American Cinematographer - February 2021 - 44
Erik Messerschmidt, ASC and
director David Fincher discuss
their creative collaboration
on Mank.
M
By Stephen Pizzello
ank frames the origin story of Citizen Kane
from the perspective of screenwriter Herman J.
Mankiewicz as he's hit a low point in life. Alcoholic, world-weary and hobbled by a broken leg sustained in a car crash, Mankiewicz is trundled off to
a dusty desert cottage in Victorville, Calif., accompanied by a nurse and a typist tasked with keeping
their cantankerous patient off the bottle so he can complete a screenplay
for Orson Welles - a script that will serve as the foundation of Kane.
Pressed by Welles to finish the project, the bedridden " Mank " (as
he's known to his friends and colleagues) struggles to find creative
44 / FEBRUARY 2021
inspiration, eventually drawing upon his memories of businessman,
newspaper tycoon and politician William Randolph Hearst. Flashbacks
transport us back to Mank's headier days as a handsomely paid Hollywood scripter. After amusing Hearst with his barbed wit on a movie
location, Mankiewicz is invited to mingle with members of the mogul's
inner circle and renews a friendship with Hearst's mistress, actress and
comedian Marion Davies. Mank's Hollywood career is thriving, and his
social standing is on the rise, but his proximity to power allows him to
observe its corrosive influence firsthand - souring his worldview, but
ultimately informing the plot of Citizen Kane and the sardonically unflattering portrait of its Hearst-like protagonist, Charles Foster Kane.
The script for Mank was initially fashioned by director David Fincher's father, Jack, a journalist and screenwriter, who empathized with
Mankiewicz's plight and leaned into the controversial assertions of film
critic Pauline Kael, whose 1971 essay in The New Yorker, " Raising Kane, "
maintained that Mankiewicz was almost entirely responsible for the Citizen Kane screenplay, with little input from Welles. (That thesis has since
been partially debunked by Welles supporters, including director and
former film critic Peter Bogdanovich.)
Following his father's death in 2003, Fincher retooled the Mank
script with the help of screenwriter Eric Roth, making it less antagonistic toward Welles. " I never felt that the film should be a posthumous
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
A Writer in Exile
American Cinematographer - February 2021
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2021
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American Cinematographer - February 2021 - 1
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