David Fincher’s new Netflix period film Mank nonetheless takes some creative liberties with the real-life events it’s based on.
Hollywood’s early decades aren’t exactly a rare source of modern stories. The mythical glamour of the movie industry in the first half of the 20th century remains an inspiration for numerous tales that each strike their own balance between fact and fiction. 2016’s Hail, Caesar! and this year’s Hollywood – another Netflix original – are just a couple of recent instances of the movies’ ongoing obsession with the movies. While Mank focuses more on the broader California politics of the era and the specifics of Citizen Kane, it still indulges moderately in stylized period homage.
Much of that indulgence is to the film’s benefit, but that doesn’t mean that all the stories Mank tells are true. The actual history of the man behind the movie and the details of Kane’s authorship are a matter of some conjecture and various conflicting s, so even a fact-check comes with a grain of salt. Still, there’s a lot historians do know for certain, and a good bit of it maps onto what’s seen in Fincher’s film. Some, but not all.
Mank Sponsoring Holocaust Refugees
In Fincher’s film, Mank has a German-Jewish nurse living with him at the ranch while he writes Citizen Kane named Fräulein Frieda. Her most significant scene in the movie is when Rita, Mank’s assistant and stenographer, challenges her about her loyalty to a man who is frequently flippant, demanding, and disrespectful. Fräulein Frieda tells Rita she’s loyal to Mank because he helped bring her and her whole village of a hundred German Jews to America to escape Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Most of this is true, though some details are changed around for a more concise narrative flow. Mank did have a nurse, but Fräulein Frieda is a fictionalized character, more inspired by than based on anyone real. And while Mank did not exactly bring over an entire village, he did sponsor many refugees fleeing Nazi , including many Jewish people escaping what would become the Holocaust. According to Richard Meryman, author of the biography Mank: The Wit, World and Life of Herman Mankiewicz, the real Herman Mankiewicz sponsored hundreds of German refugees, for whom he made himself financially responsible.
The real Mank was outspoken in general against Hitler’s fascist regime in its early days, even penning a script called The Mad Dog of Europe that explicitly showed and condemned the dictator’s rise. That screenplay is mentioned briefly in the film, as is the fact that no studio would produce it for fear of losing traction in the German market.
The Upton Sinclair Attack Ads
Much of Mank centers less on the business of filmmaking and more on the politics of filmmakers of the day. That element of the movie comes out primarily through the Upton Sinclair California gubernatorial race, which comprises a big chunk of Mank’s flashback scenes and includes a brief cameo from Bill Nye as Sinclair himself. The film depicts a Hollywood elite that almost unanimously s the Republican Party, and who are happy to resort to xenophobic fearmongering to maintain their status quo.
That picture of Hollywood politics certainly holds true to the real history, as do the MGM-sponsored attack ads against Sinclair masquerading as neutral news reports. You can watch one of the real “news reports” that ran before MGM films in theaters here, courtesy of Slate. Most of the dialogue from the shorts shown in Mank are pulled directly from these “interviews,” which really feature paid actors.
Some details of the storyline in Mank don’t hold up, however. For starters, there’s no evidence that Herman Mankiewicz inspired the fake newsreels through some clever slip of the tongue, as happens in the film. In reality, he likely had nothing to do with their inception. Also, the character of Shelly Metcalf, the guilt-ridden director of the ads in Mank who commits suicide, is completely made up for the movie. He's loosely inspired by director Felix E Feist, though his dramatic storyline and end in Mank has little to do with Feist's real life..
Mank’s Relationships With Hearst And Marion Davies
In real life, Mank was for some time a part of William Randolph Hearst’s social circle. He had a strong friendship with Charlie Lederer, the nephew of Marion Davies (shown in the film), which may have been his initial introduction to the crowd that frequented Hearst’s luxurious San Simeon estate. However, by all s, he was nothing more to either Hearst or Davies than a friendly acquaintance – at least, before he wrote Citizen Kane.
Mank paints a much more intimate picture of the friendship between Mankiewicz and Davies – one that leads to some great scenes with Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried, but which ultimately has no factual basis. Davies and Mank surely knew each other, but it’s unlikely they were nearly as close as Fincher’s film depicts. Also, Mank's suggestion that "Rosebud" was a name Hearst used to reference Davies’s genitalia was a rumor that circulated at the time of the film’s release, but it almost certainly wasn’t the intention of Mank. The name Rosebud appears in several other previous scripts he wrote, and s suggest it had no greater significance than that.
Mank’s Drunken Intrusions
The climax of Mank happens in a flashback scene toward the film’s end, when a belligerently drunk Herman stumbles into a Hearst dinner party at San Simeon, essentially outlines the whole plot of Citizen Kane in a scathing rant to Hearst’s own face, and then vomits on the floor. It’s a great dramatic moment, and it leads beautifully into Hearst’s (Charles Dance) terrifyingly measured retort, where he relays the parable of the organ grinder’s monkey while escorting Mank out of his house.
In reality, this whole sequence is largely fictionalized. Mank’s post-vomit line, “The white wine came up with the fish,” is a real quote attributed to the man, but from a different party at a different house. The exact face-off between Hearst and Mankiewicz may have been fabricated for Fincher’s purposes, but certain facts stay consistent. Mank was famously alcoholic, and he did spend notable time at San Simeon. Was the real Hearst as imposing as Charles Dance though? Unlikely, but possible.
The Writing Of Citizen Kane
Mank’s final arc focuses on the authorship and creative credit of Citizen Kane, something that has been debated by historians and film scholars for decades. The movie shows Welles and Mankiewicz nearly come to blows over the latter’s demand to be credited, which is granted by an appeal to the Writers Guild of America, giving Mank top billing over Welles in the credits. While the confrontation scene is added for dramatic effect, the arbitration and subsequent restoration of credit is true.
How exactly did Orson Welles feel about the change, and who is more responsible for the film’s immense success? Those questions are harder to answer concretely. Some s say that Welles himself ordered Mank to be granted top billing after the Writers Guild ruled in his favor, while others dispute that. Some scholars say that Mank’s original draft holds little of the x-factor that made Citizen Kane so influential, while others attribute the majority of the film’s structure, style, and emotional core to Mank’s work.
Regardless of those details, it seems unlikely that Citizen Kane would have made the impact it did on the merits of its script alone. Welles’s direction, the style of acting, and the trendsetting cinematography were all massive components of what made the movie so incredibly special. The story is certainly at the heart of Citizen Kane, but even the script was edited heavily by Welles after Mankiewicz’s initial draft. So who’s to be thanked for Citizen Kane? Probably both. According to Mank though, it’s Mank.
