Top 10 European Remakes

Having recently looked at the French films that have inspired English-language remakes, Cinema Paradiso turns its attention to pictures from the rest of the Europe to mark the release on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray of A Man Called Otto.

The practice of remaking overseas hits isn't confined to Hollywood and the British film industry. Take, for example, the Mexican comedy, Instructions Not Included (2013), the tale of a man who discovers he has a daughter that stars director Eugenio Derbez. This has already been rejigged in France, Brazil, Turkey, and South Korea, while further versions are also scheduled for India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hollywood. Then, there's Hwang Dong-hyuk's Take Miss Granny (2014), about a seventysomething who suddenly turns back into her 20 year-old self. Chinese and Vietnamese remakes have already been box-office hits, with producers in India, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan hoping that lightning can strike twice (well, seven times, and counting).

You can tell acting legend Christopher Lee was an artist not a businessman, as he once grumbled, 'I don't believe in remakes. You can make a follow up to a film, but to remake a movie with such history and success just doesn't make sense to me.' Money talks and that's why Leonardo DiCaprio is considering a reboot of Dane Thomas Vinterberg's Oscar winner about teachers with alcohol problems, Another Round (2020).

Keen on Kino

As we saw in 100 Years of German Expressionism, Weimar was responsible for some of the most innovative cinema of the 1920s. Among the most celebrated pictures was Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), which was remade to a chorus of disapproval by Roger Kay in 1962 and to degrees of bemusement by David Lee Fisher in 2005. More successful was Mad Love (1935), Karl Freund's retake on Wiene's adaptation of Maurice Renard's novel, The Hands of Orlac (1924), with Peter Lorre taking over the murderous lead from Conrad Veidt.

The coming of sound saw the emphasis shift away from imagery to dialogue, however, and the language barrier proved a significance hindrance to exports. Equally damaging was the exodus of talents that followed the rise of Adolf Hitler, with Hollywood being the principal beneficiary. Nevertheless, films produced in Germany and Austria continued to be picked up for remakes in Britain and America.

A couple of Jessie Matthews vehicles borrowed from Weimar musicals, with Albert De Courville's There Goes the Bride (1932) and Victor Saville's First a Girl (1935) starting out as I'll Stay With You (1931) and Viktor und Viktoria (1933), which had respectively starred Jenny Jugo and Renate Mller. Blake Edwards would revisit the latter as Victor/Victoria (1982) for wife Julie Andrews. Cinema Paradiso users can find the Matthews gems on Volume 6 and Volume 1 of The Jessie Matthews Revue.

Taking over from Brigitte Helm (of Metropolis fame), Norwegian star Greta Nissen plays a marchesa caught up in some Austro-Italian espionage during the Great War in Arthur B. Woods's On Secret Service, which shared a male lead in Karl Ludwig Diehl with the German original, Spies At Work (both 1933). And there's more intrigue on view in Milton Rosmer's Emil and the Detectives (1935), which followed Gerhard Lamprecht's 1931 adaptation of Erich Kästner's enduringly popular children's novel.

Peter Tewksbury produced a third version in Hollywood in 1964, by which time Hayley Mills had doubled up in David Swift's The Parent Trap (1961), which took its cues from Josef von Báky's Two Times Lotte (1950), which was based on Kästner's Lottie and Lisa. Starring Lindsay Lohan, Nancy Meyers's The Parent Trap (1998) owed more to the Disney classic than the text.

One of the greatest musicals produced in Hollywood had its roots in a Hungarian play by Sándor Faragó and Aladar Laszlo entitled A Girl Who Dares. This was filmed in German in the Hungarian capital by Géza von Bolváry as Skandal in Budapest (1933), with Paul Hörbiger and Franziska Gaal. In the Hollywood version, the roles went to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who danced cheek to cheek in Mark Sandrich's Art Deco screwball, Top Hat (1935). Equally chic was Frank Borzage's Desire (1936), which reunited Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper for the first time since Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930). Johannes Meyer had directed Brigitte Helm in two 1933 versions of this thief on the run caper (which were adapted from a play by János Székely and Robert A. Stemmle), alongside Gustaf Gründgens in Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez and Jean Gabin in Adieu les beaux jours.

