The films of Hitchcock have always been copied and remade, there’s just no denying that he made some excellent movies and really understood the concept of tension and storytelling. I always remember an interview where he talked about creating tension and highlighted it by showing a scene of two men sitting at a desk. He said you don’t build tension by blowing them up, you build tension by showing the audience the bomb, the time ticking away, where it is, the guys having their normal conversation at the table, and so on. It was simple and amazingly effective.
Good to see that his movies are still having a lot of influence though, but not so good to see so many poor remakes, or rather influences. Throw Momma from the train was influenced by Strangers on a train, and it did try to work for what it was, but not on a Hitchcock level! Thankfully, there’s going to be another crack at it and this time it’s a full remake.
Yahoo have the story from Reuters:
Noam Murro, who received a Directors Guild of America Award this year for his work behind the camera on commercials, has signed on to direct an upcoming remake of Alfred Hitchock’s “Strangers on a Train” for Warner Bros. Pictures.
David Seltzer is writing the screenplay for the adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel, which Hitchcock brought to the big screen in 1951. The story also inspired 1969’s “Once You Kiss a Stranger” and Danny DeVito’s “Throw Momma From the Train” in 1987.
Can’t say I’ve seen his sports commercials, supposedly they are really high profile ones, and it’ll be interesting to see the leap from minutes of an advert to a full length feature. Except is it all that fair throwing a Hitchcock remake at such a new Director?
