"There Is No Formula"

John Huston on remakes

John Huston on the set of Moby-Dick, 1956; photo by Norman Parkinson. The Siren couldn’t find a good shot of him on location for Roots of Heaven, no doubt because the set was so miserable no one was taking snapshots.

Only successful pictures are made over again; I’ve never understood why. I’ve never known of an instance where the remake was as good as the original. There is no formula that enables one to re-create the unique chemistry that went into making a particular picture a success. It should be the other way around. Unsuccessful pictures—those based on good material—which for reasons of time, place and circumstance just didn’t come off the first time around, are the ones that should be given a second chance. That certainly applies to The Roots of Heaven. I wish I could do it over again. Today. Only with Darryl. But that’s impossible because he died the other day.  

—John Huston on remakes, from his autobiography An Open Book (1981)

The passage above is a favorite of the Siren’s, and like the rest of John Huston’s book it's beautifully written, with that gut-punch of a last line. (The Darryl that Huston refers to was, of course, Darryl Zanuck.) The Roots of Heaven (1958) was based on Les Racines du ciel, the Prix Goncourt–winning novel by Romain Gary, a famed Lithuanian-born French novelist (also known to the Siren’s readers as Jean Seberg’s second husband). Huston says it was “a prophetic book, anticipating the concerns of today’s environmentalists.” 

Huston greatly admired the novel, but said the screenplay (the first and only from the British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who goes tactfully unnamed) was weak. It was filmed over five months in what is now Chad, during the hottest part of the year. Everyone got sick, more than once. The Roots of Heaven starred not one but two world-class alcoholics, Trevor Howard and Errol Flynn. While Huston claims that Howard was a pleasant drunk, Flynn’s liver, which had long been slowly killing him, was now rapidly killing him. He would be dead in little more than a year. Zanuck had insisted that Juliette Gréco, his then-lover, be cast as the female lead, and Gréco and Huston did not take to each other at all. 

The result is prescient in some ways, preachy in others, with an especially draggy final act. The Siren in fact is far from sure that The Roots of Heaven could be remade successfully nowadays. The colonial setting and some of the politics of the story were off-putting then, and they might be all but impossible now. 

But Huston’s point remains solid. He doesn't say so in this passage, but his thoughts on remakes certainly apply to his own Maltese Falcon, which was the third attempt to make a great movie out of Dashiell Hammett's novel. Earlier in his book, Huston says he simply calculated that it had never been done right. The producers “were surprised at my wanting to remake a two-time failure, but the fact was that Falcon had never really been put on the screen. The previous screenplays had been products of writers who sought to put their own stamp on the story by writing new, uncalled-for scenes.”

The Siren would add that the 1931 and 1941 scripts have more in common than Huston wanted to admit, but Ricardo Cortez didn’t have the right touch for Sam Spade and neither did Roy del Ruth. Satan Met a Lady (1936, dir. William Dieterle, who was having an off day) attempted to make the original novel into an out-and-out comedy, which was just a very bad idea. Satan was, wrote Bette Davis years later, “a Dashiell Hammett remake that was not to achieve any quality until John Huston directed it years later under the title Maltese Falcon. I was so distressed by the whole tone of the script and the vapidity of my part that I marched up to Mr. Warner’s office and demanded that I be given work that was commensurate with my proven ability.” Bette wasn’t wrong, but that’s another story.

And yes, of course the Siren posted this because she is thinking of the proposal to remake Charles Laughton’s one-off masterpiece, The Night of the Hunter (no. 25 in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll, no pressure there!). Hand on heart, the Siren has been working on chilling out about remakes. After all, she loved Nightmare Alley. This one, like most movie ideas, may never even see the light of a movie house. But every time someone decides to remake a beloved classic, Huston's words leap unbidden right back into the Siren’s mind. Why mess with perfection, or as close as most films get? Why not emulate Huston, and find something that had a great foundation, but wasn’t done right the first time? The answer, probably, is that the studios want that already-proven commodity. They still believe what they first told the guy who wanted another go at The Maltese Falcon in 1941—why the hell should we remake a failure.   

The most frequent rationale for remakes—the very one that John Huston used, in fact—is, we’re going back to the original material! And in fact, one of the prospective screenwriters said on Twitter that “Night of the Hunter was based on a novel [by Davis Grubb] that was MUCH DARKER than the 50s would allow” in a film. Mm … sort of. Laughton’s film is surprisingly close to its source, and it brilliantly suggests a whole lot of psychopathy.

Oh well. One never knows, do one, and that’s as close to optimism as the Siren can get. She mostly wanted an excuse to post those words from John Huston.  

Ironically, given what a lousy experience it was for nearly everyone concerned, the chapter about the making of The Roots of Heaven is one of the most gripping in Huston's book. It’s also one of the most ethically appalling sections for many reasons, starting with the presence on-set of Beverly Aadland, Errol Flynn’s underage girlfriend. An Open Book is available on the Internet Archive, should you wish to see for yourself. 

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A Note for Patient Subscribers

The Siren has been stuck at home for most of the first quarter of 2024, and has been up to her eyeliner in … stuff. We’ll leave it at that. Just a lot of messy, unpleasant stuff.

What this means for the Substack is that y’all have been paying for, well, not much. (Although the Siren has moved the archives from the old Blogspot to a subscription-required level here at the Substack, if you have noticed.) 

So: The Siren is pausing payments through June. It seems only fair. And starting now, will be back to her more regularly irregular posting habits. Love to you all.