His first movie, Alien 3, had a notoriously difficult production during which he clashed with the studio and lost control of the final cut. The film speaks to the creative frustrations of working within such a rigid system, something Fincher himself has experienced. Read: 25 feel-good films you’ll watch to watch again-and again Even newer upstarts like Netflix, which is releasing Mank, are multibillion-dollar monoliths aiming for global domination with every major release. Since Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019, Hollywood is the most centralized it’s been since its Golden Age.
This movie is surprisingly resonant in 2020. That’s the real magic of the movies.”ĭon’t be fooled by Mank’s old-fashioned presentation-by the black-and-white cinematography, echoey dialogue, and melodramatic throwback score. “What he bought still belongs to the man who sold it. “This is a business where the buyer gets nothing for his money but a memory,” Mayer (a wonderfully grouchy Arliss Howard) barks to Mankiewicz. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker-to dash off crowd-pleasers in exchange for a healthy paycheck. A former drama critic and playwright, Mankiewicz moved West like many great writers of the era-F. The film drifts between Mankiewicz toiling away at the Kane screenplay in a secluded lodge and his memories of his friendship with Hearst, Davies, and Mayer (who hired him to work at MGM Studios). Similar to Citizen Kane, Mank unfurls much of its narrative via flashback. The industry is stamping out political radicalism, and most of its storytelling power is concentrated in the hands of mega-moguls such as Jack Warner, Darryl Zanuck, and Louis B. When Mank takes place, the Great Depression is raging, and American cinema is booming. But Kane is just an anchor for Fincher’s deeper exploration of the monolithic conservatism of 1930s Hollywood. One might dismiss Mank as a niche story that relitigates old arguments about the tortured creation of Citizen Kane and the extent to which that film was a condemnation of Hearst and his partner, the actor Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried). In Mankiewicz, Fincher has found a perfect unsung hero, a man who tried to reckon with an industry that so often puts business before authenticity-and ended up writing what is considered the best film ever made. It interrogates the fragile dynamic between creator and mogul that’s essential to the Hollywood business of hammering art into commerce, whether in the 1930s or today. And although some of Mank (which debuts in theaters Friday and on Netflix next month) is concerned with the arduous process of writing Kane’s first draft, Fincher’s film has a grander scope. Today, Mankiewicz is most remembered as a co-writer of Citizen Kane, the Orson Welles masterpiece widely interpreted as a scathing critique of Hearst and the tycoon class he belonged to. To Mankiewicz, Hearst represents something more serious and frightening. To Hearst, Mankiewicz is little more than a court jester, an amusing addition to his collection of oddball pals.
During a movie shoot, “Mank” makes a wisecrack that gets him summoned to the tent of William Randolph Hearst, the famous newspaper magnate and movie producer (played by Charles Dance).
As played by Gary Oldman in David Fincher’s new biographical film, Mank, he’s a disheveled figure on the sidelines, an acclaimed New York wordsmith brought to serve as a cog in a giant Los Angeles machine. Mankiewicz is an odd sight on a glamorous Old Hollywood movie set.