Top 10 French-Language Remakes

With the riveting thriller, Deep Water, appearing on the New Releases roster, Cinema Paradiso takes a look at the best and worst English remakes of French-language films.

The tactic of remaking successful pictures is as old as cinema itself. If a subject appealed to moviegoers, pioneering film-makers simply copied it, as it was difficult to protect copyright in the days of vast distances and basic communications. Few could match the innovative storylines and sophisticated mise-en-scène employed by Georges Méliès in his trick films and ambitious outings like A Trip to the Moon (1902), however, while D.W. Griffith brought a new narrative refinement to the moral melodramas in which he started specialising in 1908.

By the time Griffith was making three-hour epics like The Birth of Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), America had become the dominant force in film production, as the major European nations were at war. The new film colony of Hollywood was the major beneficiary, as production was based along factory lines on a network of studios. An integrated system meant that the ruling moguls could control every aspect of production, distribution, and exhibition in a way that no rival industry could hope to emulate. Moreover, by the time universally understandable silent scenarios had been consigned to history by Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927), US hegemony over the world market ensured that English became the prepotent language in the early sound era.

Initially, the studios catered for audiences in Europe and Latin America by remaking their most prestigious pictures in exportable French, Spanish, and German versions with bankable local stars. But the expense involved led to features being subtitled or dubbed for overseas audiences. As Hollywood was such a cosmopolitan town, writers, actors, and directors settled from all corners of the continent (particularly after the rise of Nazi Germany), They brought with them knowledge of films that had not reached California and, the studio bean-counters were quick to secure the rights to proven box-office hits and impart an American spin on them.

1920-69

The cinematic rivalry between France and the United States predates the first projected images and remains strong today, with the French film industry bitterly resenting Hollywood's clout at the domestic box-office and the ramifications this has on both the nation's socio-cultural attitudes and its ability to compete for screen space. The tensions from the pioneering period around the turn of the 20th century had abated somewhat by the time Edward Sedgwick reworked Louis Feuillade's imposing silent serial, Fantômas (1913). The 1920 version has been lost forever, but the original is available from Cinema Paradiso, as is Georges Franju's 1963 précis of another Feuillade masterpiece, Judex (1916).

With a star like Charles Boyer in Hollywood, it's perhaps surprising that more French titles weren't imported for him. He suavely stepped into Jean Gabin's shoes in Algiers (1938), John Cromwell's take on Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937), with Hedy Lamarr succeeding Mireille Balin as the beautiful stranger who leads the fugitive to his doom. Märta Torén took the role when the story was musicalised as Casbah (1948) by John Berry, with crooner Tony Martin in the lead.

Peter Lorre featured in the latter and he co-stars with Norwegian ballerina Vera Zorina in Gregory Ratoff's I Was an Adventuress (1940), which retooled Raymond Bernard's J'étais une aventurière (1938), in which Edwige Feuillère had played the unsuspecting woman who falls for a con man. This had a noirish feel, but nothing as oppressive as the atmosphere that Fritz Lang generates in having Joan Bennett dupe meek bank clerk Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street (1945), which revisited the Georges de La Fouchardière novel adapted by Jean Renoir in La Chienne (1931).

Film noir was firmly established in Hollywood by the time that Tay Garnett teamed John Garfield and Lana Turner as the larcenous lovers in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), a retelling of the James M. Cain novel that had already been adapted by Pierre Chenal as Le Dernier tournant (1939) and, unofficially, by Luchino Visconti in Ossessione (1942), which is widely considered to be the first work of Neo-realism. When Bob Rafelson took on this steamy tale of adultery and murder in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange canoodled and conspired.

When Anatole Litvak's The Long Night (1947) was released, RKO sought to buy up all surviving prints of Marcel Carné's brooding Poetic Realist classic, Le Jour se lève (1939), and destroy them to remove any competition. Fortunately, this proposed act of cinematic vandalism failed and audiences were able to see Jean Gabin and Jacqueline Laurent as the doomed working stiff and the innocent florist who were played in Hollywood by Henry Fonda and Barbara Bel Geddes. Gabin had been on equally excellent form as the train driver lured into murder by Simone Simon in Jean Renoir's adaptation of Émile Zola's La Bête humaine (1938). But Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame were well matched in Fritz Lang's remake, Human Desire (1954), although it's never had the recognition it deserves.

