Cinema Sequels And Remakes

Cinema Sequels And RemakesPreamble The produce is some(prenominal) an industrial and a little genre. Defined primarily in relation to a body of right of showtime publication law, the admitd or credited create develops from being an ethical stem to the previous(predicate) come of duping to become an economicalally driven staple of the Hollywood industrial mode of representation. Following the Hollywood recession of 1969 and the small-and-weird- peck-be-beautiful-revolution of the early s horizontal soties, the make over (along with the sequel) becomes typical of the defensive micturate and marketing strategies of a post Jaws Hollywood. In the exercise of the unrecognized create, the absence of a production credit shifts forethought from a legal-industrial definition to a critical-interpretive atomic number 53, in which the make is determined in relation to a general discursive field that is mediated by the structure of the leadic system and by the authority of the ikon and literary legislation (Frow, Intertextuality and Ontology 46). In either instance, the intertextual referentiality surrounded by a make and its skipper is largely extratextual (Friedberg 175), locate in historicly specific technologies and institutional practices much(prenominal) as copyright law and authorship, canon giveation and withdraw literacy.In their almost one thousand page long Cinema Sequels and Remakes, 1903-1987, Roben Nowlan and Gwendoline Wright Nowlan devote non resistant of twain full pages to explaining the extract criteria for one thousand and twenty flipper alphabetically listed primary straight offs and the legion(predicate) to a greater extent associated remakes and sequels that make up their pose of reference volume. The brevity of Nowlan and Nowlans introduction is attri nonwithstandingable to the charget that they make little fire to qualify either remake or sequel, moreover sooner ca-ca these as received categories, i .e., their principal criterion for selection is that a depiction has been previously designated as a remake or sequel in any two or more(prenominal) of a number of unnamed still reliable openings, which list remakes and sequels of certain genres of snaps (xi-xii). firearm this type of sluttish definition makes for a wide selection of poppycock and does not nix the inferential reconstruction of at least some of the unspecified principles of selection ( finished an examination of those burgeon forths that stomach been included), Nowlan and Nowlans intuitive approach underscores the extent to which the remake is conceived more through actual usage and cat valium understanding than through compressed definition.(1) patch Nowlan and Nowlan put aside problems of classification to list thousands of asks, Michael B. Druxmans more base (in scope) Make It Again, surface-to-air missile, which sets surface to provide a comprehensive dissertation on the remake practice by detai ling the film life of thirty-three literary properties (9), attempts to ground its selection in some preliminary definitions. Druxman begins by electing to terminus ad quem the category of remake to those histrionics films that were ground on a common literary source (i.e., trading floor, natural(a), play, poem, screenplay), but were not a sequel to that cloth (9). This dependmingly infallible signpost is however complicated by those films that atomic number 18 manifestly remakes but do not credit their origins (9). In much(prenominal) cases Druxman adopts a heuristic devicea chemical formula of thumbwhich requires that a new film borrow more than just an element or two from its predecessor to qualify (9). This in turn allows Druxman to distinguish between nonfiction films of a single historical hap or biography of a historical figure (e.g., the lawlessness on the Bounty or the life of Jesse James) which dissent beca enjoyment they be ground around competing recital s of the a like(p) incident, and those nonfiction films of a homogeneous historical incident which argon similar evening though they are based upon versatile literary sources (9). As magnate be expected from an approximate rule which arbitrates according to whether a films borrowings are significant or wholly tally to an element or two, Druxman ultimately admits that t here were many marginal situations in which he just now if used his own discretion in deciding whether or not to embrace a film as a remake (9).Although Druxmans recognition of unacknowledged remakes introduces a number of methodological difficulties, he funkier grounds his handling by think Hollywood remaking practice as a function of application pragmatism, driven by three major factors. Firstly, Druxman argues that the decision to remake an vivacious film is primarily a voluntary one based on the perceived continuing viability of an authoritative score. However, assiduity demand for sumal sensib le during the studio-dominated era of the thirties and forties and attempts to rationalize the very much high be of source acquisition prompted studios to consider previously filmed stories as sources for B pictures, and even for top of the bill productions (13). As Tino Balio points out, the Hollywood majors had bosh departments with large offices in New York, Hollywood, and Europe that systematically searched the literary grocery and stage for suitable unuseds, plays, short stories, and archetype ideas (99). Taking as an interpreter story acquisitions at Warner Br differents between 1930 and 1949, Balio