Investigation“The remakemania” (4/6). The Turkish version of “Ten percent” has lost its homosexual characters, the American adaptation of “A French Village” comes up against its post-Black Lives Matter validation … From one country to another, the film remakes or series follow local customs. A more or less conscious, more or less hidden form of censorship?
Are snakes necessary? When, in 2018, the filmmaker Brian De Palma arrived in Paris to promote this noir novel written with his screenwriter and companion, Susan Lehman, the couple slipped a confidence to AFP: “Our favorite TV program? A french village ! “ Frédéric Krivine, the creator of this series broadcast from 2009 to 2017 on France Télévisions, leaps from his chair. He has a project in his boxes. “If Régine Deforges could have done this crap The Blue Bicycle, which transposed during the Occupation a history of the Civil War, I said to myself that we could do the same in reverse… ” From one national trauma to another, there are indeed similarities: comparable durations, torn families … “I sent a five-page note to De Palma. Half an hour later, I had an answer. He engaged direct. “
So there you have it A french village, which sold in 65 countries, being adapted both in Spain during the time of the Civil War, in Italy of the Republic of Salo (September 1943 – April 1945), and to the States -United… “Great filmmakers rarely make pale copies, reassures Frédéric Krivine, who watches over his baby. Personally, I prefer The Seven Mercenaries to Seven Samurai. “ When it comes to remakes, De Palma is sort of a specialist: Passion (2012), Impossible mission (1996) and, of course, Scarface (1983) … “I saw the original again, continues Krivine, Howard Hawks’ one: it’s another movie. “
Round trips
Attractive poster, project in progress, but nothing is won. “The United States is complicated”sighs Frédéric Krivine. He already wrote the pilot, baptized Clarksville 1861, named after an imaginary small town in Kentucky, a state cut in two during the Civil War. “To write a series on this period is to put the racial question at the center. From here, we do not realize to what extent, in the United States, nothing is settled. And how narrow is the path whenever fiction is harnessed to it. “
Adaptation highlights the cultural differences, the moral values that prevail from one country to another, from one era to another
As a consultant, the French went to find Sundiata Cha-Jua, professor of African-American history at the University of Illinois. “Without him, there is little chance that the series will happen. We go back and forth. We get along very well, but he keeps telling me that I think like a white man, that I write like a white man, that I understand absolutely nothing about slavery… We will see. In any event, Clarksville 1861 will only happen if there is a prominent black personality who doubts the project. In the United States, you need an Oprah Winfrey or the Obamas, who are consultants at Netflix, to validate your project… ”
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