Brideshead Revisited, revisited
I have discovered, to my horror, that a new film version of Brideshead Revisited is in production. Why? What on Earth is the point of this when the most definitive version imaginable has already been done?
Granada TV’s 1981 production, adapted by John Mortimer and with the most perfect cast imaginable is clearly one of the greatest adaptations of a novel to the screen (be it small screen or silver screen) that has ever been accomplished. Deciding that it’s worth having another go at it is like deciding to remake Casablanca, or The Godfather. It’s not just cynical, it’s utterly disrespectful.
Worse still, apparently the producers have decided to squeeze the novel into a two hour time slot by dropping all mention of or references to Roman Catholicism. In other words, by choosing to abandon the entire theme of the novel. As one poster on the IMDb message board said, it would be like deciding to remake Gone with the Wind and then removing everything to do with the civil war!
August 14th, 2005 at 4:41 am
The reason they are re-making it is simple: the first version was successful and producers are completely unable to face risking money on something that is unproven. They will stick a few current “stars” in with some “production value” (read young girls) and throw it against the wall. Even if it sucks it will probably make it’s money back.
May 29th, 2006 at 9:26 am
You cannot remake this, there is only one, thats the original magic in its true form, real majic cannot be repeated.even the taps spoken by Jeremy Irons can not be done again, this again is the one and only magic
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Simple as that. I bet you can’t help yourself though!