‘They Made Me a Criminal’ and the Persecution of an Innocent Star

Beyond the Classics is a bi-weekly column in which Emily Kubincanek highlights lesser-known old movies and examines what makes them memorable. In this installment, she investigates the origins of film noir with John Garfield in Busby Berkeley’s They Made Me a Criminal.

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Film noir has never been an easy genre to pin down. A film’s dark and gloomy cinematography can earn noir status. The crime-ridden plot can qualify as noir. A double-crossing femme fatale can turn a mystery into a noir. It may be hard to define noir in a way that captures all its possibilities, but you know when you see it. This is especially true when looking back at movies that came before the film noir genre took hold. Crime dramas, gangster films, and other 1930s films contain elements of the noir movies of the following decade. And looking back at movies like 1939’s They Made Me a Criminal helps reveal how Hollywood inched towards a more cynical representation of America and how it persecuted its own in the process.

The last director we’d usually associate with film noir archetypes is the famed choreographer Busby Berkeley, who is known for his involvement in elaborate Depression-era musicals like Footlight Parade and The Gold Diggers of 1935. At the end of the 1930s, his musicals were on the decline at the box office, and he longed to move towards more serious films. Warner Bros. handed him They Made Me a Criminal, a remake of 1933’s The Life of Jimmy Dolan. Berkeley’s version was the perfect vehicle for the studio’s newcomer John Garfield, a young and rebellious actor fresh out of Lee Strasberg’s troupe at the Group Theatre and fresh off an Academy Award nomination for his first Hollywood role.

Garfield plays champion boxer Johnnie Bradfield, who has fooled the public into believing he’s a real stand up guy. But that all changes the night after his big win. While celebrating with his manager, Doc (Robert Glecker), his girl, Goldie (Ann Sheridan), and her friends, Johnnie gets into a drunken brawl but blacks out before he can witness Doc murder a man. Doc and Goldie take Johnnie with them when they flee the scene, but they abandon his unconscious body when they realize they won’t be able to prove their innocence.

As they leave Johnnie to fend for himself, the two double-crossers are chased by police and perish in a violent car crash. Police assume the man in the car is Johnnie, and the real boxer wakes to find the world thinks he’s not only a murderer but a dead one, too. He must flee from New York and assume a new identity to evade the one detective (Claude Rains) unconvinced of Johnnie’s death. Johnnie ends up in the care of two women who reform delinquents on their Arizona date farm. As he tries to make a new life, Johnnie can’t shake his champion boxing ways and risks his freedom for some prize money.

They Made Me a Criminal lacks the high-contrast cinematography associated with film noir. Berkeley is unable to completely shed the light-hearted comedy and corny romance of his previous films. These aspects keep They Made Me a Criminal from being a strictly serious crime drama. However, it holds a lot of elements the genre would adopt in the following decade. Garfield’s Johnnie has the cynical look on life synonymous with noir criminals and hard-boiled detectives. He’s got questionable morals to match. Everyone in life is a “sucker” if they’re not taking advantage of someone else, and because of that, he trusts no one.

Johnnie’s drunken monologue about the unfairness of the world sounds like it was plucked out of Double Indemnity or Out of the Past’s voiceover narration. This “nobody’s got any friends” attitude proves to be right, at least in terms of those closest to Johnnie. His manager and girlfriend leave him in the dust, despite being his closest allies earlier in the night. Johnnie’s hard look on life follows him into his new life in Arizona, even when farm owners Peggy (Gloria Dickson) and Grandma (May Robson) prove they’re nothing but good-hearted. 

Even though she’s only in the film for about fifteen minutes, Ann Sheridan makes an impact as Goldie. She’s got everything the iconic femmes fatale embody in noir movies that follow. Goldie knows how to seduce a man. She has Johnnie wrapped around her finger, even though he knows she’s only with him for the money, the fame, and presumably the sex. In the span of one night, Goldie goes from Johnnie’s fun girlfriend to ruthless double-crosser. She doesn’t take much convincing to leave Johnnie for dead and seems to be thrilled to go on the run with Doc. After all, he’s the one in control now, and a femme fatale always sticks by the man who’ll benefit her the most.

Sheridan’s transition from sexy girlfriend to back-stabbing femme fatale is comparable to Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai or Joan Bennett in Scarlett Street. Sheridan’s Goldie embodies exactly what Halley Sutton describes when talking about the femmes fatale in classic film noir: “You know her the moment she’s on-screen: she’s got the best lines and the best wardrobe. She’s having more fun than anyone else around her—which usually means she’ll have to be punished by [the] film’s end.” That punishment comes swiftly for Goldie, but her brief time in They Made Me a Criminal provides the framework for the dangerous female characters that follow her film history.

Johnnie’s predicament is one that mimics later crimes in famous films noir. He wakes up having a murder pinned on him and has to prove his innocence or run away from the possibility of being caught. It’s extremely film noir for a character to be mistakenly considered dead. In fact, this happens in several noirs like Laura and The Third Man. Even more common in noir is the idea that an innocent man is framed for a crime he didn’t commit: The Wrong Man, The 39 Steps, Kansas City Confidential, and Nightfall are just a few that have characters faced with the same problem Johnnie deals with in They Made Me a Criminal.

