ThereÕs only one ‘True Grit’ for all those John Wayne fans

Date Published: {J}

Now that we have seen the gala night for the presentation of the Oscars – as someone who has had a lifelong interest in the

cinema, can I say that I was just a little puzzled by the fact that a remake of True Grit got up to 10 Oscar nominations, though eventually it did not feature among the major prizewinners.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on world cinema, or anything like it. Interest in the movies began as a kid in the fourpennies, like tens of thousands of others. But it did translate into a long stint as secretary of the Galway Film Society in the ’60s and ’70s, when a bunch of us did try to bring what might be termed some ‘world cinema’ to Galway.

In certain circles we were known as ‘the dirty film crowd’, but week-in, week-out, we collected reels of films from the trains and succeeded in screening Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Elia Kazan and Federico Fellini to Galway. In fact, the night we screened La Dolce Vita in Salthill in the Oslo, they were hanging out of the rafters such was the reputation of the film.

Unless I am mistaken, a goodly number of the clientele who were unaccustomed to subtitled films, or maybe expected some ‘hotter’ action, left during the break for the reel change . . . for, though we had two projectors, there had to be a break as we switched projectors.

However, back to True Grit. Now I know little or nothing about the newly-released remake – which was directed by no less than the formidable Joel and Ethan Coen – but I have to wonder out loud about the concept of making a new version of a very good film which has endured since 1969 when it was first made and starred John Wayne, Glen Campbell and Kim Darby.

I have to admit something of a soft spot for John Wayne. That probably comes from the days in the fourpennies when Wayne fought his way across every island in the Pacific as a marine in all those war films. Wayne, Alan Ladd, Audie Murphy, William Holden were the staple diet of the cinemagoers of my generation . . . and it was only later that we learned not to ‘boo’ when Jane Russell hove into view.

Now you will notice that I did not call the original True Grit a classic. I would rather classify it as a definitive Western. However, the idea of a remake of ‘a very good film’ all sounds a bit like inviting someone along to have another attempt at painting the Mona Lisa.

Or, you might get someone in to make you a violin in the style of Stradivarius. Both propositions sound a little silly, now don’t they . . . in other words, how do you improve something that is widely regarded as very fine indeed?

Sounds like you might end up with an end product akin to that mentioned in one of Tommy Cooper’s joke. Fans of the comic will remember his story about looking at The Antiques Roadshow and then heading up into his attic in an attempt to rummage out something of value. He emerged with a violin and a painting!

Cooper said that when he took them to his local antique dealer he was told that what he had found were a Stradivarius and a Rembrandt . . . but, unfortunately, Stradivarius was a hopeless painter and Rembrandt made crap violins!

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.