Film Studies: It's such an ancient pitch, but one I wouldn't switch...
5th Sep 2005, 15:31 GMT
The trouble with the new movie version of Bewitched, out later this month, is that not only does it have no interest in witchcraft, it can't muster any faith in those who believe or suffer from it. This may qualify writer-director Nora Ephron as a properly liberated, rational modern woman. But it's a handicap to her sense of fiction. The situation reminds me of something Steven Spielberg said when he introduced Close Encounters of the Third Kind, way back in 1977. When that film opened, a certain Dr Allen Hynek, a UFO expert, was along for the ride. So someone in the press asked Spielberg did he, too, believe in UFOs? No, said the director, but I believe in people who believe in them.