notes that the pattern of source acquisition demonstrates two oft contradictory goals (1) the believe to base films on pretested material, that is, low-risk material that was already well known and well received by the public and (2) the desire to acquire properties as inexpensively as achievable, especially during declining or chatoyant economic circumstances (Robert G ustafson qtd. in Balio 99). In practice this meant that while Warners a great deal invested in expensive pre-sold properties, such(prenominal) as best-selling novels and Hollywood relieve oneself plays, it offset the high costs of pretested properties by using authoritative screenplays indite in its screenwriting department and by relying heavily on the cheapest pretested material of all primitively Warner pictures (99).Druxmans gage, connect point is that the customary studio practice at the time of get the rights to novels, plays, and stories in perpetuity meant that a company was able to produce ternary versions of a accompaniment topographic point without making additional hires to the copyright bearer (15). Canonized classics of literature, such as Treasure Island and The Three Musketeers, not hardly had pre-sold titles, but because they were in the public domain, had the added advantage of requiring no initial payment for their dramatic rights (18-20). While the m ajority of recycled, previously purchased source material ( contingently from those films that had through with(p) fair to poorly at the box office) made its way into B-unit production (Balio 100), high profile titles were sometimes remade to take advantage of new technologies and practices. Accordingly, Druxmans ternion and final point relates to the profit potential of redoing established films in grade to exploit new jumper leads or screen techniques, e.g., Michael Curtizs 1938 version of The Adventures of Robin lubber as some(prenominal) a vehicle for Errol Flynn and a sound and Technicolor modify of the Douglas Fairbanks silent epic, Robin Hood (Allen Dwan, 1922) (15).Druxmans initial definition and the above factors of industry pragmatism allow him to posit three general categories of Hollywood remake (i) the disguised remake a literary property is either updated with minimal change or retitled and then disguised by new settings and airplane pilot characters, but in ei ther case the new film does not seek to draw assistance to its to begin with version(s), e.g., Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh, 1949) as a disguised remake of High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941) (ii) the direct remake a property may undergo some alterations or even adopt a new title, but the new film and its biography image do not hide the fact that it is based upon an anterior production, e.g., John Guillermins 1976 remake of King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) and (iii) the non-remake a new film goes under the same title as a familiar property but there is an goodly new plot, e.g., Michael Curtizs 1940 version of The Sea gear is said to bear little relation to First Nationals 1924 interlingual rendition of the Rafael Sabatini novel (13-15).(2)While Druxmans account of the remake raises a number of salient points, among them the quality that credits and pro questions play in the identification of remakes, the publication of Make It Again, Sam prior to th e post-Jaws renovation of Hollywood and the transformation of film viewing through videotape and other recent technologies of storage and reproduction make the cast off back somewhat backward-looking. In order to consider some aspects of the remake as a media-intertext, particularly in relation to new Hollywood remakes, it is reformative to turn to a more recent typology of the remake, Thomas M. Leitchs Twice-Told Tales.(3) Leitch begins his account by making a number of points a tear the singularity of the remake both among Hollywood films and even among other types of narratives the uniqueness of the film remake, a film based on another movie, or competing with another movie based on the same property is indicated by the word property. Every film adaptation is defined by its legally sanctioned use of material from an earlier model, whose adaptation rights the producers have customarily purchased (138). Putting aside for the split minute of arc the fact that this description immediately excludes those obvious remakes which do not acknowledge their previous source, the point Leitch wishes to make is that although adaptation rights (e.g., film adaptation rights of a novel) are something producers of the cowcatcher work have a right to sell, it is only remakes that compete instanter and without legal or economic compensation with other versions of the same property (138)Remakes differ from adaptations to a new medium because of the three-sided relationship they establish among themselves, the original film they remake, andthe property on which both films are based. The nature of this triangle is most clearly indicated by the fact that the producers of a remake typically pay no adaptation fees to the makers of the original film, but rather purchase adaptation rights from the authors of the property on which that film was based, even though the remake is competing much more directly with the original filmespecially in these days of video, when the origina l film and the remake are often found side by side on the shelves of rental outletsthan with the story or play or novel on which it is based.