The wonderful Renate Müller (who was victimised by the Gestapo) took the role in Georg Jacoby's Sturm im Wasserglas (1931) that would reinforce the burgeoning reputation of Vivien Leigh alongside Rex Harrison in Ian Dalrymple's comic romance, Storm in a Teacup (1937). Another Austrian comedy, Henry Koster's Kleine Mutti (1935), provided an excellent vehicle for Ginger Rogers, as she assumed the role of the shopgirl mistaken for a new mother that had been taken by Franziska Gaal in Garson Kanin's comedy of errors Bachelor Mother (1939).

Another Vivien Leigh/Rex Harrison outing, Tim Whelan's St Martin's Lane (1937), finds itself on a Cinema Paradiso double bill with Harold French and Paul L. Stein's Talk About Jacqueline (1942). Despite Britain being in a fight to the death with Nazi Germany, this comedy about a wife letting her sister take the blame for her chequered past was based on Werner Hochbaum's Man spricht über Jacqueline (1937), which was adapted from a novel by Katrin Holland. The lives of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand provided the impetus for Géza von Bolváry's Abschiedswalzer (1934), which teamed Cornel Wilde and Merle Oberon when it was remade in Hollywood by Charles Vidor as A Song to Remember (1945). The original story was credited to Ernst Marischka, who would play a key role in reviving Austrian cinema after the war, most notably as the director of Sissi (1955), Sissi: The Young Empress (1956), and Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), which made a star of Romy Schneider in the role of the Empress Elisabeth that Vicky Krieps would take to spellbinding effect in Marie Kreutzer's Corsage (2022).

Paula Wessely had played the Austrian aristocrat whose life was chronicled in Karl Hartl's Der Engel mit der Posaune (1948), but Eileen Herlie did a fine job in Anthony Bushell's The Angel With the Trumpet (1950). Similarly, Vera-Ellen steps up as the chorus girl mistakenly believed to be engaged to Scotland's richest man in H. Bruce Humberstone's Happy Go Lovely (1951), a remake of Thornton Freeland's Paradise For Two (1937), which was itself a revision of E.W. Emo's And Who Is Kissing Me? (1933).

Curt Goetz had co-directed an adaptation of his hit play, Doctor Praetorius (1950), but Cary Grant took the role of the physician whose unorthodox methods are questioned by rival Hume Cronyn in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's People Will Talk (1951). The same year saw David Wayne attempt to fill Peter Lorre's shoes in M, Joseph Losey's ill-starred remake of Fritz Lang's criminal underworld masterpiece, M (1931). Another misfiring bid to duplicate a classic was Edward Dmytryk's The Blue Angel (1959), which saw Curt Jurgens and May Britt struggling to keep pace with Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930), which was based on Heinrich Mann's novel, Professor Unrat,

Gene Kelly turned down the chance to remake Wolfgang Liebeneiner's Die Trapp-Familie (1956), as he felt such sentimental claptrap would ruin his reputation. In fact, Robert Wise won an Academy Award for handling the film version of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's hit show, The Sound of Music (1965), which saw Julie Andrews take over from Ruth Leuwerik as Maria. Yet, two decades were to pass before American cinema produced its next worthwhile remake of a German movie. Percy Adlon's marvellous Zuckerbaby (1985) inspired Paul Schneider's Baby Cakes (1989), with Ricki Lake striving valiantly to match Marianne Sägebrecht as the plump mortuary beautician looking for love.

A rare East German film to be remade in Hollywood was Frank Beyer's Jakob der Lügner (1975), an adaptation of a Jurek Becker novel about Nazi-occupied Poland that afforded Robin Williams one of his best roles, in Peter Kassovitz's Jakob the Liar (1999), as a shopkeeper trying to boost ghetto morale with fake news. The same year saw the release of The Thirteenth Floor, Josef Rusnak's reboot of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's masterly two-part mini-series, World on a Wire (1973), which was adapted from Simulacron-3, Daniel F. Galouye's neo-noir sci-fi novel about a rogue virtual reality programme. Now there's a double bill to keep Cinema Paradiso users on their toes.

We might also suggest ordering Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire (1987) with Brad Silberling's City of Angels (1998). There's no question which is the better film, with angel Bruno Ganz's romance with trapeze artist Solveig Dommartin being made all the more magical by Henri Alekan's monochrome photography. But Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan are well matched and Dennis Franz follows capably in the footsteps of Peter Falk, as the angel who has taken human form.

