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[Ibn Pickthall]

Re-reading the Kurosawa thread got me wondering about films which are based on other films, or print, and transposed to an entirely different culture. Kurosawa has two films, Throne of Blood and Ran, which are set in the samurai era of highly feudal, warring Japan. These are based pretty closely on Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear. Of course, there's a strong universality to Shakespeare, which probably means it could be transposed to many different cultures, but the same must be true for other bits of literature - have others made it into film in other cultural settings?

[Nefertiti2]

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Clueless is an adaptation Jane Austen's Emma

Jaws has been called an adaptation of Ibsen's Enemy of the People

Apocalypse Now is an adaptation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness

[Stumpy Pepys]

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A lot of Shakespeare's plays have been updated by Hollywood.

Off the top of my head, Forbidden Planet (The Tempest), Ten Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew) and Shakespeare in Love (Romeo & Juliet). I once saw a real curio with Sid James called Joe Macbeth (a retelling with 1930s gangsters).

[Heliotrope]

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Black Orpheus is the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice set in late 1950s Rio.

[Incandenza]

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The Magnificent Seven is of course an adaptation of The Seven Samurai.

[Levin]

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Cruel Intentions is a cover of Dangerous Liasons and Oh Brother Where Art Thou is a retelling of the Odyssey.

[Incandenza]

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The Big Lebowski shares some similarities with The Big Sleep.

[Stumpy Pepys]

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And of course, all those Asian films that Hollywood has remade because it has no better ideas.

[evilC]

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Stumpy Pepys wrote:

And of course, all those Asian films that Hollywood has remade because it has no better ideas.

The interesting variation on that one is 'Ring 2', where (I understand) Hideo Nakata wanted to direct the Hollywood version as well, as he was aware that he'd not done the best job possible on the original. As it is, the plots do differ, so it's hard to call it a real 'cover version'.

[evilC]

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Another interesting thing is that re-makes aren't a recent invention. It was common for stories to be committed to film several times in a relatively short period in the early days of the cinema industry. 'Der Golem' is an example of this (though not a particularly good one - just the first that sprang to mind. Although, of course, with that basically being a folk story/myth, I expect that lends itself to such treatment.)

[Guest]

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Cruel Intentions is a cover of Dangerous Liasons

So is Untold Scandal, set in 17th-century Korea. It's a lovely version of the story.

[Stumpy Pepys]

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A bit leftfield, but the only good bongo flick I've ever seen — The Opening of Misty Beethoven — is a porno remake of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.

[Reed John]

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Pedantry: Shakespeare in Love isn't a cover of Romeo & Juliet.