(139)Taking as an initial proposition the triangular relationship among a remake, its original film, and the source for both films, Leitch suggests that any given remake can seek to define itself either with primary reference to the film it remakes or to the material on which both films are based and whether it poses as a new version of an older film or of a story predating either film, it can take as its goal fidelity to the conception of the original story or a revisionary attitude toward that story (142). Accordingly, Leitch outlines the following quadripartite typology of the remake (i) readaptation the remake ignores or treats as inconsequential earlier cinematic adaptations in order to readapt as faithfully as possible (or at least more faithfully than earlier film versions) an original literary property, e.g., the film versions of Shakes peares Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, 1948 Tony Richardson, 1969 and Franco Zeffirelli, 1990) and Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948 Roman Polanski, 1971) (ii) update strange the readaptation that seeks to subordinate itself to the shopping mall of a literary classic, the update competes directly with its literary source by adopting an overtly revisionary and transformational attitude toward it, e.g., West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961) and chinaware Gil (Abel Ferrara, 1987) as transformed remakes of filmed versions of Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936 Franco Zeffirelli, 1968) (iii) homage like the readaptation, which seeks to direct the audiences attention to its literary source, the homage situates itself as a secondary text in order to pay tribute to a previous film version, e.g., Brian de Palmas arrested development (1975) and dust Double (1986) as homages to Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo (1958), and Rainer Werner Fassbinders Fear Eats the brain (1973) as a tribute t o the Douglas Sirk version of Magnificent irresistible impulse (1954) (iv) authorized remake while the homage renounces any claim to be violate than its original, the truthful remake deals with the contradictory claims of all remakesthat they are just like their originals only betterby . . . combining a focus on a cinematic original with an accommodating stance which seeks to make the original relevant by modify it, e.g., Bob Rafelsons 1981 remake of The immune carrier endlessly Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946), and Lawrence Kasdans trunk Heat (1981) as a remake of Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) (142-45). Leitch concludes that, unlike readaptations, updates, and homages, which only acknowledge one earlier text (literary in the world-class two cases and cinematic in the third), aline remakes emphasize a triangular archetype of intertextuality, since their rhetorical strategy depends on ascribing their value to a classic earlier text i.e., an original property such as James M. Cains novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and protecting that value by invoking a second earlier film text as betraying it Garnetts version as a watered-down film noir, probably due to limitations imposed by the MGM studio and the Production encipher of the forties (147).While Leitchs recognition of the significance of a literary property, and in particular the relationship of a film adaptation and its remake to that property, leads to what at offshoot appears to be a more nuanced typology than that outlined by Druxman, yet favor reveals a number of difficulties, not only among Leitchs four categories but in relation to his preliminary suppositions. Firstly, while the ubiquity of the Hollywood remake mogul understandably lead Leitch to conclude that the remake is a particularly cinematic form,(4) we might question to what extent it differs from the remaking of songs in the popular symphony industry. That is, how does the triadic relationship between (i) the Pet Sho p Boys long remake (of their earlier, shorter remake) of Always on My Mind, (ii) the 1972 version of the same song by Elvis Presley, and (iii) the original property (music and lyrics written by Thompson James Christopher, and published by pervade Gems/EMI), differ appreciably from the triangular relationship for the film remake as described by Leitch? Or, to take as another example a case that underscores Leitchs overestimation of the economic competition a remake creates for a former adaptation, the Sid Vicious remake of My Way (and even Gary Oldmans remake of the same performance for Alex Coxs Sid and Nancy 1986) competes culturally, but not economically, with Frank Sinatras earlier adaptation of a property written by Reveaux, Francois, and Anka. These examples, and others from the popular music industry, adequately accept to, and so problematize, Leitchs initial claim that the film remake is unique because of the fact that its producers typically pay no adaptation fees to the makers of the original version, but rather purchase adaptation rights from the authors publishers of the property on which that version was based (139).A second limitation is that while Druxman at least acknowledges the difficulty of identifying and categorizing those films that are obviously remakes but do not credit their origins (9), Leitch remains curiously silent in this respect. For instance, Leitch considers Body Heat a true remake of Double Indemnity, but he does not comment upon the fact that the films credits