Sherab Rabzyor Professor David Annandale FILM1310 27th February, 2016 A Critical Comparison of Trois Hommes et un Couffin (1985) with its Remakes Coline Serreau’s Trois Hommes et un Couffin is a family movie that emphasizes the strength of the bond between parent and child and the importance of traditional family values. The film was nominated for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award in the “Best Foreign Language Film” category. Serreau was specially applauded for her “sweet-tempered humour” (Wilmington 1987) and frugal lighting style, despite it being an uncommon occurrence in comedy. Contrarily, the American remake, Three Men and a Baby, (1987) directed by Leonard Nimoy, uses a brighter imagery and much more punchline-heavy dialogue to deliver the story. The variations we see between these films lie primarily in their style of humour and the method of direction, which occur due to the differences between the cultural contexts in which they were made. However, we do not see much of a time-shift between these two renditions of the story since these movies were made only two years apart, and are both set in the mid-1980s. The French original was a major box-office success despite having actors that were largely unknown during that era. Due to this, all the commercial success it enjoyed was attributed solely to the strength of the scriptwriting, the performance of the actors, and the choices of direction. Whereas the actors in the Hollywood remake were considerably more famous and the decision to cast them was likely made because of the increased importance placed on blockbusters during the 80s. The original plot remains mostly intact in the remake except that the American drug dealers get caught towards the end but the French ones do not. This suggests that the American audience demands an ending where all agents of evil are defeated and thereby, is morally satisfying. It might also be meant to suggest that the American people take the law much more seriously and bear a stronger sense of abhorrence for social miscreants. Serreau does not rely on visual extravagance or loud humour. In fact, she makes the imagery rather bleak for a comedy by using only low key and high contrast lighting for the greater part of the film. Surprisingly, her decision to tone down the visual vibrancy preserves the dryness of the humour of the script. Nimoy’s direction is much more characteristic of a commercial comedy film in that he mostly uses high key and medium contrast lighting, which helps the film maintain a lightness in its course, and a great part of the humour lies in the deliberateness of the actors’ line delivery and facial expressions. It is important to note that Serreau was a known feminist filmmaker and this most likely has affected her method of telling this story. In her film, the baby’s mother does not show obvious signs of relief or elation during her reunion with her child, unlike in the American version. Also, Pierre (Roland Giraud) does not ask her to move in with him and his friends at the end as Peter (Tom Selleck) does. This shows Sylvia to be much more emotionally contained and maybe financially independent in her French avatar, as Serreau perhaps had wished. The role of Sylvia as a mother-figure for the baby is emphasized much more in the Hollywood remake. Nonetheless, the differences that we see between these two retellings of the story are subtle as both of them were made for Western audiences, albeit in different countries. The French and the American are two distinct cultures but they are not as different from each other as they are from Indian cultures. Therefore, there are more similarities in the style of narrative and the type of humour they enjoy. Both films follow a plot and every single event that occurs is meant to either develop the characters or the story itself. The audience expects the events to keep unfolding at a reasonable pace and that is how both these movies proceed. That is not necessarily the case with the movie’s three Indian remakes, as they conform to the cinematic traditions and audience expectations of the movie industries in India, of which there are several. Thoovalsparsham (1990), directed by Kamaluddin Mohammed, was the first of these Indian remakes and it was written in Malayalam, a regional language of the country. Eleven years later, in 2001, the Tamil film industry made a remake of this remake and called it Asathal. Finally, in 2007, the biggest Indian film industry, “Bollywood,” came up with a remake of the remake of the remake of the remake, and it was called Heyy Babyy. These movies were all made in different languages and the first two were only released regionally within their own respective states. Heyy Babyy was the directorial debut of Sajid Khan. The most significant difference between the Indian remakes and the Hollywood remake lies in the cinematic traditions that these two industries follow. The Hollywood remake pays homage to the French original by keeping the plot unchanged and also by renaming the characters using the English equivalents of their original French names. Also, Nimoy bought the rights to the original before venturing into the production, a step rarely taken by Indian filmmakers, and also brought Serreau back to work on the screenplay along with two others. Another point of stark difference is the incorporation of lyrical music into the narrative in the Indian remakes. This greatly disrupts the flow of the story and stagnates the plot, keeping it from proceeding as quickly as it could. This factor is difficult to comment on as it is something of a tradition, and something of an Indian audience’s prerogative, in Indian cinema. No movie can avoid being a box-office failure if its running time does not include songs that were specifically made for the movie itself. Given the purely commercial impetus of these films, the addition of songs might be said to be a wise decision on the directors’ part. Regarding the plot, the most significant point of dissonance is the absolute lack of the drug-angle of the first two films’ stories. None of the Indian remakes dealt with drug dealers or cops. This could be because the directors wanted to deliver a livelier course of events and take it to a point where the effervescence of the scenarios seem forced and unnatural, as the target audience demands. Another conflict in plot lies in the way the baby was delivered to the men. In the French original and the American remake, it was Sylvia who dropped the baby off at the men’s home in both cases. In the Indian remakes, it is someone else who does — the female lead’s father who does so in order to let her granddaughter know her dad. In the Tamil remake, it turns out that the baby’s father is the men’s next door neighbour. In both cases we see that social issues were exempted to lay a greater emphasis on family dynamics and relationships. Trois Hommes et un Couffin is one of the most flexible scripts of comedy and the formula of its plot makes room for humour that spans across several genres and cultures. It spawned four remakes in four different languages. Every remake keeps the core of the story untouched, yet moulds it to suit the liking of the audience it targets. This might be an indication of how perfect the “grown men and baby” formula of Serreau’s is for a light-hearted family film. Works Cited: Ebert, Roger. "Three Men and a Baby." New York Post 25 Nov. 1987. Print. Fábics, Natália. Intercultural Remake and Melodrama. N.p.: Eötvos Loránd University, 2013. Print. Levet, Sabine. Cross-Cultural Comparison Through Film. N.p.: MIT Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 2003. Print. Maslin, Janet. "Three Men and a Baby." The New York Times 25 Nov. 1987. Print. Steinmetz, Johanna. "Old ‘Men and Baby’ Formula Still Works, In Right Hands." Chicago Tribune 25 Nov. 1987. Print. Wilmington, Michael. "Three Men and a Baby." Los Angeles Times 25 Nov. 1987. Print. Yolmo Yolmo