David Fincher's Mank (2020)

 I enjoyed David Fincher's Mank as something of a take on 1930's Hollywood, though one would be mistaken if one took it too literally.  For one thing, it seems to suggest that Herman Mankiewicz was solely responsible for the script of Citizen Kane, even though this theory of Pauline Kael's has been thoroughly debunked numerous times (see my posts of Feb.5, 2018 and Nov. 13, 2019 as well as Joseph McBride's posts at wellesnet.com).  And even if this theory were true it wouldn't make any difference, since most of the great Hollywood directors -- John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, et al. -- did not write their own scripts but collaborated quite closely with those who did.  And, for that matter, how different is David Fincher's film from his father Jack's script (Jack died in 2003)?

Mank is beautifully filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Eric Messerschmidt and has quite an interest in the 1934 race for governor of California, when Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, insisted that his employees donate to the campaign of Frank Merriam, the Republican candidate, and even produced fake newsreels and radio ads undermining socialist candidate Upton Sinclair.  Herman Mankiewicz was a regular gambler and lost his bet to Mayer that Sinclair would win, later denouncing Mayer during dinner at San Simeon, the home of William Randolph Hearst, the alcoholic Mankiewicz never afraid to burn his bridges, especially when inebriated.

Many characters come and go in Mank, though Orson Welles's appearances are few, as  are producer John Houseman's, but Gary Oldman as a shambling Herman is at the center of everything as he works on the script of Citizen Kane, eventually sharing an Oscar with Welles for screenwriting in 1941 and dying in 1953.