I agree with most other reviewers here that this is a pale remake of a great classic film, though I found it mildly pleasant anyway.
Some of the other reviewers said why even try to remake a classic; why bother. What they don't understand is the big difference between our film culture and the pre-home video, pre-TCM, pre-repertory cinema era. Successful films were remade, because producers thought they were a good bet to make a profit. The studios usually already owned the story and had an effective script to base an update on; no need to pay for the rights to a play or novel, and they could probably pay less for an an updated script than for a new one. If the story was well received and made money years before, it had a better chance of being successful than untested material. The great majority of the potential audience for a remake had either never seen the older version, or had seen it many years before, usually just once, so the older version was just a faint memory. And much of the audience would be interested in seeing the story told with current stars, in color, and when it came in, in wide screen.
On another note, as of June 2015, TCM is still showing a poor quality print of the movie, the Cimemascope image cropped to something like 1:66 to 1 (it was not pan and scanned), color washed out (not remotely like what Technicolor print would have looked like when the film was new), mono soundtrack (the original was stereo according to IMDb). I imagine this is because it is not economically viable for Sony (owners of the Columbia film achieve) to do a new transfer.
Some of the other reviewers said why even try to remake a classic; why bother. What they don't understand is the big difference between our film culture and the pre-home video, pre-TCM, pre-repertory cinema era. Successful films were remade, because producers thought they were a good bet to make a profit. The studios usually already owned the story and had an effective script to base an update on; no need to pay for the rights to a play or novel, and they could probably pay less for an an updated script than for a new one. If the story was well received and made money years before, it had a better chance of being successful than untested material. The great majority of the potential audience for a remake had either never seen the older version, or had seen it many years before, usually just once, so the older version was just a faint memory. And much of the audience would be interested in seeing the story told with current stars, in color, and when it came in, in wide screen.
On another note, as of June 2015, TCM is still showing a poor quality print of the movie, the Cimemascope image cropped to something like 1:66 to 1 (it was not pan and scanned), color washed out (not remotely like what Technicolor print would have looked like when the film was new), mono soundtrack (the original was stereo according to IMDb). I imagine this is because it is not economically viable for Sony (owners of the Columbia film achieve) to do a new transfer.