The Mankiewicz Dispatches: NYFF52. PEOPLE WILL TALK and SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT.
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Synopsis: a once-provincial and now prosperous, though eccentric, metropolitan doctor must defend himself against the accusations of his peers.
Generously introduced at the screening as Mankiewicz's most "eccentric" film, which I hope proves to be the case, I subsequently feel like I should be kind and resist labeling PEOPLE WILL TALK a bad movie. But folks, it's not good. Very not good. In fact, with performances emotionally ping-ponging, and dialogue and narrative ranging from ridiculous to preposterous to borderline offensive, I feel the best compliment I can pay is that it must have been one of the films that kept Edward D. Wood Jr.'s hopes up.
Even the greatest of directors fumbles. Hitchcock has his TOPAZ, John Ford his THE FUGITIVE. Mank falls squarely on his posterior with this train wreck. I think I can be a little unkind here considering the heights he would continue to reach in this film's wake; it takes a man of no little skill indeed to make breeze-with-feet Cary Grant seem creepy, but it's pulled off here, for the first and only time to these eyes. It's one thing to create and essay a strong, confident individualist, something Grant excelled at whether the proceedings be nimble or weighted; quite another to ask him to make likable a winded, solipsistic megalomaniac. In a grossly miscalculated employment of the star's patented charm, Grant's humbly monickered Dr. Noah Praetorius so bullies any who dare question him, let alone attack him, his every word and deed smacks of Ayn Rand's worst excesses; juvenile power-tripping at best, fascistic tendency at worst. His "folksy" GP, who had once been employed, literally, as a butcher, would actually have made a much more compelling anti-hero, or out & out villain. It's not enough that his authority figure is never and can never be wrong (even his most ick decision- lying to a patient about her pregnancy, marrying her, and then casually, even "romantically" revealing the lie to his new bride - is almost instantly accepted as sound wisdom by her), he is also surrounded not by fellow faculty or students or friends or even a wife, but by worshippers filling those roles. Hume Cronyn's bad guy - coiled and scowling should you be unsure of his role - comes across as almost heroic against this stacked deck. In fact, ultimately, he's right to be suspicious of this potential imposter, who seemingly practiced voodoo medicine at one point and might be, or be harboring, a murderer. Cronyn is painted a weasel for his role as voice of dissent, and appropriately crushed. Mussolini would've loved this flick, methinks.
If Mankiewicz was making the point that this Type A personality is and should be unassailable, as if this doctor or "Doc" served as screen alter ego, then he failed miserably. I'm guessing because, at the end of the day, his heart truly wasn't in the argument. In fact this entire exercise stands in stark contrast to Mankiewicz's personal ideology, as well as his body of work, or at least that section of it I've been exposed to. He was a liberal who believed in messy democracy. Indeed, he was almost brought down for his leftist sympathies by none other than C. B. De Mille during the latter filmmaker's fave era, the Blacklist. It's easy to read an anti-McCarthy message in this film, but it's buried under the conceit that certain men are above questioning, rather than the notion that we are all above persecution. Worse still it explicitly declares these individuals beyond scrutiny based on their esteemed positions in their communities. What Fritz Lang would've made of this material!
The evaluation of Mankiewicz as superb craftsman but impersonal storyteller has stood firm these last 6-plus decades. Perhaps this misguided venting of his own near-persecution during the Hollywood witch hunt proved he was smart to remain at a safe emotional remove going forward.
Two last interesting notes: at one point costar Jeanne Crain turns nearly to face the camera and whispers "What a mess." In another a train set is wrecked. If not unintended comment were these sly hints from Mank to studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck of the former's esteem for this project?
Synopsis: An amnesiac soldier returns from WW2 and embroils himself in a murder and money mystery in pursuit of his true identity.
The films that set Joe Mank on his directorial career, the ones that immediately preceded his decade-long moment as imprimatur for prestige product, remain some of the most fascinating, for they rep the primordial Mankiewicz, which is to suggest that a fully formed Mankiewicz ever came to fruition.
SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT is a classic noir potboiler, if somewhat subdued. John Hodiak, who truth be told I know solely for his performance as the sinewed outrage in Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT, withdraws into a trench coat filled out by doubt, fear and suspicion. A bold call for an actor I appraised so middlingly til now. He reminds both of an older George MacReady and a young Martin Landau, both of whom he was not much distance from in actual age.
The doubt over one’s true identity would become a theme for Mankiewicz, carried through in the psych provocations of A LETTER TO THREE WIVES, ALL ABOUT EVE, all the way to SLEUTH. The power of identity, its legitimacy or lack of, would perhaps serve as Mank’s overarching theme. We shall see. We’ve got a lotta film yet to indulge in.
If I have less to say about this flick than today’s earlier bolder, crazier screening, it’s only because the latter screening was the more assured. Proof going forward, I think, that Mankiewicz was a talent best left to his own machinations but within certain boundaries. He was a man who excelled at traveling trails already blazed, less sure of territory new. This is no knock. How few tourists can lay claim to an avenue not yet fully discovered?
Be sure to check back later today/tomorrow for my take on 1970’s THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN and 1947’s THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR. The Joseph L. Mankiewicz series continues on til October 14th. Keep watching this space for daily updates and commentary. Excelsior!
-Joe Walsh