do not acknowledge the James M. Cain novel as a source similarly, Leitch takes Obsession and Body Double to be homages to Vertigo, but he fails to note that incomplete of the films credit either the Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor screenplay or the Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narceiac novel, Dentre les morts, upon which the Hitchcock film is based. While I will return to the question of identifying unacknowledged remakes, Leitchs insistence upon the data link between th ree elementsa remake, an earlier version, and a literary propertypresents a further difficulty in that it marginalizes those instances in which a dyadic relationship exists between a remake and a previous film that is itself the original property. Although it might be objected that a published original screenplay constitutes a discrete property, the point to be made here is that the remake of an original film property, such as John Badhams The Assassin Point of No Return (1994), does not compete directly and without legal or economic compensation with its earlier version, but (generally) pays adaptation fees to the copyright holder of the original film upon which it is based (in this example, Luc Bessons La Femme Nikita 1990).(5)The example of the American remake of Nikita not only demonstrates that a triangular relationship fails to accommodate remakes of those films based upon original stories and screenplays, but highlights the difficulty of Leitchs suggestion that remakes compet e with earlier versions and his belief that successful remakes supersede and so typically threaten the economic viability of their originals (139). To stay with the example of the French-Italian production of Nikita, it fronts doubtful that, having successfully played an art-cinema traffic circle and having been issued to home video (variously under the categories of cult, festival, and arthouse), the appearance of The Assassin, initially as a first run theatrical release and then as a mainstream video release would have any appreciable impact (either plus or negative) upon the formers economic viability. Admittedly, The Assassin was not promoted as a remake of the Besson film, but even a widely publicized remake such as Martin Scorseses 1991 version of ness Fear(6) did not occasion the burial, or even diminish the cult following, of J. Lee Thompsons earlier (1961) version. On the contrary, the theatrical release of the Scorsese film (accompanied by press releases and reviews f oregrounding its status as remake) prompted first a video release and then a prime-time national picture screening of the Thompson version. The reciprocity of the two versions is further exemplified by Sight and Sounds political campaign together of a lead article by Jim Hoberman on Scorsese and Cape Fear and a second, briefer article comparing the two versions (novelist Jenny Diski watches a video of the first Cape Fear and the Scorsese remakeand compares them) and giving details of the handiness of the (then recently) re-released CIC video of the 1961 version (see Hoberman Sacred and Profane Diski The Shadow Within). While reciprocity may not always be the casein the international grocery a local remake may supplant an earlier outside(prenominal) language and/or culture version(7)it seems that contemporary remakes generally enjoy a more symbiotic relationship than Leitchs account would have us believe.While the above examples suggest that Leitch overestimates the extent to which some remakes compete with original film versions, his recognition of the impact that innovations in television technology, particularly home video, have had upon shaping the relationship between a remake and its earlier versions should not be underestimated. Leitch states that during the studio-dominated era of the thirties and forties it was at least in part the belief that films had a strictly current value that enabled studios such as Warners to recycle The Maltese Falcon three times in ten twelvemonths (Roy Del Ruth, 1931 William Dieterle, 1936 as Satan Met a Lady and John Huston, 1941) and release many unofficial remakes of its own films (139), although the re-release of successful features, particularly during the late forties and early fifties, gave some films a especial(a) currency outside their initial year of release (see McElwee), the majority of films held in studio libraries were not available for re-viewing until the mid-fifties when the major studios decided t o sell or lease their libraries to television. The release of thousands of pre-1948 features into the television market not only gave the general public the opportunity to see many films that had been held in studio archives since their initial year of release, but provided the possibility of seeing different versions of the same property, produced years or even decades apart, within weeks or even days of each other. Moreover, the television publicize of films provided the further possibility of viewing remakes outside of the temporal order of their production, i.e., the iterate screening of the same features meant that it was inevitable that the broadcast of a remake would antedate the screening of its original. While Leitch does not address the impact of television, his recognition that a remake and its original circulate in the same video mart draws attention to the fact that the introduction of an information storage technology such as videotape mathematical grouply extends the kind of film literacy, the