The art direction and costumes were fine. My problem dealt with the pacing. The original film had a running time of an hour and fifty minutes. The remake clocked in at two hours and thirty nine minutes and seemed tedious in numerous spots.
Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara lacked the charisma of Tyrone Power and Colleen Gray. They had little chemistry as a couple. The original cast was uniformly much better.
Helen Walker's Dr. Ritter was more subtle and nuanced. Cate Blanchett's evil was obvious from her first appearance. The remake suffers for the lack of ambiguity in the original screenplay by Jules Furthman.
The best performance was probably David Strathairn as the alcoholic Pete, but Ian Keith did as well in the same role with fewer minutes of screen time. Toni Collette is no match for Joan Blondell as Zeena. Willem Dafoe has much more screen time as the carnival operator than James Flavin had in the original. He makes good use of his added scenes.
While portions of the remake were interesting, I am definitely glad that I did not pay to see the film at a theater.
Dan
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