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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 25 |
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OUR MYSTERIES THROUGH FOREIGN EYES
THREE FOREIGN FILMS FROM AMERICAN MYSTERIES At left, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low," which switches the locale of an Ed McBain "87th Precinct" novel to Japan; center: the French version of Cornell Woolrich's "I Married A Dead Man," known in France as "I Married A Shadow"; at right, Rene Clement's "Purple Noon," the first screen version of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley." |
How foreign filmmakers
do American mysteries
of TheColumnists.com
Even in the early days of silent movies, foreign filmmakers were choosing some of America's best mystery stories as the subjects of their films. Stories by Edgar Allan Poe, for instance, were being filmed overseas even before D.W. Griffith made the first big box office American feature film--"The Birth of A Nation"--in 1915.
Today filmmaking is such a global industry that it's no longer real easy to decide which culture fostered which films. Foreign directors frequently come to America and make mystery movies that may or may not emerge with the director's own sensibility.
In fact, I sincerely believe that the great American films we now extol as fine examples of "films noir" are those made by foreign directors who came to America in the 1930s and 1940s, some with limited knowledge of English and American customs. Classics like Austrian Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" and "Sunset Boulevard," German Fritz Lang's "Scarlet Street" and "The Big Heat," German Robert Siodmak's "The Killers" and "Phantom Lady," and Englishman Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" and "Strangers On A Train" brought their special feeling for dark themes, cynical characters and shadowy settings to American suspense, mystery and thriller films. It was the French film critics, who loved those films, who created the term "films noir" to describe them.
But many American mystery writers were favorites of foreign filmmakers, who made movies of their stories in their own language, initially for their own countrymen.
Three American authors especially loved by foreign filmmakers were Patricia Highsmith, Cornell Woolrich and Ed McBain. Highsmith and Woolrich wrote psychologically twisted stories with no running detective characters while McBain, the pen name of Solvatore Lombino, who also wrote mainstream fiction under the name Evan Hunter, wrote cynical "police procedurals," most of them dealing with the mythical 87th Precinct.
Though Highsmith's first published novel, "Strangers On A Train," became a best-seller in America and was turned into a popular film by Hitchcock in 1951, most of her other works were filmed by European directors in their own countries. (Highsmith lived the latter part of her life in Europe.)
Highsmith's reverred series of novels about Tom Ripley, an American-born criminal who lives in Europe, were all made as foreign films by foreign directors, starting with Rene Clement's 1960 film "Plein Soleil" ("Purple Noon"), the first film version of the first Ripley novel, "The Talented Mr. Ripley." The better known remake, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), was an English film, directed by Anthony Minghella. Highsmith's "Ripley's Game" was filmed in 1977 by German Wim Wenders as "The American Friend" with Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley. Liliana Cavani's 2003 remake of "Ripley's Game" with John Malkovich as Ripley was an Italian film. The most recent Ripley film, "Ripley Under Ground" (2005), was directed by English filmmaker Roger Spottiswoode.
French director Claude Chabrol filmed Highsmith's "Cry of the Owl" in 1987 as an Italian film. Her early novel "The Blunderer" was filmed in 1963 by Claude Autant-Lara as a French film called "Le Meurnier."
I believe the blurred notions about right and wrong that are such a major element in Highsmith's novels have appealed to European filmmakers who have more relaxed ideas about moral issues and are more interested in stories that reflect reality rather than those that tie up neatly with the guilty always being punished, which is the case in too many formulaic American films.
Though author Cornell Woolrich, who wrote under several names, wasn't exactly ignored by American filmmakers, his dark, fateful stories were especially favored by foreign filmmakers, especially Frenchman Francois Truffaut, who filmed his "The Bride Wore Black" in 1967 and "Waltz into Darkness" in 1969 as "Mississippi Mermaid." Woolrich's "I Married A Dead Man" also became a French film--"I Married A Shadow"--in 1982 and his story "For the Rest of Her Life" was filmed for German television as "Martha" in 1973.
Several Ed McBain "87th Precinct" novels became acclaimed foreign films, most notably Akira Kurosawa's 1963 contemporary thriller "High and Low," which was based on McBain's 1959 novel "King's Ransom" about a businessman who's morally obliged to pay the ransom even after he discovers kidnappers have mistakenly snatched the wrong boy and his own son is safe.
Another famed Japanese director, Ken Ichikawa, adapted McBain's "Lady, Lady, I Did It" into his 1981 film "Kofuku" (U.S. title: "Lonely Heart"); Claude Chabrol turned McBain's "Blood Relatives" into the 1981 French film "Les Liens de Sang," and McBain's "Ten Plus One" was filmed in French as "Sans Mobile Apparent" ("Without Apparent Motive") in 1972 by Philippe Labrol.
And here are some other significant foreign films made from American mysteries: Claude Chabrol's "Ten Days Wonder" (1972) with Orson Welles and Anthony Perkins was based on the Ellery Queen novel of the same name. Francois Truffaut's 1960 "Shoot the Piano Player," one of the foundations of the French "New Wave" was based on the novel "Down There" by American David Goodis. Jim Thompson's novel "Pop. 1240" was filmed by Bernard Tavernier as "Coup de Torchon" in 1981.
Through most of these overseas adaptations, the foreign filmmakers generally have adapted the storyline to their own national culture. Tavernier's film version of the Jim Thompson novel, which takes place in the American south, was shifted back in time to 1936 and the setting was moved to French Equatorial Africa. That made sense because the story, which involves the American southern attitude toward African-Americans, still could deal with race by putting it in a place and era where the French attitude toward African blacks was equally racist and seems well-suited to what goes on in the Thompson novel.
The various adaptations of Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels didn't have to do much revising of the basic concepts because her Ripley character, like Highsmith herself, was an American living in Europe as somewhat of an expatriate. And though there are strong differences between the police procedures in America and Japan, the shift in setting of McBain's "King's Ransom" to Japan didn't really compromise the original story, which depended heavily on the moral issues facing the businessman hero, which were universally difficult.
Still, there have been some cases where the shift of setting has become ludicrous. The two English films made from Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep" (1978) and "Farewell My Lovely" (1975) moved those classic stories to 1970s London, but hero Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) still seemed like the American private eye of the 1940s, way out of place in swinging, modern London. The HBO "Philip Marlowe" series with Powers Boothe as Marlowe also seemed strange because the episodes, adapted from Chandler's Marlowe short stories, were filmed in England with mostly English settings and players.
If a character like Marlowe is quintessentially American, I think it's as big a mistake to plop him down in a foreign culture as it would be for Americans to try making Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories in America with American settings and somebody like Jim Carrey as Poirot.
But when the stories seem more foreign
in attitude--as Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels do--sometimes you
get much better films than you might get if they were made in
America by Americans.
©2007 by Ron Miller. The home video and DVD covers are courtesy of the individual distributors. This column first posted June 28, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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