Another recommended twosome might lead to confusion if you add Fassbinder's Martha (1974) to the mix. We're referring, however, to Sandra Nettelbeck's Mostly Martha (2001) and Scott Hicks's No Reservations (2007), which respectively star Martina Gedeck and Catherine Zeta Jones, as the perfectionist chefs who find love with colleagues Sergio Castellitto and Aaron Eckhart. Just to add a dash more spice, there's also a Spanish gay variation on the theme, in which Javier Cámara cooks up a storm for Benjamin Vicuña in Nacho G. Velilla's Chef's Special (2008).

A noted Friedrich Dürrenmatt novella links Ladislao Vadja's Swiss presentation, It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958), and Sean Penn's The Pledge (2001), with Jack Nicholson stepping into Heinz Rühmann's role as a detective promising the parents of a murdered child that he will find the culprit. Nicholson was linked to a remake of Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann (2016). But it has remained in development hell since he dropped out in 2017.

Dennis Hopper, Nicholson's compadre and director from Easy Rider (1969), finds himself on the wrong side of the law in Wim Wenders's The American Friend (1977), a take on a Patricia Highsmith thriller that was remade by Italian Liliana Cavani as Ripley's Game (2002), with John Malkovich as the chancer who discovers that London gangster Ray Winstone had tried to cheat him in an art scam.

Achim Bornhak's teleplay Operation Noah (1998) prompted Anthony Hickox to make Blast (2004), an eco thriller set on a North Sea oil rig and starring Vinnie Jones. One can only presume that curiosity persuaded Austrian auteur Michael Haneke to see if he could relocate his 1997 home invasion thriller, Funny Games, to an American setting. Despite casting Tim Roth and Naomi Watts as the couple terrorised by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet, Funny Games (2007), failed to match its predecessor.

The tension was more successfully ratcheted up in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Das Experiment (2001) and Paul Scheuring's The Experiment (2010), which share a source in Mario Giordano's novel, Black Box, which riffed on the infamous psychological study carried out at Stanford Prison in 1971. Hans Fallada's acclaimed novel about civil disobedience during the Third Reich was filmed by Alfred Vohrer as Everyone Dies Alone (1976), with Carl Raddatz and Hildegarde Knef as the courageous couple protesting against tyranny. Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson gamely took up the mantle in Vincent Pérez's underrated Alone in Berlin (2016). Returning to the present day, Venice is the destination for Sophia Lane Nolte and her Alzheimer-afflicted grandfather, Nick Nolte, in Head Full of Honey (2018), which Til Schweiger adapted from his own domestic hit, Honig im Kopf (2014).

Schweiger was persuaded to don a Nazi uniform by Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds (2009), which took its title from Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards (1977), which was an unofficial reworking of Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967). All of which, somewhat contrivedly, brings us to Italy.

Grazie Italia

Largely set in ancient times, the superspectacles made in Italy in the 1910s were more ambitious and accomplished than the films being produced anywhere else in the world. Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914), for example, exerted a considerable influence on the Babylonian section of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916). Indeed, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Good Morning, Babylon (1987) followed a pair of sibling stonemasons to Hollywood to work on the epic and it really should be available on disc in the UK.

The Italian film industry struggled to recover from the Great War, even though dictator Benito Mussolini sanctioned the building of the famous Cinecittà Studios in Rome in 1937. This was during the 'white telephone' phase of Italian cinema, which got its name from the elegant Art Deco sets used for chic society comedies starring the likes of Vittorio De Sica, whose Bicycle Thieves (1948) was one of the key films of the Neo-realist style that transformed postwar cinema worldwide.

Often claimed to be the first Neo-realist feature, Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1942) was an unofficial adaptation of a James M. Cain thriller that was adapted in Hollywood by Tay Garnett under its original title, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). John Garfield and Lana Turner played the murderous lovers and Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange took over for Bob Rafelson's 1981 remake, which is another picture ripe for reissue on disc.

Always open to overseas influences, Billy Wilder turned to Mario Camerini's Gina Lollobrigida comedy, Moglie per una notte (1952), as the inspiration for Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), which wound up being a Dean Martin vehicle after Peter Sellers suffered a heart attack. Ira Gershwin's songs recycled unused melodies by his late brother George, while Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields provided the tunes for Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity (1969), a screen transfer of a Broadway show that had been inspired by Federico Fellini's Le Notti di Cabiria (1957), with Shirley MacLaine assuming the title role that had been played so poignantly by Giulietta Masina.

