Where's Pauline Kael's Screen Credit?

For all that's been penned regarding the authorship of "Citizen Kane" (1941), one could do worse (and better) than viewing two movies on Netflix to get the gist of the debate over who wrote the screenplay for the so-called "greatest film ever," Herman Mankiewicz or Orson Welles. "Mank" takes the side of the former and is evidently largely based on the discredited research of Pauline Kael (author of "Raising Kane," as well as famed film critic). The other Netflix movie is "The Other Side of the Wind" (2018), the completed incomplete film from Orson Welles where his semi-autobiographical stand-in slaps a thinly-veiled caricature of Kael. One could also read Robert L. Carringer's "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" (or book "The Making of Citizen Kane") or another factual account from actual film historians that make an open-and-shut case that the shared screen credit for Mankiewicz and Welles was an accurate representation of a collaborative effort, with the man, Mankiewicz, who made the most substantial contributions credited first, but where's the simplistic, counterfactual, score-settling drama of a contest of wills to be had in that. Cue yet another entry in the industry of belying the brilliance of "Kane" by dumbing it down. Ironic, though, that this is exactly what "Mank" valorizes its eponymous screenwriter for not doing, as he sticks to his convictions by not making his script any less biting or complex. David Fincher and company giving his late father sole screen credit for its script, though, for a movie about giving a writer his due, while not acknowledging that the movie basically rips off Kael's thesis, that's beyond ironic--it's insolent. And, that's still nothing compared to its travesty of history. Otherwise, "Mank" is entertaining and fairly well acted, although it's no "Citizen Kane."

I appreciate to an extent what they were trying to do here by making the movie in the manner of its predecessor from 1941: the desaturated black-and-white look, the supposed film "cigarette burns," chiaroscuro lighting, some rear-projection car views, old-fashioned-looking matte shots, some deep-focus cinematography, the flashback structure of the narrative, a gubernatorial election and even fake newsreels. There are a lot of little moments recalling particular scenes from "Kane," including a bedridden Mankiewicz dropping a booze bottle instead of a snow globe or Welles angrily tossing things as though Susan Alexander Kane had just dumped him. Stylistically, I wish "Mank" went even further than being a fair pastiche, though, or rather went in another direction. Go with the 4:3 aspect ratio instead of widescreen or shoot on actual film instead of digital, for instance. Don't half-ass it. Mostly, "Mank" just isn't as visually appealing or adventurous as "Citizen Kane." With the exception of dialogue that bristles with wise cracks and pontification in the vein of the "News on the March" reporters of "Kane," the same goes for the screenplay.

What makes "Kane" great has very little to do with its titular character Charles Foster Kane being loosely based on William Randolph Hearst. But, the notion otherwise is another dumbed-down contest of wills for TV movies and entertainment critics to vomit for easy digestion. Along with his eventual argument with Welles, "Mank" spends most of its time on the supposed conflict brewing between Mankiewicz and Hearst, as well as on their various go-betweens like Marion Davies, Joseph Mankiewicz and Louis B. Mayer, and complete with a demonstrative speech of a movie pitch for a climax. It's enough to make me think "The Social Network" (2010) is perfidy, too, because it's the same sort of dramatics at play; I just don't know enough about social-media backstories as I do of those from film history to call BS on it. "Kane" is an ambiguous and complex scenario told from multiple perspectives just as the film is photographed from various angles while keeping everyone in focus. The flashbacks here are perfunctory by comparison--elaborations of supposed past inspirations for the screenplay. The most compelling part of the Hearst connection to Kane is that it's a character--newspaper man, politician, overseer of his lover's career--who shapes stories, even from his deathbed with the mysterious last word, "Rosebud," which is just what the plot as narrated by different characters is about, too. Similarly, "Mank" is about a screenwriter, but the perspective is entirely one-sided, unambiguous and superficial.

The worst part of all of this may be the politics. The movie fabricates a connection between Mankiewicz and Upton Sinclair's 1934 campaign for California governor. The pains this picture goes to make its anti-union, GOP-donating protagonist into a passionate supporter of socialism is shocking and entirely unfounded. His antagonism to Nazis is on firmer ground, and I'm not quite sure what to make of "sad Sarah," his wife's claim of his "silly platonic affairs," let alone a throwaway scene featuring a stenographer and only woman in a room full of male screenwriters being topless aside from pasties. Anyways, more outrageous is the invention of a fictional character to direct the fake newsreels just so to suicide him and fabricate that Mankiewicz had anything to do with any of that. Besides, the real radical leftist of the screenwriters of "Kane" was Welles. It's surely part of what led him to be exiled from Hollywood, taking up the mantle of the self-financed auteur and persona non grata upon studio lots--very much in the spirit of "Kane." "Mank," on the other hand, is what the character of Kane became. It's Hollywood fluff. Everything managed and packaged by a small country of executives and contributors, running roughshod over facts and nuance, and sold off to Netflix, to the point that its story of a singular auteur is but a stupid joke. Hypocritical lies.