Such was the gripping nature of Georges Arnaud's novel, Le Salaire de la peur, that it was snapped up by Henri-Georges Clouzot for The Wages of Fear (1953), which did the unique double of winning the top prize at the Berlin and Cannes film festivals. Yves Montand led the quartet of truckers taking a cargo of nitroglycerine over treacherous terrain and the role passed to Brian Keith in Howard W. Koch's 1958 remake, Violent Road, and Roy Scheider in William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977).

Few films have proved more enduringly popular than Billy Wilder's comic gem, Some Like It Hot (1959). But Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon weren't the first two musicians to lay low by playing in an all-girl band. Fernand Gravey and Julien Carette had done the same in Richard Pottier's Fanfare d'amour (1935), while Dieter Borsche and Georg Thomalia had followed suit in Kurt Hoffmann's Fanfaren der Liebe (1951). Meanwhile, Betty Stockfield and Inge Egger paved the way for Marilyn Monroe's career-defining performance as Sugar Kane. Wilder would return to Europe for the inspiration for his final collaboration with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau on Buddy Buddy (1981), which was dervived from L'emmerdeur (1973) by a writer-director whose name will keep cropping up in this article, Francis Veber.

In analysing how to pull off a good remake, Veber declared: 'You must be cautious to not become so familiar with the source material that you forget what it was that made you decide to remake it in the first place. If you forget the emotional thrill that you felt the first time you saw the original film, you then feel compelled to add new things to it, not necessarily bad things but it's like putting whipped cream on top of a slice of foie gras. The result becomes unpalatable. You lose the charm of the original.'

Perhaps Joshua Logan should have taken note in bringing Fanny (1961) to the screen, as this musical based on the Marcel Pagnol 'waterfront' trilogy of Marius (1931), Fanny (1932), and César (1936) was a little twee, despite a fine performance by Leslie Caron. Daniel Auteuil also found the material tricky when he remade Marius and Fanny (both 2013) after having tackled another much-loved Pagnol picture, The Well-Digger's Daughter (2011).

One can imagine the conundrums that Auteuil had to solve in revising the scripts of a master. At least he was working alone, as scribes Louis Seigner and Henri Crémieux keep disagreeing during their movie collaboration in Julien Duvivier's La Fête à Henriette (1952). Consequently, the actors playing the leads in the evolving scenario, Dany Robin and Michel Auclair, keep finding themselves in increasingly unlikely situations. In Richard Quine's remake, Paris When It Sizzles (1964), William Holden and Audrey Hepburn double up as the hapless screen duo and the screenwriter and stenographer working to a tight deadline.

Although directed by Jacques De Baroncelli with a strong French cast, S.O.S. Sahara (1938) was actually sponsored by UFA and there was also a German input into British director Seth Holt's Station Six-Sahara (1962), which examines the impact of Carroll Baker's arrival at a remote oil pumping station. Working from Henri Decoin's take on Georges Simenon's Les Inconnus dans la maison (1942) , Pierre Rouve's Stranger in the House (1967) is another Anglo co-production, with James Mason on fine form as a lawyer defending a friend of daughter Geraldine Chaplin on a murder charge.

1970-89

The remake trail went cold for a while, although François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962) and L'homme qui aimait les femmes (1977) were respectively rebooted by Paul Mazursky as Willie & Phil (1980) and by Blake Edwards as The Man Who Loved Women (1983). The unfashionable Mazursky also made a solid fist of turning Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932) into Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), in which Nick Nolte excels as the vagabond who infiltrates the plush residence of Bette Midler and Richard Dreyfuss.

Adapted from Cornell Woolrich's novel, Waltz into Darkness, Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (1969) was later made by Michael Cristofer as Original Sin (2001), with Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas taking on the roles played by Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The latter made his name alongside Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's nouvelle vague classic, À bout de souffle (1960). The parts of the small-time car thief and his companion were taken by Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky when Jim McBride reworked the material as Breathless (1983).

Claude Berri's Un moment d'égarement (1977) provided the inspiration for Stanley Donen's comedy, Blame It on Rio (1984), which sees Michael Caine and Joseph Bologna struggle to keep holiday tabs on teenage daughters Demi Moore and Michelle Johnson. François Cluzet and Vincent Cassel took over as the anxious dads when Jean-François Richet returned to the topic in One Wild Moment (2015).

