In 1999, Notting Hill (Michell, UK/US) was the highest-grossing British film and the sixteenth-highest-grossing film of the year worldwide. A feelgood romantic comedy about an unlikely union between a rather unsuccessful English bookshop keeper and a glamorous Hollywood star showed not only that opposites attract, but also that love conquers all, including geographic distance and cultural difference, not to mention bank balance. However, to the acute eye of the British critics (see James 2001: 304), the film was more than just a love story between an English underdog and an American celebrity. Under the veneer of romance lay hidden (and perhaps less optimistic) truths concerning the British film industry and its relationship with Hollywood, a love affair where a powerful mistress comes and goes as she pleases, often leaving her poor lover in a state of complete disarray, trying to pick up the pieces.

This book captures two moments of that ongoing relationship. The first, in the 1960s and early 1970s, was when the British film industry's union with Hollywood was briefly a happy one before culminating in a painful divorce. As a result of that marriage, many iconic British films were produced that represented an era characterised by revolutionary sociocultural changes in British society and displayed the impact of Hollywood's involvement in the domestic film scene. In the second moment, and in a way similar to the characters of Notting Hill, who rekindle their love after a painful break-up, Hollywood returned to its 1960s and 1970s British films in the new millennium. It manifested its appreciation for the older classics by giving them a total makeover, resulting in an impressive number of Hollywood remakes of iconic British films.

The present study is an attempt at analysing Hollywood remakes and their British originals in terms of constructing and articulating their shared transnational identity and their difference. To show their reciprocal relationship, it will focus on four pairs of films: Alfie (Gilbert, 1966; Shyer, 2004), Bedazzled (Donen, 1967; Ramis, 2000), The Italian Job (Collinson, 1969; Gray, 2003) and Get Carter (Hodges, 1971; Kay, 2000) with its unofficial remake, The Limey (Soderbergh, 1999).