Forum Message

Topic: Mank
Posted by: Susan Kelly
Date/Time: 07/12/20 22:12:00

Herman Mankiewicz was a Hollywood screenwriter in the 30s and 40s, though now less well remembered than his director brother Joseph. Nevertheless, he won an Oscar for Citizen Kane.

We meet him first in 1940 when he's laid up after a bad car accident. Ironically, although Mank is a sad alcoholic, he wasn't driving at the time. He starts to write the screenplay that Orson Welles has commissioned from him. Welles wants it done in two months.

We flashback frequently to the 30s, each scene change heralded as if from a screenplay: EXT MGM STUDIOS. NIGHT. We meet such luminaries as Louis B Mayer and, importantly William Randolph Hearst who has a soft spot for Mank. Mank is not afraid to speak truth to power (possibly the drink talking) and may be the most honest and decent man in Hollywood.

In 1934 Hearst uses his wealth and influence to skewer the political ambitions of novelist Upton Sinclair who is running for Governor of California as a Democrat but is widely held to be -- shock, horror -- a Socialist. It is this, it seems that leads Mank to attack him in Kane.

The film shimmers in black and white with 'end of reel' markers digitally inserted. I remember these well but had completely forgotten about them. It was nice to see them again.

There are a lot of good one-liners which are seriously underplayed, almost thrown away. Mank's wife Sarah is known to everyone relentlessly as 'Poor Sarah'.

It's streaming on Netflix but it's also on at the Waterman's, so go along, see it on the big screen and help keep London's best repertory cinema going.

Entire Thread
TopicDate PostedPosted By
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