“American: An Odyssey to 1947,” a new documentary from director Danny Wu now on VOD, combines the artistic and ethical to form an intriguing portrait of the turbulent political landscape of the mid twentieth century in the United States.
The film’s first half focusses on director Orson Welles, the wunderkind who, after taking the New York theatre world by storm in 1936 by staging a version of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” with an entirely Black cast and creating a nationwide sensation with his radio adaptation of “The War of the Worlds,” moved to Hollywood and made one of the greatest films of all time, “Citizen Kane,” all before the age of twenty-five.
Although familiar to film fans, the story of how “Citizen Kane” landed in the crosshairs of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst is recounted here. The specifics of how the influential newspaperman used his political sway to torpedo the film and Welles’s Hollywood career, are intertwined with details of the director’s growing involvement in politics and progressive causes.
In 1947, with the House of Unamerican Activities showing more interest in him than Hollywood, Welles decamped for Europe. “America is not as happy with me as I am with it,” he said.
Wu then broadens the film’s focus to report how key moments of the time, the New Deal, World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima and racial injustice, played a part in shaping Welles’s political and personal life. Dropping the Hollywood biopic feel of the first half, Wu integrates the stories of Hiroshima survivor Howard Kakita, Isaac Woodard, an American soldier and victim of racial violence and Satsuki Ina, a psychotherapist born in an internment camp.
Disjointed though they may feel from time to time, these testimonials provide historical perspective and context for the over-arching look at the formation of Welles’s political awakening. Their stories are compellingly told, painting a grim picture of the hardship and inequity that informed the political climate of the time by expanding the micro to the macro.
What emerges is a portrait of an artist, influenced by world events, steadfast in his beliefs, even when those opinions threatened his career.
In “American: An Odyssey to 1947” Wu does a good job of setting up time and place, and even though the shift from career retrospective to the personal stories isn’t smooth, the film finds its balance to become an interesting, inventive recontextualization of a well-documented life.
William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles will forever be connected in our imagination courtesy of “Citizen Kane.” In the film, often regarded as one of the best ever made, Welles plays a thinly veiled version of newspaper magnate Hearst as self-absorbed, power-mad and wounded. “Mank,” a new film directed by David Fincher and streaming on Netflix on December 4, isn’t a making-of story about the film, but more the unmaking of its screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).
Former drama critic, playwright, columnist and Algonquin Round Table wit. Mankiewicz moved to Hollywood with the promise of a contract and a career. Heading west from New York, he quickly found himself working steadily ghost-writing films. As his reputation grew, so did his bank account. “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots,” he telegraphed to writer Ben Hecht. Known as a hard drinker and inveterate gambler, when we first meet him in “Mank,” he’s bandaged up from a recent, drunken car accident. Welles (Tom Burke) and John Houseman (Sam Troughton) have sent the writer to a ranch in the sunbaked Mojave Desert to dry out with the help of a German nurse (Monika Grossman) and a secretary (Lily Collins), and work on the script for what will become “Citizen Kane.”
At one point in the film Mankiewicz says, “You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one.” Fincher, working from a script penned by his late father, columnist Jack, supplies a vivid snapshot of a man from a particular point of view.
Shot in luscious black and white, the story is told on a broken time line, à la “Citizen Kane,” as the action springs back and forth between the past and the present. Oldman, as Mankiewicz, staggers through the movie causing a scene at a costume dinner party at Hearst’s San Simeon estate and platonically courting his friend, movie star Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), who also happens to be Hearst’s mistress. He’s poured into bed by his long-suffering wife (Tuppence Middleton) and goes to war with Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), professionally and politically– “If I ever go to the electric chair,” he says of Mayer, “I’d like him to be sitting in my lap.”—while ignoring potentially career saving advice from his brother (Tom Pelphrey). Each vignette adds DNA to the portrait, as his disillusionment with Hollywood, politics and power grows by the moment. “Every moment of my life is treacherous,” Mank says.
Oldman plays Mankiewicz as a sharp wit who has grown tired of the world he inhabits. Drink, as his brother Joe says, has made him the “court jester” of Hollywood, a man whose genius is squandered in pursuit of booze and a sure bet at the racetrack. There’s a mischievousness to the performance that is tempered by the profound sadness of someone who sees their genius reduced to doing creative work for hire. His script for “Citizen Kane,” which was supposed to be credited solely to Welles, earned him an Oscar and may have been his last chance to speak his truth to power. “Write hard,” he says. “Aim low.”
Oldman is suitably ragged and ribald, bringing a lesser known historical figure to bawdy life but it is Seyfried who almost steals the show. As Marion Davies he is the epitome of old Hollywood glamour but behind the sequins and wide eyes is a deep well of intelligence that Seyfried slyly imbues into her character. When she and Oldman are side-by-side, the movie sings.
In many ways “Mank” echoes “Citizen Kane.” In structure, in its fragmented storytelling approach and its luscious recreation of the period but as a portrait of a man it feels lesser than. Mank is an engaging character but the depth that Kane plumbed to portray the character is missing. It succeeds as a look at power and its corrosive effects but as a character study its colorful but feels slightly under inflated.
Entertainment Weekly called “The Room” the “‘Citizen Kane’ of bad movies.” Now read all about the making of the movie from someone who was there, Greg “Oh hi Mark” Sestero, in a book Patton Oswalt called, “a surprising, hilarious and compelling account of the making of the modern Plan 9 from Outer Space.” Perfect Christmas reading for the z-movie connoisseur.
Here’s more info on the book from amazon.ca: Nineteen-year-old Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at an acting school in San Francisco. Wiseau’s scenes were rivetingly wrong, yet Sestero, hypnotized by such uninhibited acting, thought, “I have to do a scene with this guy.” That impulse changed both of their lives. Wiseau seemed never to have read the rule book on interpersonal relationships (or the instructions on a bottle of black hair dye), yet he generously offered to put the aspiring actor up in his LA apartment. Sestero’s nascent acting career first sizzled, then fizzled, resulting in Wiseau’s last-second offer to Sestero of costarring with him in The Room, a movie Wiseau wrote and planned to finance, produce, and direct—in the parking lot of a Hollywood equipment-rental shop.
Wiseau spent $6 million of his own money on his film, but despite the efforts of the disbelieving (and frequently fired) crew and embarrassed (and frequently fired) actors, the movie made no sense. Nevertheless Wiseau rented a Hollywood billboard featuring his alarming headshot and staged a red carpet premiere. The Room made $1800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. One reviewer said that watching The Room was like “getting stabbed in the head.”
The Disaster Artist is Greg Sestero’s laugh-out-loud funny account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and friendship to make “the Citizen Kane of bad movies” (Entertainment Weekly), which is now an international phenomenon, with Wiseau himself beloved as an oddball celebrity. Written with award-winning journalist Tom Bissell, The Disaster Artist is an inspiring tour de force that reads like a page-turning novel, an open-hearted portrait of an enigmatic man who will improbably capture your heart.
