Movie & music reviews
On Netflix and yes, in real cinemas here in Australia, retells the making of from the view of its screenwriter. It’s a new classic about classic.
You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope for is to leave an impression of one.” So says New Yorker critic turned playwright turned script doctor Herman J. Mankiewicz (played by Gary Oldman) — or Mank, as he’s known to friends, colleagues and venomous rivals — of his screenplay American, later to be retitled Citizen Kane. And just as Mankiewicz and Orson Welles most certainly achieved this objective with their rise-and-fall-and-somuch-more story of Charles Foster Kane, so too does this telling of how Mank co-wrote The Greatest Film Ever Made.
Directed by David Fincher from a script by his journalist father Jack, Mank, like Kane, utilises multiple flashbacks to piece together a life. The here-and-now is 1940 in a ranch in Victorville, California, as Mank holes up for 60 days to break the back of the script. But we’re soon hopping back to the Paramount and MGM backlots at various junctures over the 1930s, hobnobbing with such historical titans as executive Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley) and studio head Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard). Also present, naturally, are
media tycoon William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his actor lover Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), with the former serving as the de facto subject of Kane, and the latter inspiring the godawful opera singer Susan Alexander Kane.
With Jack Fincher’s outsider script lent an insider’s knowledge by both his son and veteran screenwriter Eric Roth (here credited as producer), Mank emerges from a 30-year gestation period as one of the great films on the machinations of Hollywood. It demythologises the town while dealing with themes of authorship, self-loathing, alcoholism, fear of failure and the value of the word. It is sometimes savage, sometimes amusing, often both at once. Meanwhile, any fears that the black-and-white lensing, mono soundtrack and period camera movements might prove gimmicky rather than authentic to the films of the time are dispelled by the vitality of the content — as well as widescreen framing that affords lungfuls of air.
Do viewers need a detailed knowledge of Citizen Kane to enjoy Mank? It certainly helps, but is not essential: the complicated character dynamics fascinate; the ogle behind the curtain will enrapture anyone interested in movies and their making; and the politics engross, with Hearst’s pioneering of fake news to swing the 1934 California gubernatorial election lending a relevance that Jack Fincher, who died in 2003, could not have dreamed of. Make no mistake: Mank is an all-timer. Jamie Graham
It looked like a good idea on paper: Francis Ford Coppola’s musical fantasia could have been the La La Land of its day. After Apocalypse Now, Coppola wanted the musical to define American Zoetrope as an old-school Hollywood-style studio, with contracted stars Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr playing on-the-rocks lovers. Using pioneering ‘electronic cinema’ production techniques and huge sets, Coppola envisioned a lush hybrid of studio classicism, live TV and theatre: one from the giddy heights of movie artifice.
What went wrong?
After Heaven’s Gate’s flaming flop, the profligate reputation of the ‘1970s movie brats’ tarnished Copp’s film from birth. His production methods hardly helped: he directed the action from an Airstream edit suite via on-set speakers, leaving the leads looking lost. Meanwhile, Coppola and MGM chafed as the budget soared from US$2m to US$26m, pumped up by nine-stage Vegas recreations. Staff took pay cuts. “It’s very hard to work when every day there is a crisis,” said Coppola. In retrospect, Apocalypse Now probably seemed like a picnic.
Redeeming feature
Coppola’s balancing act of romantic idealism/grubby reality is sustained by a sublime soundtrack of sozzled street-lamp balladeering from Tom Waits, duetting with Crystal Gayle — indeed the album has rated better with time (9/10) than the movie (51% Tomatometer). Beyond the simplistic plotting and characterisation, Coppola’s neon-drenched, hyper-ambitious stylings also captivate.
What happened next?
As Coppola sold property to finish the film, fallouts with distributors exhausted him. Grim word of mouth, (mostly) grim reviews and none-more-grim box-office returns duly followed. Forced to put Zoetrope up for sale, Coppola entered the 1980s in dire straits: he’d later make The Godfather Part III to (in part) help recoup his losses.
Should it be remade?
Tragically, One From The Heart is inseparable from the off-screen story of a dreamer railing against reality. Better to live with the beautiful fantasy of what could’ve been. KH
After films about John Lydon and others, docu-maverick Julien Temple celebrates another punk origin story with a raucous, rueful, non-judgemental toast to The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan. While critical commentary is sparse, exuberant collage techniques reflect MacGowan’s route from Tipperary to folk-punk triumph and meltdown. Celeb guests (including Johnny Depp) and animated acid trips add colour, but it’s the archive footage that thrills: though MacGowan looks ashen nowadays, Temple’s snapshots of his once-dynamite talent in motion are joyously unruly to behold. Kevin Harley
Born in Miami and raised in the Bahamas, Poitier made his an eye-catching cinema debut opposite Richard Widmark in 1950’s No Way Out. Playing a disruptive pupil in Blackboard Jungle opened more doors, leading to his Bafta-winning turn in The Defiant Ones and his Oscar-grabbing role in Lilies Of The Field. He remained the first and only black
Best Actor winner for 38 years.
The triple whammy of In The Heat Of The Night, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and To Sir, With Love saw Poitier crowned the top box-office star of 1967. Yet his choice of roles saw him unfairly and racistly labelled an “ebony saint” by critics who viewed his virtuous characters as white-appeasing stereotypes.
“My work is who I am,” the actor declared, though sufficiently stung to pursue less noble parts.
The ’70s saw Poitier branch out into directing, most notably with a trio of crowd-pleasing comedies (Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do It Again and A Piece Of The Action) that partnered him with Bill Cosby. Stir Crazy (1980) was the first film with an African-American director to gross more than $100m at the US box-office.
After 11 years off the screen, Poitier returned in 1988’s Deadly Pursuit (aka Shoot To Kill) as an FBI vet pursuing a killer through the great outdoors. Little Nikita and Sneakers confirmed his aptitude for avuncular authority figures, while 1997’s Mandela And De Klerk reunited him with Michael Caine. A sort of Apartheid Defiant Ones, the 1975 release continued a link to South Africa that began with 1951’s Cry, The Beloved Country.
Celebrated throughout his life as a trailblazing pioneer, Poitier was inundated with honours in his later years: an honorary lifetime-achievement Oscar in 2002, a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
“It was my job to walk from one film to another with a sense I had to reach beyond,” he mused in 2016. “I was fortunate I could reach the level people wanted me to try for.”