Remake of Auntie Mame

There is a similar thread on the off-topic board, and I'll reiterate the thoughts I posted there. Auntie Mame is about as close to perfect as a comedy can be, and remaking it or updating it is completely unnecessary. Ms. Swinton should channel her ambition elsewhere.

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There are certain iconic movies that were so perfect the 1st time around that any attempts at a remake or update are out of the question: think Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, Maltese Falcon, etc., etc. Rosalind Russell was and always will be Auntie Mame (I'm not not talking about the musical version). Others have done the stage version with varying degrees of success (Eve Arden, Constance Bennett, even Charles Busch) But Rosalind Russell so stamped her imprimatur on the screen version that anyone else is not even a possibility, IMO.

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At the risk of being accused of being old fashioned I have to agree that a film remake of Auntie Mame would be an exercise in futility. Rosalind Russell gave many memorable, superb performances in stage plays and films before and after Auntie Mame but to several generations she IS Auntie Mame. Also, the 1958 film has not dated in the least; in fact, it may arguably still be a little ahead of its time.

Russell's Auntie Mame has the unique ability to speak to a 10 year old who laughs at the funny scenes even though not fully understanding what makes them funny, a 16 year old who begins to appreciate and understand the brilliant dialogue and to admire the courage of Auntie Mame to be an individual and not one of the pack, and the film speaks all of this to an adult and adds a greater understanding of the still radical social commentary and over the top sexual innuendo and allow you to laugh yourself silly at the fox hunt scene just like you did when you were 10.

To the post World War II generations, Auntie Mame is like a real Aunt that thanks to the 1958 film you could revisit at several stages of your life and discover something new and wonderful that you missed the last time and most of all, for 2 hours and 25 minutes, the brilliant humanity of Auntie Mame (thanks to Russell's irreplaceable performance) reminds us of what a precious thing life is and how we must not waste a moment doing anything but living it.

The fact that somebody wants to remake the film and change it to make it more hip and funny (impossible) shows that these people don't understand the true message of Auntie Mame at all; it only tells the rest of us that, to paraphrase Auntie Mame's most famous line with what I hope is a forgivable but pertinent variation: "life is STILL a banquet and most poor suckers are STILL starving to death."

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Updated On: 9/8/09 at 11:18 PM

I've never thought of Tilda Swinton as being... a warm enough person to play Auntie Mame. I think she's a terrific actress, but she seems best at playing cold, prickly characters.

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Hopefully, she doesn't want to "remake Auntie Mame," but merely to sort of re-imagine it, creating an equivalent figure for the world of today. Auntie Mame still speaks to us and makes us laugh, but there's no equivalent figure to today's generation.

Love it.