Universal requested that a catchy song be put in so that they could sell records on top of movie tickets. Bernard Herrmann, who composed the score and played the role of the Albert Hall conductor in the movie, was not known for catchy lyrical music. So some songwriters were brought in and wrote “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)” for Doris Day to sing. Her singing is about the only bright spot of her time on screen. The title of the song was derived from a line in the Ava Gardner movie The Barefoot Contessa (1954). The song, of course, has become a hit and associated with Doris Day more so than with the movie.

Hitch and Stewart made a good team and Stewart performs well here. His performance is superior to Leslie Banks’ in the original. The biggest defect, other than Doris Day, is the absence of Peter Lorre as Abbott. In the original, Abbott is a suave bad guy who is extremely cultured. The epitome of the white-collar criminal. There is not hint of a cultured villain in this one. It is tough to watch after seeing the masterful job done by Lorre.

For the most part, the original and the remake follow the same path, once arrived in London that is. The beginning of the remake in Morocco is interesting, especially the scene in the restaurant where Stewart and the tourists have difficulty with the local customs. There is also the famous scene where the black make-up comes off of the murdered Louis Bernard, Daniel Gelin, onto the hands of James Stewart.

In London, the Albert Hall performance is longer, probably to give Herrmann some more screen time. There is scene in the taxidermy store, which echoes the scene in the back of the Bates Motel. The ending is also redone a bit, in order to get Doris Day’s voice and the popular song some more screen time.

I guess you could say, like all remakes, this one was done for purely commercial reasons. Perhaps that is why it is not superior to the original.