Stevie Wonder helped himself to a Best Song Oscar with 'I Just Called to Say I Love You', which he wrote for The Woman in Red (1984), Gene Wilder's take on Yves Robert's Pardon Mon Affaire (1976). Perhaps that success is what prompted Stan Dragoti to change the colour of Tom Hanks's footwear when he remade Robert's Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire (1972) as The Man With One Red Shoe (1985).

Few foreign remakes have rung the box-office tills as loudly as Three Men and a Baby (1987), which Leonard Nimoy wound up directing after creative differences prevented Coline Serreau from reprising her French hit, Trois hommes et un couffin (1985). Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson proved so comfortable in the title roles that they reunited for Emile Ardolino's Three Men and a Little Lady (1990).

It's rare that lightning strikes twice so resoundingly, as Roger Vadim discovered when he dusted down the screenplay for Et Dieu...créa la femme (1956) and replaced Brigitte Bardot with Rebecca De Mornay for And God Created Woman (1988). Even careful remakes end up lacking that certain je ne sais quoi, such as Joel Schumacher's Cousins (1989), which saw Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini assume the roles taken by Victor Lanoux and Marie-Christine Barrault in Jean-Charles Tacchella's Cousin Cousine (1975). Humour is particularly difficult to translate, as Francis Veber discovered when he cast Nick Nolte and Martin Short in Three Fugitives (1989), having previously teamed Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard to amusing effect in Les Fugitifs (1986). That said, Veber's co-written script for Alexandre Arcady's Hold-Up (1985) held up when Bill Murray and Howard Franklin rejigged it for Quick Change (1990).

1990-99

Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard are a tough act to follow. But Martin Short and Danny Glover do their best in Nadia Tass's Pure Luck (1991), a reworking of Francis Veber's La Chèvre (1981) that pairs a no-nonsense investigator with a luckless klutz in an effort to find a missing woman plagued by misfortune. Sylvester Stallone also has big boots to fill in John Landis's Oscar (1991), a Depression-era remake of a 1967 Édouard Molinaro farce of the same name, in which the great Louis de Funès had fallen prey to a series of raw deals.

Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith were married around the time they headlined Mary Agnes Donaghue's Paradise (1991), a rethink of Jean-Loup Hubert's Le Grand chemin (1987), in which a couple's marital issues are put in perspective by stranger Elijah Wood. Anothew new arrival causes consternation in Jon Amiel's Sommersby (1993), which abandons the 16th-century French setting in which Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye had clung together in Daniel Vigne's The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) and transports viewers to the antebellum Tennessee farm where Jodie Foster swears that Mel Gibson is the miraculously returned husband who had reportedly fallen during the Civil War.

Bridget Fonda's past narrows the options for her future, as she trains to become a government assassin in John Badham's Point of No Return (1993), which can be contrasted via Cinema Paradiso with Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita (1990), which had starred Anne Parillaud. Violence also rears its head in John Roberts's War of the Buttons (1994), which opts for a quirky spin on the rivalry between two gangs of Irish youths in 1960s Carrickdowse that sets it apart from the more serious pacifist stance that both Yves Robert (1962) and Christophe Banatier (2011) took in adapting Louis Pergaud's novel, La Guerre des boutons.

A book by Paul Guimard links Claude Sautet's Les Choses de la vie (1970) with Mark Rydell's Intersection (1994), which casts Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Lolita Davidovich, and Martin Landau in the love-crossed roles originally taken by Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider, Lea Massari, and Gérard Lartigau. A play provided the impetus for Jean-Marie Poiré's Le Père Noël est une ordure (1982), which became Mixed Nuts (1994) when Nora Ephron cast Steve Martin as a suicide hotline worker enduring a nightmare run up to Christmas. The same year also saw Gérard Depardieu reprise in Steve Miner's My Father the Hero the role he had played in Gérard Lauzier's Mon père, ce héros (1991), of a divorcé trying to amuse his estranged teenage daughter (respectively played by Katherine Heigl and Marie Gillain) while on holiday.

