Mank poster.
Since the release of "The Vanishing Lover" in 2014, after 6 years, David Finch's "Mank" was launched on the streaming media Netflix platform on December 4. The film unfolds with Herman J. Mankiewicz (nicknamed "Manke") completing the screenplay for Orson Wells's Citizen Kane, re-examining the glitz and absurdity of Hollywood in the 1930s through the perspective of the scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter.
Stills of "Citizen Kane" "Rose Bud".
Citizen Kane is a 1941 film directed and starring Orson Wells that features a newspaper tycoon dying alone in a mansion, surrounding the extraordinary experiences of his life around the word "rosebud" he uttered before his death. The newspaper tycoon played by Orson Wells in the film is based on william Randolph Hearst, the king of the newspaper industry and the controversial figure in the history of journalism. Although the film only won the best original screenplay at the Oscars the following year, it has a prominent position in film history, occupying the top spot in various film history charts.
"Roma", "The Irishman", "Marriage Story" and so on did not win the Oscar for Best Picture for Netflix, and "Mank" is likely to help Netflix achieve this wish. The story, written by David Finch's late father, Jack Finch, is also likely to be the first person to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay since Sidney Howard won the Best Screenplay Award for Gone with the Wind in 1940.
After "Manke" was launched, it was unanimously praised by the media, with a Rotten Tomatoes freshness score of 88%, and is a strong competitor to next year's Oscars. Renowned film site Indiewire describes Manke as "a strange labyrinth of cinema that deconstructs Hollywood history in its own language in a thrilling and unpredictable way." This story that has haunted David Finch's mind for nearly 30 years not only has the emotional sustenance from his father, but also condenses his own desire to personalize creation for many years. "Mank" to David Finch, "Roma" to Alfonso Cuarón, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" to Quentin, all belong to their most intimate emotions, but also have the sentiment of the times.
【Origin】
A play from David Finch's father 30 years ago
The script for Mank was written by David Finch's father, Jack Finch. A journalist in his early years, san francisco bureau chief of Life magazine, he was a movie fan, grew up in a movie theater, and was the leader of David Finch's entry into the Film Sanctuary. At a very young age, David Finch was indoctrinated by his father with film knowledge, cultivated a love of movies, and watched many enlightenment movies, such as "Dr. Strange Love", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Alien", and of course, the best film history in his father's mind, "Citizen Kane".
David Finch's father, Jack Finch.
In 1990, my father retired and wanted to write a screenplay. David Finch suggested that Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter behind Citizen Kane, be the subject of the creation. While his father was writing the screenplay, David Finch also began working on his directorial debut, Alien 3. Over the next few years, his father continued to revise the script, and David Finch continued to work hard as a director, shooting "Seven Deadly Sins" in 1995, and his influence in Hollywood continued to expand.
In 1997, after filming Mind Games, David Finch took his father's script to lobby major studios, and one studio threw an olive branch, and even David Finch's actor had a choice — Kevin Spacey, who had worked with him in The Seven Deadly Sins, played Manke, and Judy Foster ("The Silence of the Lambs") played Hearst's lover Marion Davis, however, the studio had to quit because David Finch insisted on using black and white photography. After that, David Finch made representative works such as "Fight Club", "Zodiac", "Rejuvenation", "Social Network" and so on.
David Finch
In 2002, his father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and David Finch knew that in his lifetime, his father could not see his heart and soul being put on the big screen. After a year of battling cancer, his father died.
With his father and his own unfulfilled regrets, David Finch went on to shoot the political drama "House of Cards" produced by Netflix and the movie "The Disappearing Girl". In 2019, after directing two seasons of Mindhunter by Netflix, David Finch was "exhausted." He went to see Netflix executive Cindy Holland, vice president of original content, and Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, and told them directly: "I don't want to spend two years making the third season of Mindhunter, I want to spend six months making a two-hour movie." The other person asked, "Well, what script do you have?" David Finch pulled out the long-dusted mank script on the studio shelf, and after reading it, the Netflix collaborator said, "When are we going to start?" ”
"I signed a four-year exclusive deal with them (Netflix)," David Finch said in an interview, "and we're going to continue to work together, I don't know if they're going to condone arrogant bastards like me to make more black-and-white movies." No wonder Netflix has always loved David Finch, after all, their cooperative drama "House of Cards" single-handedly established Netflix's position in streaming media, and it has impacted the entire TV series production industry in the United States.
Gary Oldman plays drunkard screenwriter Manke.
In September 2019, "Mank", which had been completed for nearly 30 years, finally started. The previously favorite actor, Kevin Spacey, was replaced by Gary Oldman over a sex scandal, who had just won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Darkest Hour.
