Old and Out of the Way

I’m in love with my DirecTV box — let’s just put that out here right now — though I agree that much of what’s on sucks, or is at least worth questioning.This is precicely the reason I feel hundreds of channels are better than a few: you get a plethora of view points, ideas and electronic images from across the past 100 or so years.

A little disclosure: I’m a screenwriter, and while I prefer outright originality to remakes of any kind, I know it’s the hot thing to do right now for the dominant paradigm, and I’d like to make a few suggestions.

While perusing my DTV for some cool movies with women at the helm, I ran across a few old, practically forgotten gems, the kind of movies I feel would make worthier updates than the current crop, which seem to serve mostly to remind the majority of film-goers why they loved the original so much more than the remake. I’d just as soon as see a remake of something decent that could use a little work, personally, than see a remake of a film that was damn near perfect to begin with.

Here are a couple of my picks, in no particular order:

The Farmer’s Daughter, 1947, with Loretta Young, Ethel Barrymore and Joseph Cotten. 

Loretta Young stars as Katrin Holstrom, a good, strong, Swedish farm girl with ambitions of becoming a nurse so she can return to her community and work for the local hospital.

While waiting for a bus going from the country into Washington, DC, a neighbor pulls up and offers her a ride in order to save her a few bucks bus fare. Little known to our heroine, he’s an alcoholic with a terrible driving record, proved effectively when he backs his car into a ditch, killing it temporarily. As he’s drunk away much of his money, he asks Katrin to pay for the repairs (some way to save on bus fare!) with the promise that he’ll pay her back when they reach the city.

Rather than pay her back, he ditches her at the hotel where they’ve been forced to stay (in separate rooms, much to his chagrin) and she’s left on her own.

Eventually making her way to Wash, DC, Katrin finds work as a maid for a wealthy congressman, who, along with his butler, convinces Katrin to take night courses in politics. Finding she enjoys politics, she gives up on her nursing studies.

Eventually, she becomes involved in her employer’s politics, and when she becomes enraged at their choice of a replacement for a congressman who has recently died and left his seat empty, she decides to run on her own, without the support of the family.

Fast, funny, entertaining, and high-concept, The Farmer’s Daughter needs a bit of work on plot twists, credibility, and where certain characters enter and leave the story, but I feel that with a few changes, this sweet, engaging little film could enjoy a second run and become a genuine modern masterpiece.

The Dalton Girls, 1957, with Merry Anders, Lisa Davis, Penny Edwards, Sue George and John Russell.

When their father and brothers are killed by lawmen, the downtrodden sisters of The Dalton Gang take matters into their own hands. Left with no real means of supporting themselves and the expectation of the town that they will become little more than prostitutes or barmaids, the Dalton girls become outlaws, robbing and stealing their way across the desert, remaining true to themselves from beginning to end.

What I love about The Dalton Girls is the realism of the characters – one of the women is a hardened killer, one is angry and on her way to following in the former’s footsteps, one is a bit of a dreamer who wants to make her way to California and start a farm of her own, and one simply wishes to marry a nice farm boy and get on with her life. The male characters, such as the gambler Mr. Gray, who the girls rob in the beginning of the film, is an anti-hero of sorts, closer to the truth than a lot of the older "good guys wear white" flicks of the past.

While I enjoyed this short feature — it clocks in at under 1.15 — I feel as though it needs a bit of plot development, something tough, real, and full of heart, like Thelma and Louise, Unforgiven, or Buffalo Gals. A perfect story to update for a modern audience, The original Dalton Girls is a good blueprint for an aspiring filmmaker.

I’m working on a couple of adaptations in addition to my own original work if anyone out there wants to chat!