The biggest transfer of 1994, however, was James Cameron's True Lies (1994), which was the first film to cost $100 million. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in playful mood as the spy juggling domestic duties with wife Jamie Lee Curtis (who won a Golden Globe) and daughter Eliza Dushku, who think he's a mild-mannered businessman. Thierry Lhermitte had also enjoyed himself in Claude Zidi's La Totale! (1991), which is hugely enjoyable, even though it simply couldn't compete in terms of spectacle.

Every effort was taken by director Terry Gilliam to ensure that the sci-fi puzzler Twelve Monkeys (1995) maintained the standards set by Chris Marker's remarkable photographic short, La Jetée (1962). Casting Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt certainly helped. The teaming of Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, and Daryl Hannah also gave a lift to Fernando Trueba's Two Much (1995), which updated Yves Robert's Le Jumeau (1984), which revised a Donald E. Westlake novel about a gallery owner posing as his own twin in order to romance a pair of sisters.

A gimmicky plot also underpins Chris Columbus's Nine Months (1995), a remake of Patrick Baoudé's Neuf mois (1994) that afforded Hugh Grant his first Hollywood lead, as a child psychologist going into panic mode after learning that partner Julianne Moore is pregnant. Robin Williams cameos as an émigré obstetrician, but he's more front and centre in The Birdcage (1996), director Mike Nichols and writer Elaine May's Americanisation of Éduardo Molinaro's adaptation of Jean Poiret's play, La Cage aux Folles (1978). Williams and Nathan Lane succeeded Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault in playing the gay couple who have to hide their relationship from the former's prudish son. But the Franco-Italian pair also got to make a couple of sequels, Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles 2 (1980) and George Lautner's La Cage aux Folles 3: The Wedding (1985).

Frustratingly, the latter isn't currently available on disc. But Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy Whoopi Goldberg as a smart lawyer holding her own in a man's world in Donald Petrie's The Associate (1996), a remake of René Gainville's 1979 French film of the same name, which, in turn, was based on Jenaro Prieto's 1928 novel The Partner. Directing herself, Barbra Streisand plays a literature scholar being inevitably drawn towards mathematician Jeff Bridges in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), which revisits André Cayatte's 1958, romcom, Le Miroir à deux faces.

Some films are best left alone, however. No matter how good Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani are in dealing with Chazz Palminteri in Jeremiah S. Chechik's Diabolique (1996), they can't erase the memory of Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot trying to dispose of tyrannical teacher Paul Meurisse's corpse in Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955). The films share a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who also wrote the source of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). Although the Tamil thriller Kalangarai Vilakkam (1965) and Brian De Palma's Obsession (1976) have drawn inspiration from Hitch's masterpiece, no one has attempted a remake. However, Robert Downey, Jr. is eager to take on the James Stewart role in a new version to be penned by Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders (2013-22)

Francis Veber hoves into view again, as Billy Crystal and Robin Williams assume the roles originally played by Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard in Fathers' Day (1997), Ivan Reitman's revision of the comic thriller, Les Compères (1983). Hervé Palud's Un indien dans la ville (1994) inspired John Pasquin's Jungle 2 Jungle (1997), which sees commodities broker Tim Allen trying to bond with the 13 year-old son he never knew he had, while Michel Poulette's French-Canadian satire, Louis 19, le roi des ondes (1994), was reinvented in Hollywood as Ron Howard's EDtv (1999), which follows the fortunes of Matthew McConaughey after producer Ellen De Generes makes him the star of a reality show.

In 1999, a pair of American novels hit the domestic screen via French adaptations. Patricia Highsmith's thriller about an urbane sociopath who assumes a friend's identity had been filmed by René Clément as Plein Soleil (1960), with Alain Delon in the lead. Matt Damon took over for Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), which landed five Oscar nominations. There were no such plaudits for Stephan Elliott's Eye of the Beholder (1999), despite Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd proving fine foils as the intelligence agent and serial killer in this twisting rehash of Claude Miller's Mortelle Randonnée (1983), which had starred Michel Serrault and Isabelle Adjani.

