I see Mankiewicz’s influence in Godard, Rohmer, and Rivette (though Rivette would later turn against JLM). Ciment is also a defender. He was the first writer I found that shared my sense of Mankiewicz as a filmmaker of systems and not just individuals. Power and its exercise/abuse is under constant examination in Mankiewicz’s films.

I have always wondered, however, why the French love of Mankiewicz did not survive auteurism’s transatlantic crossing to America. They are still publishing major tomes on Mankiewicz in France.

Knowing my love for Mankiewicz, Bill Krohn shared with me the story that when Fred Jung would run into Serge Daney, no matter what phase Cahiers criticism was going through, Jung would always inquire: “Mais, aimez-vous encore…Mankiewicz?” If I were going to be buried, it would be my epitath.

Despite some reservations, Godard was an early and passionate admirer of Mankiewicz: “After SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT, the recent release in Paris of THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, A LETTER TO THREE WIVES and HOUSE OF STRANGERS suffices to establish Joseph Mankiewicz as one of the most brilliant of American directors.”

jbryant: I fell in love with ALL ABOUT EVE (first viewed because it was a Bette Davis movie). Mankiewicz joined Hitchcock, Wilder, Wyler, Huston, Capra, Antonioni, Bergman, Lean as the first cadre of directors whose films I watched simply because they had made them. They were the auteurs I cut my cinematic teeth on.

Like you, I accepted the party line that while JLM was deficient visually, he wrote well and had a talent for directing actors. Wilder was a much bigger favorite at that time (and for years to come). But Mankiewicz consistently gave me pleasure, so I continued to watch and never bad-mouthed him.

When I began to know more cinephiles, I discovered just how low Mankiewicz’s reputation was. In order to mount a cogent defense, I began to examine JLM’s films with greater rigor, and lo and behold there was a visual stylist there whom all along I had missed.

Now, JLM was no florid melodramatist with an opulent visual style. But neither was he a plain craftsman. Space was prized as where performances were given (in his films, characters are always shown to be watching other characters perform for them). I realized that for Mankiewicz, space was the determiner of word and gesture. Unlike almost every other great director, you cannot turn off the sound in a Mankiewicz picture and glory in the image alone. Mankiewicz demands that his audience simultaneously watch and listen to his movies. Image, word, and performance are an interlocking trinity where each component relies on the support and effectiveness of the other two to make the entire aesthetic contraption work (this is why films that JLM scripted and/or produced can be such odd ducks. Mankiewicz needed to finish the job of directing that he began when he wrote/revised the screenplay. Only Cukor, Borzage, and Lang [three auteurs of equal stature to Mankiewicz] were able to re-direct Mankiewicz).

But in an important (and for me, sad) way, Mankiewiczean cinema turned out to be a dead end. Location shooting, naturalistic performing styles, “real sounding” dialogue triumphed in American filmmaking. Even when he made a Western, the prison cells of THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN… had a drawing-room air about them. People in Mankiewicz movies think on screen; in films of more recent vintage it is all about being distressed, anguished or dozens of other visceral emotions that the screen is now thought to be the perfect home for. If Mankiewicz were a young filmmaker today, I would not be at all surprised if he went in for animation where word and image sometimes display that old Mankiewiczean unity.

As for meeting the great man, I was in his presence twice, both times at MoMA. He presented THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR at a Directors Guild tribute to him (he served with honor as its President during the McCarthy era). The other event was the Academy’s evening celebrating his body of work with a lifetime membership (somehow the AFI, AMMI, and Lincoln Center never got around to paying tribute. Mankiewicz’s centenary next year will provide opportunities to make up for past lapses).

My lover at the time and I picked out seats up front, and it turned out that Mankiewicz, his wife, Hume Cronyn, and Jessica Tandy were seated in front of us. After the clips and the speeches, Mankiewicz got up and spoke a little, and when he mentioned Claudette Colbert not being able to play Margo Channing, Colbert herself jumped up not two seats away (how she had sat down without my noticing I still haven’t figured out) and cried: “I’m sorry, Joe. I’m sorry.” She was in full Claudette mode, absolutely fabulous, and never was a queer boy so happy.

I met him a couple of times. I remember that he was looking for a copy of one of his movies – I think it was THE QUIET AMERICAN – and I made him a tape. I asked him how it was. “Terrible! Absolutely terrible! Whoever the hell made that copy should be shot!” I must have had a glint of shame in my eyes, because he patted me on the shoulder and said, “It’s not YOUR fault, though. You’re a good kid.” He passed away a few months later.

PANDORA AND FLYING DUTCHMAN is too heavy for flight, does not sore for me. Color is heavy, framing is tight, no space, the movie is thick.

BAREFOOT CONTESSA is light, woman becomes prisoner of fairy tale like someone else wrote. She becomes corpse statue, grey, dead.

Powerful men appear in her life that she resists and when she’s alive whether in sun light or darkness there’s warmth.

Mankewicz folds actors into mise-en-scene so their body movements and voice tone is part of whole fabric.

But I don’t understand subtle Mankiewicz dialog so well, so movier must be better for native Enghlish speaker.