Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993) was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Like his brother his Herman, Oscar for the screenplay for Citizen Kane , he was a correspondent for the Chicago Times in Berlin in the 1920s, and because of his knowledge of the language he became a letterer for German films. At the end of that decade he left for Hollywood.

A producer rather than a writer and director, roles Mankiewicz longed to pursue, Louis B. Mayer entrusted him with producing duties, explaining that “you have to crawl before you can walk.” And yes, the filmmaker had a better vision of the ‘cinematic game’ thanks to his production of films like Fury ( Fritz Lang , 1936), Three Comrades ( Frank Borzage , 1938), The Philadelphia Story ( George Cukor , 1940) and Woman of the Year ( George Stevens , 1942). But already in 1931 he stood out as a scriptwriter in Full throttle , with WC Fields. And he begins to write, and write, and write, in Alice in Wonderland (1933), Public Enemy Number 1 ( WS Van Dyke , 1934) and Our Daily Bread ( King Vidor , 1934). Thus comes The Keys to the Kingdom ( John M. Stahl , 1944), based on the work of AJ Cronin , the first film in which he appears as both screenwriter and producer. His love for the word, his ease and wit for dialogues, were proverbial. Thus, upon meeting Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, she said “I’m afraid I’m a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy.” Mankiewicz, present, retorted, “Don’t worry, Kate, he’ll cut you down to size soon.”

Ernst Lubitsch ‘s failing health led Mankiewicz to make his directorial debut in Dragonwyck Castle (1946). In this film, and in those that continue with him behind the camera, his effort to show people stands out: “I try not to distort the life or behavior of human beings, giving them, through technique, a preconceived form,” he said. Faced with other filmmakers like Clint Eastwood , who give his stories a fatalistic tone, Mankiewicz is committed to human freedom. Eric Rohmer pointed it out when talking about The Quiet American(1958): “From the moment that the will is established as the main part of the intrigue, the heroes are no longer the inert beings marked by unalterable coordinates of the novel [by Graham Greene ].”

His explorations of theater ( Eva naked , 1950) and cinema ( The Barefoot Contessa , 1954) are fabulous. His female portraits are extremely delicate in those films, and also in Dragonwyck Castle , The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Letter to Three Wives (1949), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Cleopatra (1963) and Women in Venice (1967). And in portraits of men she is not far behind The World of George Appley (1947), Hate Between Brothers (1949), the Shakespearean Julius Caesar (1953) and The Footprint(1972). Its staging is elegant and without fanfare, at the service of the story and the characters.

“I think it can be said that I have been at the beginning, rise, peak, collapse and end of talking pictures.” This phrase from Mankiewicz says a lot about his sorrow for the decline of cinema, more concerned with special effects than with building a good story. This is how the cynicism of the prison western The Day of the Cheaters (1970) and the adaptation of Shaffer’s work The Footprint is understood , where the confrontation between an older husband ( Laurence Olivier ) and a young lover ( Michael Caine ) could well be understood in code generational and cultural.