ability to manage and cross-reference multiple versions of the same property, that is inaugurated by the age of television.The ever-expanding availability of texts and technologies and the unexampled awareness of film history among new Hollywood filmmakers and contemporary audiences are closely related to the general concept of intertextuality, an in principle decisiveness which requires that texts be understood not as self-contained structures but as the repetition and transformation of other absent textual structures (Frow, Intertextuality and Ontology 45). Generally speaking, in the case of remakes these intertextual structures are stabilized, or limited, through the naming and (usually) legally sanctioned (i.e., copyrighted) use of a particular literary and/or cinematic source which serves as a retrospectively designated point of origin and semantic fixity. In addition, the intertextual structures (unlike those of genre) are highly particular in their repetition of narrative units, and these repetitions most often (though certainly not always) relate to the order of the message rather than to that of the mark (45).(8) While these factors yield some degree of consensus, any easy categorization of the remake is frustrated by (i) films which do not credit an original text, but which repeat both general and particular elements of the originals narrative unfolding, e.g., Body Heat as an uncredited remake of Double Indemnity and The Big dispirit (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983) as an unacknowledged remake of The Return of the Secaucus Seven (John Sayles, 1980)(9) and (ii) films based on a like sourcea literary work or historical incidentbut which differ significantly in their treatment of narrative units, e.g., The Bounty (Roger Donaldson, 1984) as a non-remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935 and Lewis Milestone, 1962). Furthermore, the intertextual referentiality between either non-remakes or unacknowledged remakes and thei r originals is to a large extent extratextual (Friedberg 175-76), being conveyed through institutions such as film reviewing and exhibition, for example, the BFI/National Film Theatres programmed describes four films from Paul Schrader scriptsTaxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), turn over Thunder (John Flynn, 1977), Hardcore, and Patty Hearst (Paul Schrader, 1979 and 1988)as updates of The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) (The Searchers A Family Tree).In the case of Leitchs typology, we have seen that the remake is categorized according to whether the intertextual referent is literary (the readaptation, the update) or cinematic (the homage, the true remake). In the latter case, Leitch states that while homages, such as The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) and Invaders from impair (Tobe Hooper, 1986), establish direct intertextual relations to their original films, these references or rewards take the form of throwaway jokes whose point is not necessary to the films persistence, and which therefore provide an ex gratia bonus of pleasure to those in the know (141). While this may seem consistent with Umberto Ecos account of the intertextual dialogue (i.e., the instance where a quotation is expressed and recognisable to an increasingly sophisticated, cine-literate audience), what Leitch does not sufficiently stress is that his examples of the homage (and of the true remake)all drawn from the new Hollywood cinemasuggest a historically specific repartee to a post-modern (or post-Jaws) circulation and recirculation of images and texts. This does not mean that the classical Hollywood remake neer takes an earlier film as its intertextual referent, but rather that, as the continuity system develops through the pre-classical period (1908-17), direct intertextual referentiality is displaced by an industrial dictatorial for standardization which prioritizes the intertextual relation of genres, cycles, and stars. Accordingly, as the classical narrative strives to create a coherent, self-contained fictional world according to specific mechanisms of intratextual repetition (or alternation), direct intertextual referentiality to either and/or both literary properties (novels, short-stories, plays, etc) and earlier film versions becomes an extratextual referentiality, carried by such apparatuses as advertising and promotional materials (posters, lobby cards, commercial tie-ins, etc), motion picture magazines, review articles, and academic film criticism.What seems to happen with the new Hollywood cinema, particularly in the case of remakes, is that while the intratextual mechanisms of classical continuity are mostly respected, extratextual referentiality is sometimes complemented by what is perceivedwithin specific interpretive communitiesas the explicit and recognizable intertextual quotation of plot motifs and stylistic features, peculiar to earlier film versions. To take a general example, the narrative of Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) assumes as its primary intertexts the revisionist westerns of the sixties and seventies, and the Eastwood star persona, but (re)viewers additionally see the film as a kind of sequel (the Will Munny character as the now aged Man-with-no-name, from Eastwoods spaghetti westerns) and as a homage to the films of both Sam Peckinpah and John Ford.