Fosse also reshaped Mario Monicelli's hilarious crime caper, Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), for the stage. However, Big Deal (1986) never reached the screen, as it closed after only 69 performances. The original Oscar-nominated story about a bungling gang of thieves has been remade, though, with Louis Malle's Crackers (1984) being followed by Anthony and Joe Russo's Welcome to Collinwood (2002).

Another Fellini masterpiece to get the musical treatment was 8 ½ (1963), the story of a director with creative block that had been reworked for the stage by Maury Weston, whose songs were retained by Rob Marshall for Nine (2009), which saw Daniel Day-Lewis take the Marcello Mastroianni role alongside an all-star female cast. Lina Wertmüller has also had a couple of her collaborations with actor Giancarlo Giannini remade Stateside. Richard Pryor headlined Michael Schultz's Which Way Is Up? (1977), which was based on The Seduction of Mimi (1972), while Guy Ritchie's Swept Away (2002) revised Swept Away...By an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (1974) to suit his then wife, Madonna.

Two enduring favourites on the Cinema Paradiso roster started out on Italian screens. Franco Amurri's Da grande (1987) had a distinct influence on Penny Marshall's Big (1988), which earned Tom Hanks his first Oscar nomination, as the tweenager who finds himself in an adult body. Al Pacino also has reason to be grateful to Italian cinema, as his Oscar-winning turn as a blind former soldier in Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman (1992) had its roots in Vittorio Gassman's performance in Dino Risi's Profumo di donna (1974), which had been adapted from a novel by Giovanni Arpino.

Mario Camerini was so fond of the comic thriller, Crimen (1960), that he remade it himself as Io non vedo, tu non parli, lui non sente in 1971. Two decades later, Eugene Levy took a crack at it, with Monte Carlo cop Giancarlo Giannini faced with an all-star suspect list in Once Upon a Crime (1992). The industrious Giannini can also be seen as Keanu Reeves's grape-growing father-in-law in Alfonso Arau's A Walk in the Clouds (1995), a postwar variation on Alessandro Blasetti's proto-Neo-realist charmer, Quattro passi fra le nuvole (1942).

Growing up is the theme of both Gabriele Muccino's L'ultimo bacio (2001) and Tony Goldwyn's The Last Kiss (2006), as Stefano Accorsi and Zach Braff respectively have to deal with the news that girlfriends Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Jacinda Barrett are pregnant. Family matters are also to the fore in Kirk Jones's Everybody's Fine (2009), which earned Paul McCartney a Golden Globe nomination for the song ' (I Want to) Come Home'. Bearing a passing similarity to Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno tutti bene (1990) was his follow up to Cinema Paradiso (1988). Ennio Morricone won a David di Donatello Award for his score and Tornatore profiled the great composer in the superb 2021 documentary, Ennio.

Antonio Albanese recently took the Kad Merdad role in Riccardo Milani's Grazie Ragazzi (2023), which reworked the prison drama workshop concept at the heart of Emmanuel Courcot's The Big Hit (2020). This wasn't Albanese's first remake, however, as Giulio Manfredonia's È già ieri (2004) was a stork-based variation on Harold Ramis's comic classic, Groundhog Day (1993). However, we're still waiting for the English-language remake of Paolo Genovese's Perfetti sconosciuti (2016), an excruciating tale of mobile phone etiquette that is one of the most remade films in screen history. Twenty-two versions have already been released, with Fred Cavayé and Álex de la Iglesias respectively directing the French and Spanish reboots, Perfect Strangers (2017) and Nothing to Hide (2018). Issa Mae has been working on the US remake for four years, but it's still to see the light of a projector.

A Continental Selection

Danish cinema has grown in strength over the last three decades, with both Dogme95 and Nordic Noir doing much to raise its profile. If the fates were kinder, Cinema Paradiso would be able to bring you Daryl Duke's The Silent Partner (1978), a tense heist thriller starring Elliot Gould and Susannah York that was based on Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt's Tænk på et tal (1969). However, we can bring you Ole Bornedal's Night Watch (1994) and his own Hollywood remake, Nightwatch (1997), which saw Ewan McGregor take over from Nicolaj Coster-Waldau as the student on the late shift at the morgue.