2000-10

Michel Serrault and Guy Marchand won Césars for their performances in Claude Miller's thriller, Garde à vue (1981), which also starred Lino Ventura and Romy Schneider. Yet, when Stephen Hopkins teamed Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman in a Stateside adaptation of Brainwash - John Wainwright's novel about a tax lawyer's involvement in a rape and murder case - Under Suspicion (2000) barely caused a ripple. You can judge for yourself right now through Cinema Paradiso. Also available is Jean-Marie Gaubert's Just Visiting (2001), which failed to impress in spite of boasting a screenplay by John Hughes and a reunion between Christian Clavier and Jean Reno. They had played the medieval knights who fetch up in the present day in Jean-Marie Poiré's Les Visiteurs (1993), which proved such a runaway domestic hit that it was followed by Les Visiteurs 2: The Corridors of Time (1998) and Les Visiteurs: Bastille Day (2016).

Starring Stéphane Audran, Maurice Ronet, and Michel Bouquet, La Femme infidèle (1968) was one of the films that earned Claude Chabrol comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock. Yet Adrian Lyne struggled to achieve the same level of brooding intensity in Unfaithful (2002), a ménage remake that had Richard Gere suspecting wife Diane Lane of infidelity with Olivier Martinez. Neil Jordan experienced similar difficulties in reworking Jean-Pierre Melville's casino heist classic, Bob le flambeur (1956), as The Good Thief (2002), although Nick Nolte helped the cause with a solid performance.

Back in La Patrie, Gérard Pirès scored such a hit with Taxi (1998) that writer-producer Luc Besson returned to Marseilles with leads Samy Naceri and Frédéric Diefenthal for Taxi 2 (2000), Taxi 3 (2003), and Taxi 4 (2007), which were all directed by Gérard Krawczyk. During this run, Besson took the franchise to New York and cast Queen Latifah as the cabby who chauffeurs bungling cop Jimmy Fallon in Tim Story's Taxi (2004). However, it failed to catch on and, when Besson returned to the idea for Taxi 5 (2018), actor-director Franck Gastambide took over as the flic, while Malik Bentalha kept the pedal to the metal as Naceri's speedster nephew.

Gilles Mimouni's L'Appartement (1996) was feted by many for the teasing manner in which it explored writer Vincent Cassel's relationships with fiancée Sandrine Kiberlain and former flatmates Rohmane Bohringer and Monica Bellucci. Josh Brolin has the same quandary with Jessica Paré and roomies Rose Byrne and Diane Kruger in Paul McGuigan's Wicker Park (2004), yet it never feels as involving or disconcerting.

The sixth of Éric Rohmer's Moral Tales, Love in the Afternoon (1972), was a typically articulate and intelligent study of human emotion. Bernard Verley stars as the businessman whose marriage to English teacher Françoise Verley is jeopardised by old flame, Zouzou. Chris Rock directed himself in the lead of I Think I Love My Wife (2007), with Gina Torres and Kerry Washington playing the women in his life. Rohmer's film was released in the US as Chloe in the Afternoon and Atom Egoyan chose the same name for Chloe (2009), a remake of Anne Fontaine's Nathalie... (2003), in which Amanda Seyfried, Julianne Moore, and Liam Neeson step into the scenario that had seen hairdresser Emmanuelle Béart being hired by Fanny Ardant to seduce her unfaithful husband, Gérard Depardieu.

It's baffling why Claude Chabrol's Le Cri du hibou (1987) is not available on disc, as this adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel is far superior to Jamie Thrave's The Cry of the Owl (2009), even though Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles gel well as the man who becomes obsessed with a woman he (very wrongly) feels personifies innocence. Similarly, Vincent Lindon is so compelling as the husband willing to go to any lengths to overturn wife Diane Kruger's murder conviction in Fred Cavayé's debut feature, Anything For Her (2008) that Russell Crowe feels like he's on a hiding to nothing seeking to help Elizabeth Banks in Paul Haggis's remake, The Next Three Days (2010).

Unaware that boyfriend Yvan Attal has undergone plastic surgery to avoid the detective and Russian mafiosi on his tail, Sophie Marceau enlists the help of a stranger on a train (Attal with his new face) in César nominee Jérôme Salle's Anthony Zimmer (2005). When Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck remade the story as The Tourist (2010), the roles went to Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. The stellar names prove more of a distraction in 13 (2010), as Ray Winstone, 50 Cent, and Mickey Rourke join Sam Riley in the game of Russian roulette into which the latter has accidentally stumbled. Making his Hollywood debut, Georgian director Géla Babluani ably sustains the suspense. But he outdid himself with 13 Tzameti (2005), the France-set original thriller that had starred brother George Babluani as the migrant in peril.

