Joseph L. Mankiewicz: The Essential Iconoclast at the New York Film Festival

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra.

Starting today, the New York Film Festival honors director Joseph L. Mankiewicz with a retrospective of 21 of his movies, including his strychnine-laced love letter to the theater, All About Eve.

"I wanted to do something from Hollywood that was very important to me," says Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones.  "But we need these retrospectives in general, they help you see new films in a different light.  Last year we did Jean-Luc Godard, and in a weird way Mankiewicz sort of talks to that series because Godard really loved his work."

The revivals are important on another level because they are the only opportunity in the Festival to see film projected.  The print for People Will Talk was struck from the original negative.  The Barefoot Contessa (screening October 6) was restored by The Film Foundation, and the Festival is showing a release print of Sleuth (October 6).

Known today primarily for Eve and for Cleopatra (October 13), a big-budget blockbuster that almost ruined Twentieth Century-Fox, at the height of his career Mankiewicz was one of the most honored artists in Hollywood.  But what many film fans don't realize is that his career stretches back to the silent era.

Mankiewicz was the younger brother of Herman J. Mankiewicz, who shared a writing Oscar for Citizen Kane.  In the late 1920s, on the cusp of the transition to sound, the elder Mankiewicz got his brother a job writing titles for the silent versions of films like The Virginian and The Man I Love. 

Mankiewicz graduated to writing screenplays at Paramount, tackling Westerns, Broadway adaptions, musicals, sports films, and comedies.  He moved from screenwriting to producing at MGM, taking charge of Joan Crawford's career and handling prestige projects like The Philadelphia Story and Woman of the Year.

Like his brother, he adopted a cynical attitude toward the industry, calling himself "the oldest whore on the beat."  But his work writing and producing gave him a grounding in every genre and format, as well as experience dealing with creative egos.

Mankiewicz's first film as a director was 1946's Dragonwyck (October 6), a Gothic mystery set in upstate New York during the Colonial era.  Originally planned for an ailing Ernst Lubitsch, the movie resembles a period film noir, a genre Mankiewicz would explore again in Somewhere in the Night (October 2).

"I am essentially a writer who directs," Mankiewicz wrote in a 1967 Life article.  It took time for his directorial style to emerge, but with two adaptations of novels—The Late George Apley (October 6) and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (October 3)—Mankiewicz began to find visual equivalents for his sparkling, nuanced dialogue, like a 360-degree pan around a dinner table in Apley. 

Mankiewicz's three best films came during an astonishing burst of creativity, starting with A Letter to Three Wives (October 7 and 10) in 1949.  Ostensibly a romantic whodunit, Three Wives is a dauntingly witty survey of upper-class life, shown in three troubled marriages.  The film debuts for Thelma Ritter and Paul Douglas, the movie also includes excellent performances from Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, and Kirk Douglas.  Mankiewicz won Oscars for Directing and Screenwriting.

All About Eve (October 1 and 2) arrived in 1950, again winning Mankiewicz Directing and Screenwriting Oscars.  Its quips and insults have become part of our culture, but as Jones points out, the movie itself bears repeated viewings.  "Like all great movies, you think you know it, but when you revisit it you see something that you haven't seen before," he says.

Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain in People Will Talk.

Released in 1951, People Will Talk (October 2) may be Mankiewicz's most personal film.  Based on a Curt Goetz play, it stars Cary Grant as a doctor and university professor whose unorthodox methods bring him before a disciplinary board.  It's a movie that is bursting with brilliant talk, idiosyncratic characters, and unexpected plot twists.  Mankiewicz offers spirited debates about abortion, euthanasia, model railroad trains, and choral music, all within a moving and romantic mainstream comedy.

Critics accused Mankiewicz of elitism, and his subsequent films could seem sour and impatient.  He called The Quiet American (October 8) "the very bad film I made during a very unhappy time in my life," even though Jean-Luc Godard named it the best picture of 1958.  (Graham Greene complained that Mankiewicz changed his novel's ending, writing that the resulting film was "laughable.")  The director also judged his Guys and Dolls (October 5), his second collaboration with Marlon Brando, a failure.

Even Mankiewicz's weaker movies are worth seeing, like Escape (October 14), a thriller starring Rex Harrison that Jones said was the most difficult print to track down. 

Jones also praised the archivists and Twentieth Century-Fox, especially Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fox Filmed Entertainment, who waived print fees for the series.  "They really made the retrospective possible," he said.