Mank Misses the Mark: Dense Biopic of Herman J. Mankiewicz

To depict someone as multifaceted, talented, contradictory, and self-destructive as Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897-1953), a filmmaker must edit. Even within choices of this father and son effort, red penciling seems too reticent. The Finchers (Screenwriter Jack Fincher and his son, Director David Fincher) have selected 1. the making of Citizen Kane and, 2. in an apt nod to today’s upheaval (this was written in the 1990s), economics and politics. The personality portrait is solid, but color is absent from more than cinematography. (This is a black and white film.)

Background: Herman J. Mankiewicz grew up smart and verbal in a German/Jewish immigrant family ruled by a stern academic father. (It’s perhaps not entirely a non-sequitur to point out 10 year-old Herman named his bicycle Rosebud.) Both he and younger brother Joe suffered from and over-compensated for feelings of inadequacy their entire lives. He sped through school an opinionated writer, married sweet, unsophisticated Sara Aaronson, and was employed as a foreign correspondent.

Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz and Tom Pelphrey as Joe Mankiewicz. Cr: NETFLIX

Back in New York, Mank wrote for newspapers and magazines as well as serving as an unreliable second drama critic at The New York Times and then The New Yorker. (He drank and gambled to excess.) A gregarious constituent of The Algonquin Round Table, the young man also collaborated on several plays. Though doughy, not particularly handsome, and perpetually rumpled, he seems to have charmed everyone with whom he came in contact.

Mank and “poor Sara,” as she was commonly known (she was aware), moved to Hollywood so he might pay off a gambling debt, fully intending to return to New York where he could do “serious” writing. Being prolific and skilled with (successively) silent screen titles, screenplays, and producing, however, he found himself quickly promoted to the head of a department he was asked to staff.

“Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around,” he wrote to Ben Hecht. “Recruiting trips to New York became known as …The Paramount Fresh Air Fund for New York Newspapermen.” Mank filled studio offices with a “wisecracking, irreverent, flippant, sensibility with film that replaced sentimental melodrama.” (The Brothers Mankiewicz – Sydney Ladensohn Stern.) S.N. Behrman, Nunnally Johnson, Charles MacArthur, George S. Kaufman, Hecht and Charles Lederer (who turned out to be Marion Davies’ nephew) were a few peers he employed at a time other income was difficult to come by.

The group resumed drinking, betting and finishing one another’s sentences, upping the cleverness ante. A scene in the Fincher film shows raucous chaos in a writers’ room where the secretary wears only pasties and a G-string. Called on the carpet to Richard Zanuck’s office, the writers collectively ad-lib an entire film plot, each concocting a scene on the spot.

Meanwhile Sara raised their children, juggled precarious finances, put him to bed after regular binges, apologized for her husband’s behavior, and tolerated philandering which was sometimes intense, but may never have been physical. Films for which Mank was responsible include, in part, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business and Dinner at Eight. One of ten writers on The Wizard of Oz, he wrote 56 pages the first week featuring instructions to film the Kansas scenes in black and white. The script was rejected, his idea stuck.

When Mank (Gary Oldman) opens, we see him at the end of his career, ravaged by alcoholism, having burned professional bridges. A car crash left him in a month’s traction “somewhat in the posture of a lower class Klondike whore.” During that time, he was visited by 24 year-old Orson Welles (Tom Burke – the voice is good) whom he’d befriended at parties when most suspicious, jealous Hollywood shunned “the boy genius” as an outsider. Welles had a two picture deal with unheard of artistic control. He asked Mank to write his next screenplay.

Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst. Cr: NETFLIX

They bandied around ideas and settled on William Randolph Hearst (an under-used Charles Dance) as model for a protagonist. At first, the ostensibly under-wraps project was meant to merely fulfill contract obligations, its screenplay executed as pay-for hire – without credit. (If Mank didn’t come through, nothing was lost, if he did, Welles later said, credit would be attributed.)

The Fincher set is a Mrs. Campbell’s Guest Ranch (near Palm Springs) bungalow where Mank bedridden with a leg in a cast, will be sequestered for 60 days in order to deliver a script. He’s accompanied by Welles’ Mercury Theater partner John Housman (a bland Sam Troughton), who’s flown from New York to edit, secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), from whom Susan Alexander Kane got her name, and cliché housekeeper/nurse Fräulein Frieda (Monika Grossmann), representing one of a hundred German refugees Mank (actually) sponsored in America.