There's no denying that the original also comes up trumps when comparing Pierre Salvadori's Cible émouvante (1993) and Jonathan Lynn's Wild Target (2010). Bill Nighy amuses as the hitman browbeaten by domineeering mother Eileen Atkins before forming a new gang with apprentice Rupert Grint and art swindler Emily Blunt. But Jean Rochefort is irresistibly wonderful alongside Patachou, Guillaume Depardieu, and Marie Trintignant. Similarly, hard as Steve Carell and Paul Rudd strive for laughs in Jay Roach's Dinner For Schmucks (2010), Francis Veber's Le Dîner de cons (1998) reigns supreme, as genial buffoon Jacques Villeret unintentionally unravels the life of Thierry Lhermitte, the smug businessman who had been planning to parade him before his friends at an 'idiot's dinner'.

2011-22

Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday complement each other perfectly, as the teacher awaiting heart surgery and the thief about to rob a bank in Patrice Leconte's The Man on the Train (2002). Donald Sutherland and Larry Mullen, Jr. also bond in Mary McGuckian's Man on the Train (2011), but the original was so good that the remake can only pale by comparison. This would still make for a fine Cinema Paradiso double bill, however, as would Alain Corneau's final feature, Love Crime (2010), and Brian De Palma's Passion (2012), with Ludivine Sagnier and Noomi Rapace respectively playing the advertising executives seeking revenge on manipulative bosses Kristin Scott Thomas and Rachel McAdams.

Having directed Sophie Marceau and Christa Teret in LOL (2008), Lisa Azuelos went to Hollywood to work with Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore on LOL (2012), with the American version adding a social media aspect to the story of a teenager trying to reunite her parents while negotiating her own first romance. Canadian Ken Scott also took on the remaking duties when the fact-based Québecois dramedy, Starbuck (2011), was Americanised as Delivery Man (2013), with Vince Vaughn taking over from Patrick Huard as the anonymous sperm bank donor who is sued in a bid to discover his identity by 142 of the 533 children he has sired.

Scott also scripted Jean-François Pouliot's Seducing Dr Lewis (2003), which was remade below the 49th Parallel by Don McKellar as The Grand Seduction (2013), with Brendan Gleeson replacing Raymond Bourdon as the denizen of a remote fishing village seeking to persuade a visiting doctor to take up permanent residence. Jean-Stéphane Bron's Swiss-French comedy, Mon Frère se marie (2006), also turns on deceptive appearances and Justin Zackham assembled a stellar cast that includes Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, and Robin Williams for The Big Wedding (2013), which replaces the Vietnamese groom-to-be with a Colombian.

An autobiographical novel by Bruno and Michel Papet lies behind Jacques Maillot's Rivals (2008) and Guillaum Canet's Blood Ties (2013). Intriguingly, Canet had played opposite François Cluzet in the original before directing Clive Owen and Billy Crudup, as the jailbird trying to go straight and his cop brother. Sébastien Japrisot's bestseller was filmed by André Cayatte as Piège pour Cendrillon in 1965, with Madeleine Robinson's nanny helping amnesiac Dany Carrel cope with some disturbing flashbacks. The roles passed to Tuppence Middleton and Kerry Fox in Iain Softley's Trap For Cinderella (2013), which was much better than the reviews would have you believe.

Written and produced by Luc Besson, Pierre Morel's District 13 (2004) pitched Parisian gang member David Belie and undercover cop Cyril Raffaelli into a kidnap saga. The pair reprised their roles in Patrick Alessandrin's District 13: Ultimatum (2013), but Belie was teamed with Paul Walker in Camille Delamarre's Stateside remake, Brick Mansions (2014). Markedly less combustible, but still simmeringly compelling was Rachid Bouchareb's Two Men in Town (2014), a reworking of José Giovanni's Deux hommes dans la ville (1973) that sees Brenda Blethyn take over from Jean Gabin as the parole agent battling with the FBI's Harvey Keitel to ensure that Forest Whitaker gets a fresh start. Michel Bouquet and Alain Delon had taken the latter roles in a film that really should be on disc in this country, alongside such Giovanni-scripted classics as Claude Sautet's Classe tous risques, Jacques Becker's Le Trou (both 1960), Henri Verneuil's The Sicilian Clan (1969), and the self-directed The Sewers of Paradise (1979).

