1930s Hollywood is re-evaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane (1941).
In 1940, film studio RKO 1940 hires 24-year-old wunderkind Orson Welles under a contract that gives him full creative control of his movies. For his first film, he calls in washed-up alcoholic Herman J. Mankiewicz to write the screenplay. That film is "Citizen Kane," and this is the story of how it was written.—grantss
Holed up in the secluded North Verde Ranch in the middle of the Mojave Desert, bedridden American screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz has sixty short days to turn in the first draft of the Citizen Kane (1941) screenplay. Grappling with alcohol dependency, Mankiewicz collaborates with Orson Welles, Hollywood's 24-year-old golden boy, and gets to work. As RKO had already given Welles carte blanche, Mankiewicz opts to draw inspiration from his tenure at MGM, his association with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and the latter's 20-year-old paramour, actress Marion Davies of the Ziegfeld Follies.—Nick Riganas
The true story of a male actor and writer in Hollywood during black and white films finding inspiration and new ways to create a new story and film that will be a known classic one day for future generations to watch and experience to know what life is about.—RECB3
Mank captures the life of Mankiewicz between essentially 1933 and 1940, when Americawas in the midst of the Depression and watching uneasily, but from far, the gatheringclouds of World War II. There is another presence that Fincher does well to focus onin his telling of the making of Citizen Kane, the candidacy of Left-leaning Upton Sinclairfor the governorship of California, which sees the tinsel town gang up against him. AsSinclair is portrayed as promoting "anti-American" values, with MGM lending its mightto a campaign that would now be described as fake news, Mank is forced to confront hisown compromises and little lies.
In a marvelous scene, Dance's Hearst recounts Oldman's Mank the "parable of the organgrinder's monkey", just after the latter has humiliated himself and Hearst in a drunkenrant about the sold idealism of the newspaper baron. While the monkey thinks it is himrunning the show, Hearst reminds Mank, he has to "dance", "every time", the music plays.
That realization is a glimpse of the bitterness that would eventually lead Mank to findinghimself jobless in Hollywood, particularly after his decision to take on Hearst with Welles'backing. It would also lead him to Citizen Kane - while on the bed with a broken leg, awayfrom friends and family and fighting for a drink despite alcohol slowly claiming him - as wellas his only Oscar.
As Mank explains it to a friend, "We have got a huge responsibility, to people in the dark willingly checking their disbelief at the door."
