Mank
Directed by David Fincher
Produced by Ceán Chaffin, Eric Roth, Douglas Urbanski
Screenplay by Jack Fincher
Music by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Cinematography Erik Messerschmidt (shot in black and white)
Edited by Kirk Baxter
Production companies; Netflix International Pictures, Flying Studio, Panic Pictures, Blue Light
Cast
Gary Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz
Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies
Lily Collins as Rita Alexander, Herman’s secretary, from whom Susan Alexander Kane gets her name.
Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer
Tom Pelphrey as Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst
Sam Troughton as John Houseman
Ferdinand Kingsley as Irving Thalberg
Tuppence Middleton as Sara Mankiewicz
Tom Burke as Orson Welles
Joseph Cross as Charles Lederer
Jamie McShane as Shelly Metcalf, test shot director and Herman’s friend. Although Metcalf is fictional, Felix E. Feist was the test shot director at MGM, who shot the propaganda films against Upton Sinclair that Metcalf shoots in Mank.
Toby Leonard Moore as David O. Selznick
Monika Gossmann as Fräulein Frieda, Herman’s housekeeper
Leven Rambin as Eve Metcalf, Shelly’s wife
Bill Nye as Upton Sinclair
Jeff Harms as Ben Hecht
Everyone knows that Orson Welles produced and directed Citizen Kane, and that it was a thinly disguised biography of William Randolph Hearst, and that Kane’s final words as he lay dying was “rosebud.” Everyone assumes that it was a huge box office success (it wasn’t) and that it was a great movie (it was); layered, complex, non-linear, and with a powerful sense of humanity for the characters (all true.)
People assume that Welles, who had incredible autonomy as a director and producer (not to mention playing the main role), also wrote the script, and in Mank, it’s clear that his role was a secondary one. It was actually drafted by the titular character, Herman J. Mankiewicz, portrayed in Mank as a washed up screenwriter on his last legs (literally bed-ridden from an auto accident while writing Kane). He was meant to be an uncredited ghost writer, and when he realizes what he has written, reneges on the agreement, to the fury of Welles, who wanted full credit. It sparked a bitter public row between the two men, with the result that Mank never worked in Hollywood again.
Much of the movie revolves around the changing politics of Hearst, who started out as a flamethrowing leftist radical and eventually became part of the monied elite. He goes on to destroy a man who might have been a younger Hearst’s political twin, Upton Sinclair (slyly cast in Mank by Bill Nye the Science Guy). In a fantastic scene late in the movie, Mank calls out Hearst, reminding him of what he was then and what he is now.
Welles is played by Tom Burke, and in just about any other role, I would think Burke was chewing the scenery, The Tick as played by William Shatner. But I’m told that it’s actually a pretty accurate portrayal of how the incredibly talented, but vain and overbearing Welles actually was.
Like Kane, Mank received critical acclaim and a weak popular response. But like Kane, Mank is multilayered, deep, non-linear and profoundly human and intelligent. There’s an excellent chance that in time, Mank will become a true classic.