There’s Just a Nodding Acquaintance

When is a remake not really a remake? When it’s an inspiration, an interpretation, an adaptation, an elaboration, an update or--of all things--a non-remake. In other words, whenever a film’s original premise has been so thoroughly altered that you can hardly recognize it.

It’s no wonder that so many filmmakers are distancing themselves from cinematic predecessors these days to enhance their own creativity or to avoid unwelcome comparisons.

What’s revealing about this unofficial remake trend, though, is not only what filmmakers are choosing to revisit but how cleverly they’re departing from predecessors to appeal to a contemporary audience and to satisfy their own egos:

* “Washington Square,” filmed previously as “The Heiress” in 1949 by William Wyler, reinterprets Henry James’ 19th century novel to accentuate Jennifer Jason Leigh’s agony in the tug of war between abusive father Albert Finney and awkward suitor Ben Chaplin.

* “Great Expectations,” due the end of the year, avoids David Lean’s 1946 film while discarding much of Charles Dickens’ plot in this MTV-style update about artist Ethan Hawke traveling from Florida to New York in search of fame and Gwyneth Paltrow.

* “The Jackal” gets a complete make-over from Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 assassination thriller, as icy Bruce Willis stalks a top American target for the Russian mafia, hotly pursued by IRA terrorist Richard Gere and FBI deputy director Sidney Poitier.

* “Mad City” merely borrows the ethical dilemma from Billy Wilder’s acidic “Ace in the Hole” (1951), with ambitious TV reporter Dustin Hoffman exploiting unemployed museum security guard John Travolta’s inadvertent hostage crisis.

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What could be more current than transforming victimization into therapeutic self-awareness? That’s exactly what director Agnieszka Holland and screenwriter Carol Doyle achieve with “Washington Square.” According to a previous quote, what Holland finds so attractive about James, in addition to his ambiguity, is “the dynamic of change in the main character, as she goes from nothing to her own sense of self-hood.”

There’s nothing ambiguous about Montgomery Clift’s fortune hunting in “The Heiress,” which makes Olivia De Haviland’s triumphant revenge so exhilarating.

The filmmakers want none of that in “Washington Square.” They’re after a softer kind of empowerment. Not surprisingly, Holland’s visual strategy also differs from Wyler’s calm spatial divide. Her swooping camera is full of neurotic energy; her shots are claustrophobic and contrasty, with only occasional bursts of color.

Unlike Holland, director Alfonso Cuaron needed to be liberated from his literary source in updating “Great Expectations.” In fact, the only reason he agreed to make the film was because Mitch Glazer’s script was such a departure from Dickens. While many of the events are similar, the setting, context and character construction are all reinvented. Even Pip’s name has been changed to Finn.

“We didn’t have a name we liked until we were in production, when Ethan came up with the idea of Finn,” Cuaron says. “The intention was never to do Dickens’ book or Lean’s film, which was so faithful. This is an elaboration, not a remake.”

Clearly, class differences and Victorian mores wouldn’t translate. What remained, however, was the protagonist’s struggle to control his life and an obsession with his elusive love.

“Everything is filtered through his perception,” the director adds. “There is more of a primal taste to Florida, and New York is more aggressive than romanticized.”

Still, this is a love story, and Cuaron uses water as an erotic symbol whenever Hawke and Paltrow kiss. He’s also chosen a suitably Gothic location for the decaying manor where the lovers first meet as children: Ca d’ Zan, the Venetian mansion on Sarasota Bay. Here the filmmakers try to modernize Dickens’ ghoulish Miss Havishom subplot, with Anne Bancroft as Dinsmoor, the jilted bride frozen in time, sardonically dancing to “Besame Mucho,” looking like a long-lost sister from “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Likewise, in modernizing “The Day of the Jackal,” only the basic concept is retained, along with a few familiar incidents, which is why Zinnemann--who died in March--had demanded a change of title. After all, without the Charles De Gaulle assassination plot or Zinnemann’s deliberate pace, it’s really a different film.

Director Michael Caton-Jones agreed and purposely avoided seeing the original before shooting his non-remake. “The original is a great chase, a good basis for a contemporary action movie,” suggests producer James Jacks, who initiated the new “Jackal” with partner Sean Daniel.

“By fictionalizing it, we wanted to make it topical and give the pursuers more of a rooting interest,” Jacks says. “The audience has a natural desire to identify with the Jackal because he’s being chased by everybody in the original.”

The answer was the creation of a second Jackal to complement Willis. So screenwriter Kevin Jarre, with a fondness for the IRA already evidenced in “The Devil’s Own,” contributed the Gere character as an unexpected nemesis. He’s an imprisoned terrorist betrayed by the Jackal who strikes a bargain to assist the FBI.

The new version is not only faster-paced, but Willis portrays a sadistic Jackal who plays with some dangerous high-tech toys.

“He’s a great character,” Jacks adds. “He’s an omnipotent killer who is one step ahead of everyone. And having a movie star makes it work so differently.”

“Mad City” has its own star power, with Hoffman playing media mentor to Travolta’s Gump-like simpleton in a different state of siege by director Costa-Gavras. Travolta, who angrily wants his job back, is forced to keep children hostage in the museum after accidentally shooting the other security guard.

Hoffman then keenly milks the story for another shot at network stardom in New York. Although similar in spirit to “Ace in the Hole” (cynical reporter Kirk Douglas keeps a man trapped in a collapsed cave to milk his story), screenwriter Tom Matthews insists “Mad City” was inspired only by the Wilder film.

“This is not a remake of ‘Ace in the Hole,’ but I liked its theme about journalistic abuse when I first saw the film 12 years ago on AMC,” Matthews says. “I wanted to address the question of abuse in journalism through a story of my own. I was also inspired by the siege in Waco. That was the jumping-off point for ‘Mad City.’ ”