Cape Fear by Martin Scorsese was a remake of this underestimated criminal thriller

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When people hear “Cape Fear”, they think of … Well, probably the episode “Simpsons” “Cape Feree. With Sideshow Bob Stalking Bart Simpson,” Cape Fere “is the best parody of films that the series has made.

But if it is not Our favorite yellow family, the expression “cape fear” is most likely to evoke Robert de Niro as a Max Cady seated in a cinema, smoking a cigar and laughing with his ass. We consider it “Cape Fear” one of the best films that Scorsese and Niro have never made together. This takes them away from their hometown of New York, but Scorsese still uses its pet themes: violent men, a judicial system which allows its own corruption and good Christianity. Hearing a southern Twang speaking gently out of Niro’s mouth can take a second of adjustment, but as a Cady, it sticks to the screen as it always does.

“Cape Fear” is placed south and presents Nick Nolte as Sam Bowden, lawyer and father whose life and dear beings are endangered when a face of his past returns to the image. But it was not the first time that this story was told about the film. “Cape Fear” by Scorsese is a remake of a 1962 thriller entitled – Wait – “Cape Fear”. Technically, the two films adapt “The Executioners” (The 1957 novel by John D. Macdonald), but this book was unleashed in the dark in a way that none of the films has.

Made by J. Lee Thompson, the ’62 “Cape Fear” features Gregory Peck like Bowden and the bad boy of Old Hollywood, Robert Mitchum, as Cady. If you think it is frightening in “The Night of the Hunter” as a murderous preacher Harry Powell, just look at Max Cady de Mitchum, who has all the charm and the threat of a hungry alligator.

Scorsese made “Cape Fear” with regard to the original. The stars of the film are even in camée in the remake: Mitchum plays a police detective, while Peck plays a shaded lawyer and beating the Bible kept by Cady. Thompson has also approved Scorsese and Niro removing the film. Interviewed for “The Making of ‘Cape Fear'” (a featurette on the release of the 2001 DVD of the 1962 film), the filmmaker described “The King of Comedy”, which was directed by Scorsese and played Niro as his favorite film. Naturally, he could make more confidence to redo his film.

By telling “Cape Fear”, made Scorsese, de Niro and Co. Surpass the original?

The ’62 “Cape Fear” was a film made in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, shooting in black and white and bringing Bernard Herrmann to compose the score. It is a comparison that is resistant to this day because none of the two films feels as scandalous now as they did it during their initial release. They are still great The films, to be clear, but what made the border that pushed is then limited now. Even the black and white coloring of the two films can be less frightening and more austere.

“Cape Fear” by Scorsese? It is an equally wild and scary film of 34 years, because it could be Lurid where the original was retained by the Hays code. It’s a strong Image and not only because the film reuses orchestral music in full swing of Herrmann. Each plan, each cut, each swing of the camera is as huge as possible. Cady blasphemes that he is as great as God, in particular that of the Old Testament which has all removed faithful work. With the way the film supervises and his tattooed chest, you almost believe it.

Sam is less a good guy in the remake, supplemented by the casting of Nolte en Sueur and with a hacped voice. In the original, it is as clean as the peck jaw and practically the hearing of the actor to play Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird”. He keeps a happy house as a patriarch of his family, while in the remake, he is about to deceive his wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) with his clerk Lori (Illeana Douglas) – who Cady attacks and rape, biting a piece of his cheek.

The story of Bowden with CADY is also modified. Bowden de Peck saw Cady attacking a woman, arrested her and testified against Cady to put him away. The remake takes the work of Bowden as a lawyer and links it more convincingly; Bowden de Nolte was the Cady’s own defense lawyer during a rape trial. He buried evidence that the victim was promised because he could say what a Cady monster was. Sometimes the moral choice is also contrary to ethics, but was it his right to condemn a man alone like that? Cady himself would say that it is reserved for God.

Bowden’s daughter goes from the innocent little girl Nancy (Lori Martin) in the original of the bad mood teenager Danielle (Juliette Lewis) in the remake. Also compare how Cady tries to contact her. In the original, he takes it in ambush at school and there is a sequence of prosecution. The string score is dazzling to keep you on your toes, Nancy in search of a possible escape while Cady slowly advances like a proto Michael Myers in “Halloween”.

In the remake, Cady attracts Danielle to her school auditorium (a fairy tale on stage suggesting that he is the big bad wolf) and turns the charm. He talks about his resentment towards his parents, and his sweet words have his floating eyelashes; Cady is able to climb, kiss her and stick her thumb in his mouth, all guests. It is not only more transgressive, but it is also much more frightening; Cady acts less threatening, but the danger feels more real.

The two films have essentially the same culmination of the marshes. The Bowdens flee towards a barge, but Cady follows and attacks them. The original makes Sam an action hero; The confrontation ends with him holding Cady under the threat of a weapon and delivering a fair speech on the way he spares Cady so that he can rot in prison. (The ultimate proof that Peck is the best Batman that we have never had.) The last blow of the 1962 “Cape Fear” is the Bowden family seated together in a turtle boat, shaken but united.

The remake moves the action directly on the Bowdens boat during a rain storm. Sam does not correspond to CADY, but before the latter could wear a kill, he was swept away by the river. He drowns, babbling that he is “to the promised land”. The film then ends with a slow zoom on Danielle’s traumatized face until you see her frightened eyes; She tells the blow, saying that things were never the same for the Bowdens. His latest words are read as optimistic (“If you hang on to the past, you will die a little every day. And for myself, I know that I prefer to live.”), But on the basis of Herrmann’s cooling score and the shaken delivery of Lewis, it feels like Danielle was putting himself to herself.

If someone could challenge the trend of remakes rarely corresponding to the original, it was Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro during their 90s peak.