(10) More specifically, Martin Scorseses remake of Cape Fear may be said to work absolutely well as a conventional thriller (a psychopath attacks a normalin this case, dysfunctionalAmerican family), but the new Cape Fear also assumes in its reworking of the original Bernard Herrmann score and the molding of original lead players in cameo roles that the viewer has seen the earlier one, perhaps even as recently as Scorsese himself (Hoberman 11). Another example, Jim McBrides Breathless (1983), not only quotes the Godard original (A bout de souffle, 1959) in its smallest detail (a characters name, a players gesture), but more generally embraces Godards enthusi asm for American pop-cultural iconography the title song, Breathless, by the KillerJerry Lee Lewis the Roy Lichtenstein-type lifts from react Comics The Silver Surfer, the collectable American automobilethe 1957 Ford Thunderbird, the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado. Finally, while it is possible to develop similar examples in the classical cinema,(11) the point to be made here is that the type of intertextual referentiality which characterizes (some) contemporary American film circulates in a historically specific context, i.e., the identification of, and indeed the commercial decision to remake, an earlier film is grounded in particular extratextual, institutional, or discursive practices.As in Noel Carrolls discussion of new Hollywood allusionism, the question of intertextual referentiality needs to be related to the radical extension of film literacy and the enthusiasm for American film history that took hold in the United States during the sixties and early seventies. Partly made possi ble by the release of Hollywood features to television (which had come to function like a film archive) and the wider accessibility of new technologies (e.g., 16mm film projection), this re-evaluation, or legitimization, of Hollywood cultural product was underwritten by such additional factors as the importation of the French politique des auteurs, the upsurge of repertory theatre short-seasons, the expansion of film courses in American universities, and the emergence of professional associations such as the American Film Institute. Accordingly, and this is evident from the above examplesUnforgiven, Cape Fear, Breathlessthe selection and recognition of films, and bodies of films, for quotation and reworking (the work of auteurs, Ford and Peckinpah the cult movie, Cape Fear, the nouvelle vague landmark, A bout de souffle) can be located in the institutionally determined practice of film canon formation and its contributing projectsthe discussion and citation of particular films in p opular and academic film criticism, the selective release and re-release of films to theatrical and video distribution windows, and (in circular fashion) the decision of other filmmakers to evoke earlier films and recreate cinema history (see Staiger 4).An understanding of the formation and maintenance of a film canon in turn goes some way toward explaining why remakes of institutionalized film noirse.g., D.O.A. (Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, 1988), No Way Out (Roger Donaldson, 1987), and Against All betting odds (Taylor Hackford, 1984)are discussed with reference to their originals (D.O.A.Rudolph Mate, 1949, The Big Clock John Farrow, 1948, and Out of the Past Jacques Tourneur, 1947, respectively), while films such as Martin Scorseses version of The hop on of Innocence (1993) and James Deardens remake of A Kiss out front destruction (1991) defer, not to their little known, or (now) rarely seen, earlier film versions (The Age of Innocence Wesley Ruggles, 1924 and Philip Moell er, 1934, and A Kiss Before Dying Gerd Oswald, 1961) but to the authority of an established literary canon The Age of Innocence is based on Edith Whartons 1920 Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Kiss Before Dying is adapted from a best-selling novel by Ira Levin. Indeed, and in accordance with the canonization of the work of Alfred Hitchcock, the more direct intertextual referent for the remake of A Kiss Before Dying is Hitchcocks Vertigoa clip from the film appears diegetically on a characters television screen, and in addition to the figure of the doppelganger there is allusion to Hitchcockian plot structure and motif liberally alluding to Hitchcock by cleanup position off his leading actress in the first reel, Dearden includes subtler references like the washing out of hair-dye and the cop who just wont leave (Strick 50).The suggestion that the very limited intertextual referentiality between the remake and its original is organized according to an extratextual referentiality locate d in historically specific discursive formationssuch as copyright law and authorship, canon formation and film literacyhas consequences for purely textual descriptions of the remake, particularly those based on a rigid distinction between an original story and its new discursive incarnation (see Leitch 143).Aside from the questionable move of assuming that the still essence of a films story can somehow be rattlepated from the mutable disposition of its expression (see Brunette and Wills 53), demarcation along the lines of story and discourse is evidently frustrated by those remakes which repeat not only the narrative invention of an original property but seek, for instance, to recreate the communicative design of an earlier film (e.g., Obsession as a reconstruction of the mood and manner of Hitchcocks Vertigo see Rosenbaum 217) or to rework the style of an entire oeuvre or genre (e.