In Search of Joe Mankiewicz, the Essential Iconoclast: NYFF52

There are directors who arouse the passions of the cinema fanatic, to the extent that they carry ammunition into any potential battle they may enter in their defense, filmmakers who left their permanent and prominent mark not only on their own work but on cinema as a whole. There are others who exerted a large degree of control over their careers and came away with a respectable CV as result, invoking admiration if not excitement. Then there exist directors-for-hire who may not fit the auteur criteria, yet stir the blood of the Cinegeek when any title-by-title recounting of their output occurs. I've basically just referenced Howard Hawks, William Wyler, and Michael Curtiz, respectively. In which category does the career of the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz reside?

He was younger brother to Herman J., he of the CITIZEN KANE script and almost nothing else were you to go by recurring conversation, who put his sibling to work writing intertitles at then-silent Paramount Pictures. He quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the highest paid writers at that studio. He left for MGM, where he was promoted to producer, his first undertaking in that capacity Fritz Lang's first Hollywood film: 1936's scathing mob indictment FURY. A hit. He enjoyed many more successes at the studio, not least of which a pair of Hepburn's best: 1940's THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and 42's WOMAN OF THE YEAR. He moved to Fox for further profit and greater autonomy, and made his debut as director on 1946's DRAGONWYCK, when Ernst Lubitsch proved too ill for the task. He was thirty-five by this time, and had now successfully warmed just about every creative chair a filmmaker could. But what kind of filmmaker would he become?

The answer to that question has proven elusive through the decades in which he lived and since he's passed. He worked in multiple genres, like Hawks, yet left no personal stamp to connect them. He was critically admired and collected quite a few Oscars, like Wyler, yet unlike the director of THE LETTER and MRS. MINIVER he often scripted his own films. He could serve as prestigious hired hand like Curtiz, but never displayed quite the same zeal in the role. He is director to both an unassailable masterpiece of the cinema and one of its most notorious catastrophes, ALL ABOUT EVE and CLEOPATRA, respectively. The former may still boast that it beat no less equal a legend than Billy Wilder and his SUNSET BOULEVARD for director and film at that year's Oscars. The latter, while serving as shorthand for calamity, may have derailed his career, but still earns him stripes for steering a sinking ship through unfriendly waters rather than see it founder completely. The former came from his scintillating and acerbic pen. The latter from some masochistic inclination to film a $40 million dollar unspeakable act perpetrated by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The trajectory between the peak and the summit of his career still provides no clue to the man, no overarching theme, no connective tissue. It leaves unanswered the question: what is a Joe Mankiewicz film?

His best work featured scabrous wit unfettered, epitomized by George Sanders' Addison De Witt, a case of casting so perfect I sometimes wonder if the character is playing the actor. Indeed nary a player in EVE escapes the screen without delivering some caustic zinger we pray capable of in our own daily interactions. And yet the most bitingly entertaining of his films in my opinion, perhaps because it's about people trying to murder each other both verbally and physically, is his last film, the 1972 adaptation of Anthony Shaffer's smash stage thriller SLEUTH. Often tossed off as the final sad reminder of a once formidable talent, and while perhaps not as lofty of ambition as the OSCAR-minting EVE, it remains my fave Mank, the one I return to again and again, and have since childhood. Dismissed normally by even generous critics as a work-for-hire, I can't help but think this was actually one of the man's more personal films. There must have been something more than twist of plot that attracted him to so intimate a tale, involving only two (or three) characters in virtually one setting for three hours. Was Mankiewicz at one point the young upstart essayed by Michael Caine, set on his heels by a more experienced higher up seeking to block his own obsolescence? Was Mank at that point identifying with the older Olivier character, a forgotten, disempowered Titan, surrounded in reclusion by reminders of past glory and greater failure? In any case there exists a playfulness in the proceedings, a delight in the crisp quick dialogue, a fervor for the battle that roused a spark in the director one last great time. There are differences sometimes in what one might consider a best film and a favorite. SLEUTH may not be Mankiewicz's finest film, but it is the one I want to re-watch at any given moment, and perhaps, in its austerity, it holds the key to unlocking his entire body of work.

In any case I am now set upon a journey, its ultimate goal to answer that decades-old query, "what is a Joseph L. Mankewicz film?". Thanks to the support of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and an assist from the public relations firm PMK-BNC, I'm about to dive head first into the series The Essential Iconoclast, which features just about every film the man directed, and I'll be attending just about every damn screening. On my upcoming itinerary; 1951's PEOPLE WILL TALK with Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain; 1946's SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT, starring John Hodiak and Lloyd Nolan; 1955's GUYS AND DOLLS, with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, the director's lone musical; 1954's THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, with Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner; 1949's A LETTER TO THREE WIVES, with Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain and Ann Sothern; 1950's NO WAY OUT, with Darnell, Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark; 1949's HOUSE OF STRANGERS with Edward G. Robinson and Richard Conte; 1959's SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER with Monty Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Kate Hepburn; and, of course, 1972's SLEUTH with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. By taking in the full depth and breath of the man's body of work I hope to find some clearer connection, some uniqueness to the constant quality.

Tonight, however, belongs to Margot Channing. And this is news to who? Mankewicz's ALL ABOUT EVE will unspool tonight at Alice Tully Hall to kick off the retrospective, and will be introduced by none other than the director's widow, Rosemary. This is a filmmaker I've long admired yet never actually explored. I'm excited about the prospect and grateful for the opportunity. Check back with the site for post-screening notes and observations as I check each entry off my list. To quote Olivier's mystery writer, now the plot thickens.

- Joe Walsh