【Mirror】
Black and white photography pays homage to Citizen Kane
Mank's cinematographer, Eric Messerschmidt, who previously worked with David Finch in two seasons of Mindhunter, is his first time as a cinematographer for a film, and it's quite possible that he will make history as the first person to win an Oscar for best cinematography for his first film.
The black-and-white photography in Mank is a tribute by David Finch and cinematographer Messerschmidt to Greg Toland, a photographer who is interested in Citizen Kane.
Stills from Citizen Kane and Mank.
Eric Messerschmidt considers Greg Tolander "incredibly influential", and the photography in Mank is a tribute to his signature technical deep-focus lens, "We want people to really immerse themselves in that era, not to be distracted too much by those images, to feel like they're watching a movie of that era and helping them connect with the story in this way." In addition, the director and Eric Messerschmidt also referenced the black-and-white still photography of the famous American photographer Ansel Adams to make the film feel this way.
However, implementing this technology with modern cameras is not as simple as it seems. The director and cinematographer did a lot of testing, experimented with lenses and color grading techniques, and "figured out the right recipe." "Cinema camera equipment manufacturer Red has made an 8K resolution sensor camera specifically for film.
Art director Donald Graham Burt ("Rejuvenation") and costume designer Tracy Somerville ("The Hunger Games 2") also borrowed from Orson Wells' experience in shooting Citizen Kane, interpreting the charm of California in the 1930s and 1940s with superb behind-the-scenes technique. When designing the costumes, both used black and monochrome filters on Apple phones to see how colors change in black-and-white movies.
Tracy Somerville reviewed photos from the 1930s and found that Hollywood executives and glamorous actresses wore orange-yellow, green and eggplant-colored clothes that she used to design clothes for Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman. "We wanted to show the different levels and levels of socioeconomic status in Hollywood at that time."
Amanda Seyfried played Marion Davis in Mank.
The scenes in the film are based on the artistic concept proposed by Donald Graham Burt, and the lighting and photography department then studies how to construct and illuminate the scene. In the scene at the Hurst Castle dinner, costume designer Tracy Somerville designs a beautiful white outfit for Marion Davis, played by Amanda Seyfried. During the shoot, the photographer overexposed her slightly, so that she became a beacon in the dark castle, and she was the only character on the scene to be illuminated alone. This creates a black atmosphere of chiaroscuro.
【Retro】
Everything sounds like expensive crystals
A drunken Manke plays a drunken maniac at a dinner party in Hearst, one of the most important scenes in the film, Hearst Castle, a lavish castle built by the newspaper king Hearst in central California, which lasted 28 years and cost $165 million. Of course, live-action shooting here is unlikely.
Frontal and panoramic photos of Hurst Castle in California.
Art directors Donald Graham Burt and David Finch spent months in Los Angeles looking for a filming location to replace the mansion. The interior and exterior of the film were filmed in a property in Pasadena, Huntington Gardens, and a studio in Malibu, all of which were carefully decorated to give the feel of Hurst Castle.
Stills from "Mank", second from the right, Meyer, and First from the right, Hearst.
In fact, due to budget constraints, the dinner scene and the birthday party scene of MGM's head Louis b. Meyer were filmed in the same scene. David Finch filmed the birthday party scenes first, then re-set, changed the fireplace, added columns to the aisles, added Gothic windows to the porch, reconfigured some elements, and remodeled the house so that it could be used in both scenes.
Stills from The Citizen Kane and the mansion interior from Mank.
In the dinner scene, David Finch wanted to show a sense of luxury and opulence, and sound designer Lenn Kes reversed the sound of the mix distortion, reducing the dynamic range and limiting the high frequencies, bringing the audience back to the Hollywood and Citizen Kane eras of the 1930s. "He (David Finch) wanted everything to sound like expensive crystals, not IKEA glass. The best champagne feeling of being opened, the best leather chair feeling of being seated. All of this is as if to say, 'Look, how rich William Randolph Hirst is!' Len Kes said.
Stills from "Mank".
There's a scene where Manke and Marion Davis are walking in the garden. It's a long shot, starting in the seating area where they meet and drink, through the park where the zebras and giraffes are located, and finally to the fountain. Initially, David Finch had filmed the scene and recorded all the conversations of the day, but out of creative considerations, he wanted to redo the sound from head to toe. However, Amanda Seyfried, who played Davis at the time, was pregnant, and the crew installed a microphone for her in her New York apartment, dubbing the dialogue of the scene online.
In order to make the black-and-white film "Mank" look more old film texture, David Finch and the technical department deliberately processed the digitally shot finished film to have a scratch-like effect, while allowing the sound department to add a "zi la la" sound effect.
Mank's art director, Donald Graham Burt, understood Finch's intent to excel in retro, "he wanted it to look like something made in that era." He didn't want the audience to have a clear idea of when we were shooting.
Beijing News reporter Teng Chao
Edited by Huang Jialing Proofreader Wei Zhuo