Staying on the creepy side, Carsten Myllerup's Midsommer (2003) inspired Daniel Myrick's Solstice (2008), in which

Elisabeth Harnois plays a teen staying in a remote bayou lake house when she senses the spirit of her dead twin. Siblings also drive the action in Susanne Bier's Brothers (2004) and Jim Sheridan's 2009 remake of the same name. Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, and Connie Nielsen find their lives intertwining in the Danish original, while Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, and Jake Gyllenhaal lose control of their emotions in a ménage that has its origins in Homer's Odyssey.

Bier also directed Mads Mikkelsen and Sidse Babett Knudsen in After the Wedding (2006), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore took on the roles of the orphanage director and the wealthy donor with a secret in Bart Freundlich's After the Wedding (2019). This was released the same year as Roger Michell's Blackbird (2019), which saw Christian Torpe rework his script for Bille August's Silent Heart (2014) and Susan Sarandon take over from Paprika Steen, as the dying woman bringing her family together for a final farewell.

Such was the impact of Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher (1996) on the Danish box office that it was followed by Pusher II (2004) and Pusher 3 (2005). Without Kim Bodnia and newcomer Mads Mikkelsen, however, Luis Prieto's Pusher (2012) paled by comparison, despite the best efforts of Richard Coyle. But this was actually the second remake of the 1996 thriller, as Assad Raja had directed a London-set Hindi version, Pusher (2010), with the director also playing the small-time dealer who has to take a wild risk after losing heavily while betting on the Cricket World Cup.

Staying in Scandinavia, a couple of Icelandic titles have been remade in English. Óskar Jónasson's Reykjavík-Rotterdam (2008) became Balthasar Kormákur's Contraband (2012), with the director casting Mark Wahlberg as the reformed smuggler facing a payback crisis that he had played in the original thriller. It's a shame that Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson's Either Way (2011) isn't currently available. But Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch ensure that David Gordon Green's Prince Avalanche (2013) is every bit as good.

Moving on to Norway, Nils Gaup has twice seen domestic hits remade in America. Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), Hodet over vannet (1993) was so successful in Europe that Cameron Diaz and Harvey Keitel were cast as the age-gap couple stalked by Craig Sheffer and Billy Zane in Jim Wilson's Head Above Water (1996). Gaup's Oscar-nominated, Sami-language adventure, Pathfinder (1987), had similarly been acclaimed. But it took 20 years for Hollywood to relocate the story to North American as Marcus Nispel's Pathfinder (2007), so that warrior Karl Urban can resist a Viking invasion.

The remake was coolly received and Al Pacino's performance was scrutinised in Christopher Nolan's Insomnia (2002) after Stellan Skarsgård had excelled in Erik Skjoldbjærg's Insomnia (1997), as the cop whose guilty conscience is exacerbated by the effects of the midnight sun. Liam Neeson also experienced the Skarsgård effect when he headlined Cold Pursuit (2019), Hans Petter Moland's remake of his own In Order of Disappearance (2014), in which a snowplough driver tracks down the members of the drug cartel responsible for his son's death.

Joachim Trier's telekinesis chiller, Thelma (2017), was lined up for a Hollywood remake by Craig Gillespie of I, Tonya (2017) fame. However, the cameras have yet to start rolling, while the rumours have hushed of a reworking of Trier's two-time Oscar-nominated, The Worst Person in the World (2021), for which Renate Reinseve won the Best Actress prize at Cannes.

Before we conclude our tour in Sweden, let's recall a handful of other European pictures that Anglo-American producers couldn't resist. The earliest is Béla Gaál's Meseautó (1934), which re-emerged in Britain as Graham Cutt's Car of Dreams (1935), in which John Mills mistakes factory girl Grete Mosheim for a wealthy socialite. More marvellous, however, is the fact that John Huston's wartime sporting classic, Escape to Victory (1981), derived from Zoltán Fábri's Two Half Times in Hell (1961), which was a hit without being filled with famous retired footballers.

Pole Roman Polanski turned down the chance to direct Henry Fonda in a colour remake of Knife in the Water (1962), as he felt there was no point in trying to improve upon perfection. Indies Josh Apter and Peter Olsen had no such qualms, however, and borrowed elements for the little-seen Kaaterskill Falls (2001). There were also concerns that Andrei Tarkovsky's space station saga, Solaris (1972), was too intellectually demanding to translate into mainstream entertainment. But Steven Soderbergh managed to be faithful to both the film and Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel, in pairing George Clooney and Natascha McElhone in Solaris (2002).