Delon also headlined Jacques Deray's masterly thriller, La Piscine (1969), in which a St Tropez holiday is disrupted when partner Romy Schneider invites ex-boyfriend Maurice Ronet and his teenage daughter, Jane Birkin, to their luxurious villa. When Luca Guadagnino relocated the storyline to the Italian island of Pantelleria for A Bigger Splash (2015), he cast Matthias Schoenaerts and Tilda Swinton as the unhappy vacationers and Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson as their scheming guests.

This time teaming with Catherine Deneuve, Delon also starred as the hitman who is targeted by his former employees in Robin Davis's Le Choc (1982). In Pierre Morel's The Gunman (2015), which draws on the same Jean-Patrick Manchette novel, Sean Penn plays a mercenary whose murderous involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo comes back to haunt him. Vengeance is also very much to the fore in Pascal Laugier's Martyrs (2008) and Kevin Goetz's 2015 remake of the same name, as Mylène Jampanoï and Troian Bellisario respectively seek to punish those who had abused them as children.

Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Blunderer, came to the screen in 1963 as Le Meurtrier, with Claude Autant-Lara directing Robert Hossein and Maurice Ronet as husbands striving to quash murder charges. The suspected wife killers in Andy Goddard's A Kind of Murder (2016) were Patrick Wilson and Eddie Marsan. Recently the subject of Eva Vitija's documentary profile, Loving Highsmith (2022), the enigmatic writer was also the brains behind Michel Deville's Eaux profondes (1981). This was remade as Deep Water in 2022 by Adrian Lyne, with Ben Affleck and Ana De Armas taking the roles of the couple trapped in a festering open marriage that had originally been played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert.

German Baran bo Odar took the helm for Sleepless (2017), a remake of Frédéric Jardin's Nuit blanche (2011) that replaces Tomer Sisley with Jamie Foxx, as the cop whose attempt to steal cocaine from a club owner prompts his son's kidnap. Comparisons proved unflattering, as they were with Neil Burger's The Upside (2017), which saw Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart take the roles of the wheelchair-bound billionaire and the parolee assistant that had been taken by François Cluzet and Omar Sy in Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledo's Intouchables (2011), which had broken the French box-office record held by Dany Boon's Welcome to the Sticks (2008), which Will Smith had once hoped to remake.

Sadly, we can't bring you John Turturro's The Jesus Rolls (2019). But Cinema Paradiso can offer its prequel, Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski (1998), and the film that inspired it, Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses (aka Going Places, 1974), with Turturro, Bobby Cannavale, and Audrey Tautou inheriting parts that had been created by Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, and Isabelle Huppert.

A superb performance by Catherine Frot is frustratingly out of Cinema Paradiso's reach in Safy Nebbou's L'Empreinte de l'ange (2008), as she becomes convinced that Sandrine Bonnaire is raising the daughter she had been told had died in infancy. But Noomi Rapace brings her own distinctive intensity to Kim Farrant's remake, Angel of Mine (2019), which co-stars Yvonne Strahovski, as the mistrusted mother.

Albert Dupontel and Jason Statham can hardly be described as peas in a pod, yet they respectively headlined Nicolas Boukhrief's Cash Truck (2004) and Guy Ritchie's Wrath of Man (2021), as the new guard on the beat at an armored truck company. The original afforded Jean Dujardin a meaty role en route to winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (2011). While this was the first silent to win Best Picture since William A. Wellman's Wings (1927), Sian Heder's CODA (2021) made Oscar history by becoming the first remake of a French film to take the top prize. Éric Lartigau's La Famille Bélier (2014) had drawn six César nominations for its story about teenager Louane Emera's bid to become a singer while signing for her deaf parents and brother. Emilia Jones (daughter of Aled) took the acronymic lead (Child of Deaf Adults) in the Hollywood remake, which not only became a sleeper hit, but also earned the Best Supporting award for deaf actor, Tony Kotsur. Another first.