Theme of the Betrayer and the Hero: David Fincher’s ‘Mank’ (2020)
By: Babu Subramanian
Tags: Film, Film Festivals, Film Reviews, Movies, Filmmaking

The Netflix film Mank (2020) directed by David Fincher is of particular interest to film buffs, since it revolves around the writing of the script of the 1941 classic Citizen Kane by Herman J. Mankiewicz. As much as the meaning of “rosebud” was a mystery — albeit a bit of a gimmick — that the reporter Jerry Thompson set out to unravel in that Orson Welles film, the question on the authorship of the screenplay for it too was turned into a mystery of sorts. Although Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, jointly credited in the film — were conferred the academy award for the best original screenplay, the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael sparked a controversy in her 1971 book length essay, “Raising Kane” by crediting Herman J. Mankiewicz almost solely for it. Director, critic and actor Peter Bogdanovich is known to have come up with his rebuttal to it in an article in “Esquire” titled “The Kane Mutiny” in 1972 with input from Welles. David Fincher’s Netflix film Mank (2020) — scripted by his father Jack Fincher — brings that debate to mind.

Synopsis

The inspiration for Jack Fincher’s script might have been Pauline Kael’s 50,000 words long essay written in her captivating style full of credit for Mankiewicz at the cost of taking the sheen off Welles to a certain extent. Fincher has used some of the stories and witty remarks quoted in it. The following paragraph from her essay is a summary of how Mankiewicz went about bringing out his script as shown in Mank: “Orson Welles wasn’t around when Citizen Kane was written, early in 1940. Mankiewicz, hobbling about on a broken leg in a huge cast, was packed off — away from temptation — to Mrs. Campbell’s Guest Ranch, in Victorville, California, sixty-five miles from Los Angeles, to do the script. He had a nurse and a secretary to watch over him and John Houseman to keep him working, and they all lived there for about three months — in a combination dude ranch and rest home, where liquor was forbidden and unavailable — until the first draft of Citizen Kane, called simply and formidably American, was completed.”

Structure

Mank straddles between two time periods: the present (1940) and the past (1930s) covering Mankiewicz’s career in Hollywood as a screenwriter after the advent of sound. The structure is reminiscent of David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010) which alternates between the depositions conducted in the present (2008 or so) and the period spanning from Facebook’s birth until Sean Parker’s exit from the company in 2005. The Social Network gives the background for the depositions by showing the genesis of the new venture and the relationship dynamics among the people concerned with it. Mank too provides a background by depicting Mankiewicz’s self-destructive days in Hollywood during which, apart from drinking, he gambled with fellow screen writers many of whom (such as Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer) recruited by him. That was the time in which Hollywood Moguls such as Louis B Mayer and Irving Thalberg ruled their studios. The flashbacks also explore why Mankiewicz decided to lay bare the lives of people he hobnobbed with — the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst on whom Charles Foster Kane was loosely modelled and Marion Davies — Hearst’s girlfriend and actress on whom Susan Alexander was partly based.

**Article contains spoilers**

Hollywood’s role in the Campaign of the Century

It seems that Hollywood used to be Republican those days and MGM generated fake news using the pre feature newsreels to influence voters during the 1934 election for governor of California. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) is outraged in the film when the MGM producer Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley) asks him to donate for the Republican candidate Frank Merriam who stood against the Democratic candidate Upton Sinclair in that election. The real Mankiewicz though was “mostly skewed conservative” — according to Matthew Dessem in his article “What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Mank” in “Slate”— and he was not among the writers who refused to donate to Merriam. But he is shown disenchanted with Hollywood — the studio bosses as well as Hearst, the former left winger turned right, whose films MGM distributed. Added to this Shelly Metcalf (Jamie McShane), the test shot director friend of Mankiewicz, is assigned to make fake newsreels defaming Sinclair. Mankiewicz tries in vain to get the phony Sinclair films pulled. After Sinclair’s defeat, Metcalf feels that the fake newsreels that he shot would have caused Sinclair’s gubernatorial loss and commits suicide when diagnosed for Parkinson’s. This is a fictitious character in the film. The one who actually made those newsreels was Felix Feist Jr. Those newsreels helped Feist in advancing his career. He went on to make film noirs and died of natural causes in 1965. The Metcalf fiction sits at odds with the real Mankiewicz’s stand in that election. According to Greg Mitchell, the author of “The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics”, as he has written in his New York Times article, “there is no evidence that Herman [Mankiewicz] took any stand for Sinclair. His brother [Joe Mankiewicz], on the other hand, wrote outrageous anti-Sinclair radio dramas…”. The political background of the film and the use of fake news have contemporary relevance at a time when there was a bitterly fought US Presidential election. Perhaps the reason why Jack Fincher’s script, written long back, was at last taken out and made into a movie.