We've already mentioned directors who struggle to reproduce their best work in unfamiliar surroundings. Dutchman George Sluizer sought to replicate the tension of The Vanishing (1988) by replacing Gene Bervoets with Jeff Bridges, as the man obsessively searching for his missing partner in The Vanishing (1993). But Steve Buscemi did a decent job before and behind the camera in Interview (2007), a reworking of Theo Van Gogh's Interview (2003) about a fading political journalist meeting a soap star.

This would make a fine Cinema Paradiso double bill. But we can only offer you Richard Gere and Steve Coogan in Oren Moverman's The Dinner (2017), as neither Menno Meyjes's 2013 adaptation of Herman Koch's novel, Het Diner, nor Ivano De Matteo's Italian remake, I nostri ragazzi (2014), has been released on disc in this country.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the name Bergman crops up regularly in our survey of Swedish remakes. Producer David O. Selznick was so taken by Ingrid Bergman in Gustaf Molander's Intermezzo (1936) that he signed her up for Gregory Ratoff's Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939), in which Bergman's pianist falls for married violinist Leslie Howard. Jerry Schatzberg's Honeysuckle Rose (1980) returned to the material, with Dyan Cannon and country singer Willie Nelson. Bergman had also played against type as a scarred criminal in Molander's A Woman's Face (1938). But Joan Crawford took the role of the blackmailer who is given new hope by a plastic surgeon in George Cukor's A Woman's Face (1941).

A bestselling Pär Lagerkvist's novel about the thief released by Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus Christ was adapted for the screen by Alf Sjöberg in 1953. Ulf Palme took the title role in what was a lavish production for the Swedish film industry at the time. But Anthony Quinn is better remembered in Richard Fleischer's Barabbas (1961). Faith is also central to Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960), the story of a miracle that followed the rape and murder of a young girl that was based on a 13th-century ballad and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Wes Craven put an exploitation spin on the narrative in The Last House on the Left (1972), which initially proved controversial. However, it's since acquired a cult standing that made it difficult for debuting director Dennis Iliadis to make much impact with his 2009 retool, The Last House on the Left (2009), even though it was handled by Craven's Midnight Pictures company.

Among the other films with Bergmanesque antecedents is Harold Prince's A Little Night Music (1977), a transfer of the Stephen Sondheim Broadway hit that had musicalised Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). The influence of the same film can be felt in Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), which became the first of his 13 collaborations with Mia Farrow after Diane Keaton had to withdraw to complete Warren Beatty's Oscar winner, Reds (1981).

The beloved children's novels of Astrid Lindgren were probably more influential on Ken Annakin's final feature, The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988), than Olle Hellbom's Pippi Longstocking (1969), although Svensk Filmindustri was behind both productions. The same company also sponsored the long-running series about the Jönsson gang, which reworked a popular Danish franchise about the Olsen family of crooks, which also proved popular when remade in Norway.

A Young Adult novel by Mats Wahl was the foundation for Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist's Den osynlige (2002), which was remade as The Invisible (2007) by David S. Goyer, with Justin Chatwin playing the bullied schoolboy who comes to believe he is invisible. A book by John Ajvide Lindqvist inspired another tale of isolation and prejudice, with Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson as the victim of bullying and the vampire who befriends him in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In (2008). The roles passed to Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz in Matt Reeves's US revision, Let Me In (2010).

A Stieg Larsson publishing phenomenon also generated two box-office successes, as Niels Arden Oplev's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) was followed by David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011), with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara assuming the roles played by Michael Nykvist and Noomi Rapace. They returned as Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Selander in Daniel Alfredson's The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (both 2009), neither of which seemingly ticked the right Hollywood boxes.

Ruben Östlund got into the Cannes habit with his dark comedy, Force Majeure (2014), which landed the Jury prize before he scooped the Palme d'or with both The Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022). Neither has been remade in Hollywood, but his avalanche satire prompted co-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash to pair Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the feuding married couple in Downhill (2020).

Despite Hannes Holm's adaptation of Fredrik Backman's novel, En Man som heter Ove (2015), being nominated for Best Foreign Film and Make-Up and Hairstyling at the Academy Awards, it still came as something of a surprised when it was announced that Tom Hanks would headline Mark Forster's remake, A Man Called Otto (2022). He is typically engaging as the suicidal Pittsburgh widower who forges an unlikely friendships with Mexican neighbour Mariana Treviño. But it's a shame it's currently not possible to compare their performances with those of Rolf Lassgård and Bahar Pars. Maybe soon?