Jean Dujardin gets smaller and smaller in "The Shrinking Man" The movie is a remake of the 1957 science fiction film "The Incredible Shrinking Man"

Since October 22, The Shrinking Man has arrived in French cinemas, and is also circulating worldwide, notably at the Trieste Science+Fiction in Italy, where it was presented as the opening film. A science-fiction movie that allows rediscovering the 1957 classic The Incredible Shrinking Man by Jack Arnold, itself an adaptation of the story by Richard Matheson published just one year earlier. The two versions of the same title, in its contemporary variant directed by Jan Kounen, feature a protagonist who, due to supernatural and inexplicable events, suddenly begins to shrink. In the 1950s film, the misfortune befell Grant Williams, while his successor is Jean Dujardin, who strongly supported the idea of making a remake of the sci-fi classic, securing both the rights to the book and the film. The actor thus expressed the desire to step into the (tiny) shoes of the protagonist, this time named Paul. And it is impossible not to imagine and perceive similarities between this performer who in 2012 won the Oscar for Best Actor for a work like The Artist and his desire to return once again to the cinema of origins. A work by Michel Hazanavicius, in black and white recalling the silent era, with the recent The Shrinking Man hinting at the actor's desire to continue communicating through an art that has magnified various genres throughout its history.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is indeed the most natural expression of the science-fiction genre, which perfectly aligns with an attractions cinema blending human and universal analysis of the theme, using precisely the fantastic tools of cinema. In the work, where the conclusion leads the protagonist to existential and metaphysical reflections, the entertainment stems precisely from the man’s shrinking and the possibilities of the seventh art to place him in physical and spectacular contexts, such as a cat, for the giant man, trying to catch him, and a spider that becomes his arch-enemy in the attempt to turn a cellar into his kingdom. The absence of many dialogues, the choice to show rather than tell, makes Jack Arnold’s film an example of cinema at its peak, highlighting the reference genre without needing too many words and exploiting its fantastic ability to achieve the unimaginable (a man shrinking) and turn it into a pure and essential spectacle, despite all the introspections on the subject in question.

The Incredible Shrinking Man presents the characteristics of many films that have marked and elevated classic Hollywood, showing the infinite possibilities of cinema, captivating thousands upon thousands of viewers. For this reason, the French equivalent The Shrinking Man can only feel not only a glorious past but also the ability of 1950s sci-fi cinema to surprise with very little. Kounen’s work has the merit of wanting to revisit Matheson’s text and Arnold’s film. It aims to stand out as something new while paying homage with admiration and respect to the black-and-white film. Yet it adds little to the wonder of the past work, reviewing it but producing nothing that hasn’t already been said or shown, reaching the same conclusions as the original, contenting itself with the merit of inspiring viewers to rediscover the 1957 film. The meeting of the infinite and the infinitesimal merges once again, now centering the two titles. They align in seeking to perpetuate the myth of this shrinking man to audiences of yesterday and today, with a past that proves to be, at least for now, unreachable.