The Betrayer and the Hero

Mathew Dessem’s “Slate” article helps in fact-checking. As somebody who knew Hearst (Charles Dance) and Davies (Amanda Seyfried) socially, Mankiewicz is shown attending parties at the Hearst castle — the model for Xanadu in Citizen Kane. Hearst appreciated his wit and wanted him to sit next to him in parties. Mankiewicz and Davies indeed bonded it seems as shown in the film. In the fictional last scene at the Hearst’s castle, Mankiewicz is shown to come up with a story idea for a film — an early version of Citizen Kane — with Hearst as the model, calling him Don Quixote. In that narration in the film Mankiewicz includes Hearst’s role in getting the socialist Sinclair defeated. It seems there is no evidence for the real Mankiewicz making such a pitch for a film. Also, there is no record of him supporting Upton Sinclair as mentioned already. To justify its protagonist’s betrayal of Hearst, Mank comes up with something fictional and makes Mankiewicz look like a hero by taking on the media Mogul, ridiculing him in the party with his pitch. Hearst is shown humiliating him in response. It was the real Mankiewicz’s drinking that made him unwelcome to the castle at some point it seems. In the film Gary Oldman fits the role of Mankiewicz although he is limited by the film’s fiction. Charles Dance playing Hearst has too little screen time to come up with nuances. The film touches upon Mankiewicz sponsoring Jewish refugees like Fräulein Frieda (Monika Gossmann) to migrate from Germany to USA. It seems he didn’t save an entire village but he indeed sponsored hundreds of refugees fleeing from fascism. But this doesn’t have a bearing on the subject of Mankiewicz’s script writing.

The ’30s and ’40s Look

Digging up the past of the character to explain the present is something Mank shares with the film its protagonist wrote. For, Citizen Kane too suffers from tracing Kane’s behavior to his childhood separation symbolized by the sled he harks back on. However, its structure of multiple points of view and use of deep focus elevates the film to the level of a classic. After remaining number 1 in the Critics’ list of Top 100 over five decades in the Sight & Sound Poll conducted every 10 years, Citizen Kane came second in the 2012 poll. Francois Truffaut called it as probably the one that has started the largest number of filmmakers on their careers. As a film concerning the birth of Citizen Kane, David Fincher’s Mank has been shot in black and white using deep focus and low angles by DP Erik Messerschmidt. There is the theatrical lighting cue of turning the lights down during scene changes as in the Welles film that gives the effect of deep dissolves. Whenever the location changes in the film, the slug line comprising the location, time of day, year etc. is typed out to evoke the preparation of the script. It is shot in digital but it doffs its hat to film. There are circular cue marks called “cigarette burns” that were used to signal the projectionist to change the reels. The exterior scenes of Hearst’s estate, San Simeon, with its monkeys, elephants and giraffes have been shot splendidly using day for night. The party scenes have been shot very well, particularly the one just after the election with the ice sculpture reminiscent of Citizen Kane and the huge 1934 sign. Shooting in Hi Dynamic Range has helped this digital movie in reproducing greater range of luminosity — jet blacks and shadows to get the Gregg Toland effect.

The Question on Authorship

In the end, Mankiewicz’s press conference in the movie has him saying what according to him would have been his acceptance speech at the Oscars had he attended it: “I am very happy to accept this award in Mr. Welles’ absence, because the script was written in Mr. Welles’ absence.” As a film on Mankiewicz, it shows him in good light, leaving Tom Burke playing Orson Welles with very less screen time. There is a scene in which Orson Welles gets angry and throws furniture around when Mankiewicz rejects his offer of 10,000 dollars to go without credit. This is based on Pauline Kael’s essay in which she quoted filmmaker Nunnally Johnson’s account of how Orson Welles tried to stick to the original understanding of no credit to Mankiewicz. This story has been denied by Welles. The film does show however that Orson Welles was involved in some way during the preparation of the script. Welles informs Mankiewicz over phone that he is sending his notes. Earlier in the film Mankiewicz learns that Welles has kept one month for improving the script once it is completed by Mankiewicz.

David Fincher has said in an interview that he toned down the depiction of Welles in the film as it was harsh in his father’s script. But it doesn’t take into account the rebuttal to Kael’s “Raising Kane”. (Ironically, it was alleged that, Kael didn’t give credit to the UCLA faculty member Howard Suber whose research was the basis for her essay.) Kael was criticized for not interviewing Welles’s secretary Katherine Trosper, and associate producer Richard Baer who were supposed to have seen Welles writing parts of the script. Kael didn’t interview Welles either. Perhaps as a staunch opponent of the auteur theory, which held the director as the author and the major creative force behind a film, she had already come to her conclusion. Mathew Dessem provides the general critical consensus in his piece in “Slate” quoting Robert L Carringer who wrote the 1978 article, “The Scripts of Citizen Kane”, based on his analysis of the seven drafts of the film’s screenplay: [Welles’ contributions transformed Mankiewicz’s script] “from a solid basis for a story into an authentic plan for a masterpiece”. The TV film RKO 281 (1999) directed by Benjamin Ross gives a different perspective on the making of Citizen Kane but the tussle between Mankiewicz and Welles is not central to it. As for Mank, it is not about the question on authorship of the screenplay. It is part fiction, that creates a myth around its protagonist, although its evocation of the period is dazzling.