The Mankiewicz Dispatches: NYFF52. THE QUIET AMERICAN and JULIUS CAESAR.
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Synopsis: Apolitical war journo Thom Fowler is prompted to political action once a brash young arrival in Eisenhower-era Saigon poses a threat to his fragile yet prized equilibrium.
It's sort of a shame Joe Mankieiwcz only brought one Graham Greene adap to the screen, so simpatico do the two writers seem in their sympathies regarding human frailty, even when it turns to sin. In any case I'm glad he chose this story for translation, a typically excellent Greene exercise involving intimate drama carrying larger-scale implication.
The great Sir Michael Redgrave, who beat Coppola to the idea of progeny as stock company, fleshes out Greene's great compromised hero expertly; the complicity is Greene's, but the sweat is all Redgrave's. His weary war correspondent navigates a pre-Kennedy Vietnam while keeping a mistress, his lone reason for waking. The arrival of Audie Murphy, who could always channel a little young Henry Fonda to these eyes, anyway, threatens the imperfect but acceptable balance Redgrave's maintained. What begins as ideologocal duel twixt weathered cynic and youthful optimist turns swiftly to battle for the girl's affections, the shattered ego of the aging lothario stamping him with a political stripe for the first. As Elvis Costello once surmised, sex is politics, and vice versa. I think it was Elvis. Well it may as well have been.
The DP work is stark and atmospheric, channeling the great neorealist work of Ubaldo Arata (ROME, OPEN CITY) and Carlo Montuori (BICYCLE THIEVES), overseen by Greene alumni Robert Krasker, he of THIRD MAN eternity. The style shifts seamlessly between "authentic" documentary footage and stylized narrative. This is Redgrave's fire cracker, however, and he brilliantly keeps the matches just shy of the fuse for the bulk of the its running time. It's hard to flesh out a character who, quite frankly, has none: harder to exact any audience sympathy for said. Redgrave's reporter has the fortitude of linguine al dente. Luckily for gifted actors, and unfortunately for us in the real world, desperation is an experience all too human. And common.
Synopsis: Brit thesps vs. 'Merkin actors for Best Proto-Beatle Wig braggin' rights. Or somethin'.
In a directorial carer that most brand adventurous, and some erratic, why not take on Shakespeare? Better still, why not cast Hollywood's first Method Poster Boy against a fleet of Old Vic stalwarts, and see who's tunics are left standing? Somewhere between the still-life photo that is Olivier's HAMLET and the visual virtuousity of Welles' MACBETH Mank does more than a competent job with the stage masterpiece, if not retiring the jersey on it then at least crafting more than a few indelible scenes and perfs. The Kliegs were squarely on Brando on this film, and not favorably, at least not initially. The knock was he could mumble and bellow and tear the clothes and scenery asunder with fierce electric passion in a Tennessee Williams production, but he lacked the classical discipline to master the Bard. How wrong the doubters were. In the crucial Act 3 Scene 2 diatribe ("Friends, Romans, countrymen...") he manages to, as John Milius would put it, "summon fire from the sky." Not only did the role not show his shortcomings, it brought the controversial star his third Best Actor nomination at that year's Academy Awards. Apparently his passions in that screen moment were derived from and directed at Elia Kazan, his director on stage and screen in Williams' A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, now target of his young charge's bile over the infamous HUAC testimony. Ironically Brando would win his 1st little gold guy the following year as Kazan's alter ego in the director's HUAC-defending ON THE WATERFRONT.
Brando was aided in his journey to the Globe's sure footing by co-star John Gielgud and producer John Houseman, the latter of whom oversaw the controversial 1935 "Fascist" production of CAESAR with partner and star Orson Welles. I'd give a million bucks, someone else's million bucks to be exact, to know if Mank ever secretly pulled Houseman aside and asked, "How would Orson shoot this?"
One of the better Shakes adaps. In 1953 it seemed there was scant material and cinematic terrain Joseph L. Mankiewicz couldn't master, let alone navigate. Liz and Dick were nearly a decade into his future yet.
Next up: 1950's NO WAY OUT and 1949's HOUSE OF STRANGERS. Tonight at the Howard Gilman Theater. Follow my exploits at www.NitrateStock.net for full coverage of the NYFF52 Revivals series and the Mankrospective. Excelsior!
- Joe Walsh
