Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)

Brooke Adams and Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Matthew Bennell: Donald Sutherland
Elizabeth Driscoll: Brooke Adams
Jack Bellicec: Jeff Goldblum
Nancy Bellicec: Veronica Cartwright
Dr. David Kibner: Leonard Nimoy
Dr. Geoffrey Howell: Art Hindle
Katherine Hendley: Lelia Goldoni
Running Man: Kevin McCarthy
Taxi Driver: Don Siegel

Director: Philip Kaufman
Screenplay: W.D. Richter
Based on a novel by Jack Finney
Cinematography: Michael Chapman
Production design: Charles Rosen
Film editing: Douglas Stewart
Music: Danny Zeitlin

Speaking of remakes, as I did recently, there are few more successful than Philip Kaufman's version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, first filmed by Don Siegel in 1956. Siegel's film was informed by the red scares of the 1950s, which had faded into a more free-floating paranoia 18 years later when Kaufman returned to the material. Siegel was perfectly happy to go along with the idea of remaking the story, and contributed an amusing cameo as a cabbie in Kaufman's film. Kaufman also wittily used the star of Siegel's version, Kevin McCarthy, in a bit as the "running man" who races through San Francisco streets shouting "They're coming! They're coming!" It's the wit that pervades Kaufman's version that makes it such a worthy successor to Siegel's more straightforward sci-fi horror film. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in which we see Robert Duvall as a priest on a playground swing and ask ourselves "Was that ...?" There's the casting of Leonard Nimoy as a psychiatrist possessing the same sangfroid as Mr. Spock, a more benevolent alien being. And there are Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright (a year before her appearance in Ridley Scott's Alien) as the somewhat loopy Bellicecs. Kaufman has a little trouble establishing the tone of his version, so that it plays better on a second viewing than on a first one, but it's one of the few films in the genre that I'm more than happy to give a repeat viewing.

Les Grandes Manoeuvres (René Clair, 1955)

Gérard Philipe and Michèle Morgan in Les Grandes Manoeuvres

Marie-Louise Rivière: Michèle Morgan
Armand de la Verne: Gérard Philipe
Victor Duverger: Jean Desailly
Félix Leroy: Yves Robert
Lucie: Brigitte Bardot
The Colonel: Pierre Dux
Armand's Orderly: Jacques Fabbri

Director: René Clair
Screenplay: René Clair, Jérôme Géronimi, Jean Marsan
Cinematography: Robert Lefebvre
Production design: Léon Barsacq
Film editing: Louisette Hautecoeur, Denise Natot
Music: Georges Van Parys

René Clair's first film in color is a pretty pastel confection set in a French village at the end of the 19th century, a period many French filmmakers were drawn to in part because it held a kind of autumnal glow before the harsh winter that would set in during the second decade of the 20th century. A handsome womanizing lieutenant, Armand de la Verne, stationed in the village before the beginning of the army's summer maneuvers, wagers that he can seduce the first woman to enter the room. She happens to be Marie-Louise Rivière, a divorcée who has opened a millinery in the village. And they happen to be played by Gèrard Philipe and Michèle Morgan, two of the biggest French stars of the day, both of them in middle age and endowed with a kind of gravitas that means the movie is not going to be a frivolous sex farce. For sexiness, we have a parallel flirtation between another lieutenant, Félix Leroy, and the saucy young Lucie, played by the saucy young Brigitte Bardot. Yet the film is weighed down by the more mature couple, to the point that Clair's romantic nostalgia never quite comes off the screen and engages the audience. It's lovely to look at, and it has admirers who defend its bittersweet tone, but it feels to me more like an exercise in period filmmaking than a fully committed work -- even though it was one of Clair's favorite films.