Make/Remake - 3:10 to Yuma (1957 and 2007, both USA)

While the thematic underpinnings are the same in both versions of 3:10 to Yuma, they're otherwise very different films. The original is very spare, concentrating more on the tension of the waiting game in the second half than on the larger scope of the Wild West. The 2007 remake is a more complex beast - along with a greatly expanded running time (an additional 30 or 40 minutes), the newer movie features a much more complex network of characters as well as a shift in attention from the hotel room scenes to the urgency of the ride from Bisbee to Contention. There's also a greater depth to Dan's character - in particular his background and his relationship with his family - and this is evident from the very first scenes.

Unlike the original, which starts off with the stagecoach hijack, the latter movie begins with an expanded sequence concerning Dan's financial and familial plights. As played by Christina Bale, Dan is more of a sad sack than the prior character version. Van Heflin's Dan is not so much a coward as a fatalist. He doesn't believe that his intercession in the events going on around him will really make a difference one way or another. In contrast, Bale's Dan is a man who has failed at life - he's deep in hock to a local lender and is about to lose his farm. His cattle are dying, his eldest son is rebelling against him, and no one in town shows him any respect. He's not whole, as rather obviously evidenced by a wooden leg, a souvenir from the Civil War. This less stoic characterization makes Dan's interaction with outlaw Ben Wade all the more complex. It also changes the nature of his mission to take Ben to the prison train - in the original, it's more strictly (though not entirely) a mercenary mission and less of a point of pride.

In eliding the mission's progress from Bisbee to Contention, which comprises the bulk of the latter film, the relationship between Dan and Ben in the original is focused on what happens between the two men in the hotel room, as they wait for the 3:10 train to arrive. It's more of a psychological game in the original than the drawn-out bonding that happens in the remake. Adventures and danger along the trial, together with a greater range of interactions with other denizens of the Western genre, link the men in a way that simply doesn't exist in the original.

(CAUTION: SPOILERS)

But I think the true mark of the latter film's position as a "revisionist" Western comes at the end of the story. Since I saw the 2007 movie a week before watching the 1957 one, i had to ask myself if the original's filmmakers were really going to kill Dan off. The end is in fact so radically different that it's kind of amazing that it doesn't end up affecting the transmission of the theme. In the latter movie, after Dan is shot down at the threshold of the train, Ben turns on his own gang, killing them all in cold blood before putting himself back on the course to prison. In the original, both men narrowly escape the gang, jumping aboard the train as it pulls away from the station and riding towards Yuma together. They seem content with the decisions that they've made - Dan has redeemed a sense of pride that he didn't always know he needed, and Ben has grown to respect the man who has risked his life to usher him towards jail (even though he never plans to stay there for long).

The latter version is obviously more dramatic - I wonder if contemporary audiences would have been satisfied if neither of the leads had died violently. I don't know if Ben's transformation would have carried the dramatic weight if Dan had been allowed to live. So what does this mean for the original? The end of the earlier film contains a sense of hope that the 2007 version lacks. Dan is alive, the much-needed rains start to fall on the parched Arizona ground, and his wife awaits him nearby. He's ready to start a new chapter of his life, while Ben's more episodic journey takes yet another turn. It doesn't lessen Dan's willingness to sacrifice his life in order to do the right thing.

(END OF SPOILERS)

In general, the party line is that remakes are never quite as good as the original. There are plenty of exceptions to this rule, but it holds fairly steady through shifts in genre and era. 3:10 to Yuma is an exception in that both movies have strengths that the other lacks. I happen to prefer the remake to the original, but both films are linked by a strong story and generally strong execution as well. Their differences actually support the power of the source material, and both are boosted by strong casts and excellent cinematography.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I found Charlie Prince to be the most interesting character the remake had to offer. In the original, he's little more than Ben's anonymous right-hand-man. The latter Charlie Prince is a not-so-ambiguously homosexual cowboy, excellently played by Ben Foster. The choice to subvert Charlie's sexuality in a rather overt way is interesting, and I've been thinking a lot on it as a feature of the "revisionist" brand that i mentioned above. The latter film is more interested in exploring different kinds of manhood than the former was. Charlie is a badass cowboy, a psychopath really, and some critics have called his characterization bigoted because of the interconnectedness between his sexuality and his violence. But I find it interesting that Ben is pretty much the only person who doesn't question Charlie's sexuality as impacting his loyalty or effectiveness. This says as much about Ben as it does about Charlie, and it also adds an additional dynamic to their father-son relationship, which mirrors that of Dan and his own son. I'm still working out exactly how Charlie Prince functions in the scope of the film, and the closest comparison I can make is that to the character of Omar Little in the television series The Wire. Like Charlie, Omar is gay, and he's also pretty much the most feared person on the streets of Baltimore. How others respond to Omar's sexuality is a more informative route of investigation than merely looking into how Omar's sexuality is tied to his code of violence. I think the same is true of Charlie Prince. His complex coded sexuality is a controversial choice, but it's not facile nor is it necessarily bigoted.