6. Yasujiro Ozu - A Story Of Floating Weeds (1934) / Floating Weeds (1959)
Concerning an actor's return home to his seaside town and illegitimate son, Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu's A Story of Floating Weeds was remade twenty-five years later as Floating Weeds, with the director finally able to take advantage of new advances in film and technology to turn his silent, monochrome original into the technicolor talkie of the remake. Ozu, who would remake his own films again later in his career (his Late Spring became Late Autumn, for instance), had always wanted to adapt A Story of Floating Weeds, and his new opportunity to do so led to a film similar in theme and technique, but obviously different in aesthetic. (There are also differences in score and setting, with the original set primarily in the rain and the latter taking place during a searing heatwave.) Though both tender and touching and blessed with expressive beauty, Floating Weeds just edges out its predecessor, with Ozu in the twilight of his career and thus operating in a more transient mode, turning his remake into an acceptance of life's ephemeral nature in the process.