14 Seminal American Movies That Are Actually Remakes of Foreign Films
I once thought the European mind couldn’t comprehend Dinner for Schmucks. I now know how wrong I was.
‘Dinner for Schmucks’ (2010)
The 1998 French film Le Dîner de Cons (“dinner of fools”) won a ton of awards and sparked three different Indian adaptations: 2007’s Hindi-language Bheja Fry, 2008’s Kannada-language Mr. Garagasa and 2010’s Malayalam-language April Fool. The original film is based on a 1999 French play of the same name. When it was still a stage production, the title was often translated in English as The Prat’s Dinner or The Cunt’s Dinner.
‘The Last House on the Left’ (2009)
The 2009 Wes Craven film is a remake of a 1972 Wes Craven film, which in turn was based on the 1960 Swedish film Jungfrukällan (“the virgin spring”). That film was actually based on a 13th-century Scandinavian ballad, “Töres döttrar i Wänge,” a real mindfreak about the tragic origin of a local Swedish church.
‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ (1999)
This is a patriotic tale of Americans stealing back our IP from filthy French artists. American novelist Patricia Highsmith published The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1955, which immediately won a bunch of literary awards and was the basis for an episode of Studio One. The French got a hold of it in 1960, producing the film Purple Noon, which would inspire both the 1999 film we know and love and 2003’s The Room.
‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ (2011)
What started as a one-off novel printed only in Swedish has become two different global franchises. Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s trilogy Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (“men who hate women”) was published posthumously in 2005. It did pretty well in Sweden, then extremely well all over the world when it was translated three years later. The book series is up to nine installments by three different authors, while the 2009 Swedish/Danish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has an 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The 2011 American version has barely bested it at 86 percent.
‘Twelve Monkeys’ (1995)
Despite being only 28 minutes long, the 1962 French film La Jetée has inspired a wide range of art, including the video for David Bowie’s “Jump They Say” and the Fallout franchise. A producer convinced Universal to buy the remake rights to La Jetée, and put it in the hands of the perfect weirdo for the project, Terry Gilliam.
‘True Lies’ (1994)
Before Arnold Schwarzeneggar and James Cameron whipped it up into a frothing action comedy, the 1991 film La Totale! (“The Jackpot!”) was a much goofier spy comedy in France.
‘Vanilla Sky’ (2001)
Before Penelope Cruz starred in 2001’s Vanilla Sky, she starred in (arguably) the exact same movie in Spain, France and Italy: 1997’s Open Your Eyes. It’s been speculated that the original film was based on a Spanish play called Life Is a Dream, from 1635.
‘The Departed’ (2006)
The Scorsese film that launched a million stoned conversations in dorm rooms across America is a remake of a 2002 Chinese film, Infernal Affairs, a study of post-colonial Hong Kong’s identity crisis that launched two sequels and a TV series. The Departed is essentially all three Infernal Affairs, Boston-ified and stuff into one movie. Co-director Andrew Lau has said, “Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too.”
‘The Ring’ (2002)
Japanese horror writer Koji Suzuki published his novel Ringu in 1991, a massive success that spawned two sequel novels, three movies, a TV series and two separate mangas — all before being adapted into the 2002 American film.
‘The Sound of Music’ (1965)
Real-life German tutor Maria Augusta von Trapp had lived a pretty wild life, and a friend hounded her for years to write a book about it. She finally agreed to jot down some ideas for an hour, just to prove that she was no writer. When she realized she loved it, she sat down to write the 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. This was turned into the 1956 West German comedy The Trapp Family, which was later adapted into the 1965 Julie Andrews masterpiece.
‘Three Men and a Baby’ (1987)
This goofy story spread around the globe like wildfire in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The original 1985 French film Two Men and a Cradle was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1986 Oscars, then was swiftly yoinked by Hollywood for the 1987 Tom Selleck joint. From there, two different Filipino knockoffs hit theaters in 1988, followed by three Indian films — Baalache Baap Brahmachaari, Thoovalsparsham and Chinnari Muddula Papa — and a few more over the following decades.
‘The Parent Trap’ (1998)
The 1998 Lindsay Lohan vehicle is a remake of a 1961 film of the same name. Though it’s often thought to be a rip-off of 1945’s Twice Blessed, it’s actually a rip-off of a 1950 film out of West Germany called Two Times Lotte. That movie, in turn, was based on the elegantly titled Das Doppelte Lottchen, or “The Double Lottie.”
‘EDtv’ (1999)
Often misinterpreted as a shameless rip-off of 1998’s The Truman Show, it was actually a shameless rip-off of the 1994 French-language Canadian film Louis 19, King of the Airwaves. It’s hard to say which performed better — while EDtv was a box office flop at $35 million, Louis 19 was the highest-grossing film in all of Canada at … $1.8 million.
‘Jungle 2 Jungle’ (1997)
The 1994 French film An Indian in the City had a limited English-dubbed run in the United States, called Little Indian, Big City. It performed well, but received a lot of criticism, prompting American filmmakers to ask: How can we make this more racist? The answer, as it often is, was Tim Allen.