Can we talk?

The TV Died

         There's a winter storm raging outside. The wind is howling. I'm prepared for a power outage. But the worst of all scenarios has happened. The TV died in the middle of Jeopardy. I'm missing my favorite shows of the week. The big screen TV downstairs is working, but that's reserved for sports events and news shows when my dad is home, or maybe a Clint Eastwood movie.

         Since I can't watch TV tonight, I will talk about a movie I saw several days ago on TCM or ACM.
It's a black and white film from 1946, based on a Hemingway story, The Killers. It launched the career of Burt Lancaster. It was a minor role; he had little screen time. He was seen mostly through flashbacks. But what a good-looking young man he was. The femme fatale was Ava Gardner; she was young, too. The only other name I recognized was William Conrad, one of the killers.

         It's said that Hemingway claimed to have liked this film version of his story better than other films of other stories, and that he even had a copy to watch at home. That was something in the 40's, considering there were no DVD's or cassettes. The assassins were only minor characters. They were hired by a criminal to get rid of inconvenient criminals. The characters who pieced together the puzzle and bring all the criminals, except the killers, to justice were an insurance investigator and police detective. It was a very good film.

         The film was remade under the same name in 1964, starring Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the assassins. This time they had a major role and replaced the investigator and detective in solving the puzzle. The key criminal was played by Ronald Reagan. The mistress of RR was Angie Dickinson, but in this version she is brutalized and terrified by the killers. So this version drifts further away from Hemingway's story, and is a rougher.

         It must be time for another remake. Good films usually make it around several times. I wonder if they return to a closer version of the story or get a little rougher still.