#herman manciewicz

[iamanathemadevice]

“Mank”

Official Trailer

This film is not due to be on general release until December in America, so it was a privilege to be able to see it early here in Brisbane.

The plot is as simple as the narrative is not. Herman Manciewicz (Gary Oldman), aka ‘Mank’, is hired by Orson Welles (played by one Tom Burke) to write the script of Welles’s new movie, Citizen Kane, a thinly disguised commentary on the newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst. He has agreed to forego credit as part of his contract, but when the script is done, asks for it anyway. Welles angrily agrees, and both men share an Oscar for the screenplay - the only Oscar awarded to the movie.

To dispose of the most important matter first, Tom is barely in the film, despite the importance of his character to the existence of the movie. He does all right for the minute he’s on screen, and the additional thirty seconds or so of his voice acting, but his casting bewildered both of us, since he was a poor physical fit for the heavily built Welles, and his accent and voice didn’t resemble Welles either. He was one of a number of Brits playing Americans in the film, and while his American accent has improved quite a lot since he recorded Brothers for the BBC, there must be dozens of actual American actors who could have done this better.

I have now spent more time talking about Tom Burke than he appears in the film.

However, if you can bear to watch a film that does not make best use of our Tom, you will find it very much worth your while. You needn’t know the smallest thing about Hearst or Citizen Kane or Orson Welles to follow and enjoy this movie, as all the context and background is given in considerable detail through a series of flashbacks. It’s a love song to the Golden Age of Hollywood, an indictment of the power of vested interests in the movie and newspaper industries to manipulate politics, and a fairly unflinching look at Mank himself. It is not an unbiased one, though, as Orson Welles is somewhat unfairly villainised and his real work on the Citizen Kane script minimised. It is unashamedly told from Mank’s point of view, and Mank’s opinion was that he was the sole auteur of the script, and so that is what David Fincher, using his father Jack’s screenplay, presents in his film.

I’m not a fan of Fincher’s films per se, but this movie is a stunning work of art. Lovingly imitating the sounds and feel of films of that period, especially that of Citizen Kane, the attention to detail is quite incredible and effective. The script takes a little while to warm up, but once it does, it really flies, and all through it, Gary Oldman grabs your attention and never lets go, dominating each scene and delivering a performance that never feels like caricature or mere imitation. (I can’t stand Gary Oldman as a person so this admission is grudging but deserved.) Mank is a raging drunk, a gambling addict, often callous and unkind, author of his own misfortunes and of his long-suffering wife, played by Tuppence Middleton (excellent in this as she always is.) But he’s also clever, witty, talented, and generous, and his relationships with people like Hearst’s longtime mistress, Marion Davies, Hearst himself (for a while), his brother, and others in the industry as shown in the film explain why his friends remained loyal for long despite being exasperated with him.

Oldman is supported by a splendid cast. Amanda Seyfried as Davies is a standout performance, showing Davies and fragile and brave. Lily Collins as Manciewicz’s amanuensis during his recovery from a broken leg and the writing of the Kane script is initially wary, finally entirely on his side as a support and a friend. Charles Dance as Hearst is refined and worldly and cruel as only he can play it, and Ben Kingsley’s son Frederick is brilliant as the enfant terrible Irving Thalberg who died young, leaving a huge legacy of wonderful movies. Legendary MGM boss, Louis B Mayer (Arliss Howard), is a hard, driven, and morally compromised man determined to defeat communism and socialism in California at all costs (and those costs are high). Other Hollywood legends like Chaplin, Garbo, Gable, and Lombard, are seen but not heard, or heard briefly but brightly, like Sid Perelman, David O. Selznick, and George S Kaufman who, along with Mank, wrote for MGM.

There are plenty of resonances with the media and politics of today in those of 1930′s California, but Fincher doesn’t dwell too hard on the equivalences, letting the facts speak for themselves. All through it, Mankiewicz is a sharply dry observer, attempting to speak the truth in an industry which depends on convincing the audience that King Kong really was ten stories high and Fay Wray was a virgin at the age of forty.

Fincher is a notorious perfectionist, demanding over a hundred takes of his actors, and refusing to compromise even if he has to wait twenty years for a studio to allow him to film Mank in black and white as he insisted it had to be. The wait has proved worth it. Highly recommended.

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Gary Oldman as Herman J Manciewicz on the set of a Hollywood movie in Mank (2020). This was the fifth music score of a David Fincher film by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and their first not to use any electronic sounds.