Tom Burke as Orson Wells. Cr: NETFLIX

The ranch is dry. Welles has provided a case of Seconal to be administered at the end each day. Later liquor is smuggled in. “I’m toiling with you in spirit, Mank,” Welles says cheerily by phone from tinsel town. Perspective barely includes his character, indicating whose side the Finchers were on. Omission of clarifying the men’s relationship is a lost opportunity. The script would become Citizen Kane.

From a claustrophobic cabin in unremitting shadow (most of the film is in shadow), the film ricochets between past and present so often you may experience vertigo. Each new parentheses is titled as if out of a screenplay, example: Exterior Paramount.

We see Sara (Tuppence Middleton) undressing Mank’s limp, inebriated body, the car crash, interaction with Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) who gets some good lines, but none of the infamous ones and whose louche, Machiavellian character is not apparent, and Boy Wonder Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley) utilized only in reference to making propaganda films i.e. fake news against “socialist” gubernatorial Democratic candidate Upton Sinclair.

Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies. NETFLIX

Mank meets Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried who resembles her) with whom he develops a deep friendship based on mutual respect, truth telling, and kindness. She’s more substantial and self aware than in Citizen Kane. Invitations to San Simeon begin. Often the smartest man in the room, he becomes accustomed to sitting at the right of William Randolph Hearst. There seems to have been, at least initially, grudging respect, each man for his own reasons.

Denizens at a castle dinner party dismisses Hitler as harmless and temporary. When “socialist” Sinclair loses to dirty politics, Mank forfeits a large bet, then, blotto, crashes a costume party at San Simeon finally denouncing Hearst. The tirade is terrific.

With Citizen Kane, Mank further baited the bear. Sara, Joe (Tom Pelphrey who doesn’t look enough like his brother), and Marion all try to convince him to back out. Joe and Marion warn about being blackballed. Marion tells him the old man has been good to her and she’s grown to love him. “Don’t hit pops when he’s down.” (Hearst was bleeding money at the time. His mistress helped out financially.) Realizing potential legacy, Mank pays no attention.

Knowing where their bread was buttered, both Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper vilified the film after previews. Mayer offered to buy it back and burn it. Hearst, who needed no help, took his revenge drastically limiting both publicity and distribution. Most reviews, however, were raves.

Mank reverses himself and demands credit. Welles resists. There’s talk of a lawsuit. In the end, he’s listed as co-writer. Both men were awarded the Academy Award for best screenplay. Neither attended the ceremony. Herman J. Mankiewicz died 11 years later at 55, still insisting the script was his work.

In The Making of Citizen Kane, author Robert L. Carringer states that his research showed Mank laid down plot contours Welles honed in final draft, that the former was a narrator, the latter visualized. There’s no doubt Welles’ status as auteur influenced opinions, not to mention his own declaration that, “Theatre is a collective experience; cinema is the work of one single person.”

I wanted to like this film. It’s a terrific story with familiarly famous characters and bankable quotes. Gary Oldman is a talented actor; Amanda Seyfried is excellent. Mank, however, is dense and jerky with so many undefined people in emotionally level scenarios, the lead too often blends in. Oddly featuring a protagonist known for his wit, it also lacks humor, something Citizen Kane had the wisdom to include.

Directed by David Fincher based on a screenplay by his late father Jack Fincher.                    
Available on Netflix.

Top photo: Gary Oldman on the set of MANK.
Cr: Gisele Schmidt/NETFLIX

About Alix Cohen (1706 Articles)
Alix Cohen is the recipient of ten New York Press Club Awards for work published on this venue. Her writing history began with poetry, segued into lyrics and took a commercial detour while holding executive positions in product development, merchandising, and design. A cultural sponge, she now turns her diverse personal and professional background to authoring pieces about culture/the arts with particular interest in artists/performers and entrepreneurs. Theater, music, art/design are lifelong areas of study and passion. She is a voting member of Drama Desk and Drama League. Alix’s professional experience in women’s fashion fuels writing in that area. Besides Woman Around Town, the journalist writes for Cabaret Scenes, Broadway World, TheaterLife, and Theater Pizzazz. Additional pieces have been published by The New York Post, The National Observer’s Playground Magazine, Pasadena Magazine, Times Square Chronicles, and ifashionnetwork. She lives in Manhattan. Of course.