This precursor to film noir does more than just foreshadow the newfound genre that would take Hollywood by storm. It also represents the persecution of its star. Garfield is just feeling out his persona as the antihero and cynical criminal in They Made Me a Criminal. The movie forces a happy ending on Johnnie, making sure he’s redeemed and proven to be a good man after all. Garfield’s roles after Johnnie would continue to get darker and more desperate, leading him to the film noir role we best remember him by today: Frank Chambers in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Garfield had a promising career as the brooding, working-class manly men of film noir and prestigious dramas, but Hollywood’s conservatives and the FBI cut his career short.

Garfield became the biggest star to fall victim to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations into supposed Communists of Hollywood — what is known today as The Hollywood Blacklist. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the United States was thwarted into a Communist scare, suspecting any citizen who exhibited left-wing ideals to be a Communist and a major threat to the American way of life. Hollywood became the government’s most dramatic target, and they put suspicious filmmakers, writers, and actors on trial for the world to see.

Born Jacob Garfinkle, Garfield was guilty by association in HUAC and Hollywood’s eyes. He was the child of working-class Jewish immigrants from Russia, a combination sure to signal a Red allegiance. During his days at the Group Theatre, he worked with actors and playwrights who held radical ideas and snuck them into the social problem plays they put on stage. Garfield’s wife Roberta was a former Communist, but there was no evidence that Garfield himself was a member of the Party. He was never shy about his liberal political views and advocated fiercely during and after World War II against fascism. His on-screen persona, a working-class man who distrusts inherently American ideals, was an even better reason to suspect Garfield was corrupting Hollywood films with a Communist agenda.

In 1951, Garfield got the dreaded subpoena from HUAC to appear in court and prove his innocence. He denied that he ever was a Communist or knew any Communists within Hollywood. Just as the other HUAC victims who refused to name names of suspected Communists, Garfield became the kind of actor to avoid in order to evade investigation. He was never cast in another Hollywood film after his testimony, even though the FBI had nothing to prove he was a Communist. Making a movie with the man who was the go-to rebel was just too dangerous. Even if he was innocent, the government had already made him into a criminal.

Following his HUAC prosecution, Garfield was constantly surveilled by the FBI and put under immense stress as his career was at a halt. He became desperate, moving back to New York and entering the theater scene again. His last-ditch effort to win the public’s trust back was an essay he planned to publish in Look magazine. He would confess how he was duped by leftist ideals and denounce communism once and for all. The title of this essay, “I was a Sucker for the Left-Hook,” was a direct reference to They Made Me a Criminal, in which Garfield’s Johnnie is known for his left-hook in the boxing ring and his affinity for the term “sucker.”

The essay would never see the light of day, however. After an agonizing year for Garfield, he died of a heart attack the day after his name was mentioned in front of HUAC once again in 1952. This time, Clifford Odets vouched for Garfield’s innocence. It was too late, and many believe the stress of his blacklist led to Garfield’s tragic death at 39.

Garfield should have had the long career of fellow stars like Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney. They were able to act into their old age, solidifying long-lasting reputations as some of the greatest actors in Hollywood history. In They Made Me a Criminal, Garfield’s Johnnie gets a happy ending when the detective ready to take him back to New York in handcuffs changes his mind. He recalls how he persecuted an innocent man and sent him to the electric chair in the past, a mistake that haunts him to this day. He refuses to make that same mistake again and lets Johnnie live out the rest of his days in Arizona as an innocent man.

If only Busby Berkeley could have given that happy ending to John Garfield himself. Revisiting this early performance helps us remember that Garfield didn’t just make film noir films great, he helped bring the genre into being.

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The Best Home Video Releases of the Year

The word on the street continues to be that streaming is the future and physical media is on death’s door, but don’t tell that to the numerous home video labels and millions of consumers. Studios are still releasing their films to Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K UltraHD, and people are still buying them. 2020 has been something of a rough year in many — well, most — ways, but it still saw plenty of fantastic home video releases.

As a way to celebrate that, I’ve put together a list of the best and most memorable releases of the year. To be clear, this isn’t necessarily a list of the best movies to land on disc this year — it’s more about singing the praises of labels big and small going the extra mile to deliver stunning, cool, fantastic, and/or long overdue films with love, restorations, and plenty of extras.

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Beautiful Box Sets!

It’s not uncommon for box-sets to focus their attention on a singular filmmaker, and three were given some love this year that deserve a shout. My first pick is a director beloved by many but generally disregarded by many more — Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection [Severin Films] brings together a whopping thirty-one features from the late genre-loving director into one lovingly put together box set. My full review is here, but in short, this is a packed release guaranteed to please fans of low-budget horror, action, and exploitation.

The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection [4K UltraHD] highlights four titles from a far more famous filmmaker, and while Hitch’s films have been collected multiple times before this is the first box-set of new 4K UltraHD remasters. The set includes Rear Window, Vertigo, The Birds, and Psycho, all looking the best they’ve ever looked, and it’s a fantastic gift for film lovers with 4K capabilities.

Back to the lesser-known side of things, Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto [Arrow Video] collects ten films from the subversive Tsukamoto including his groundbreaking Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequel. The filmmaker blends a creative, experimental spirit with high energy genre weirdness, and this set slathers him and his films with love.

UltraHD is the current top standard for home video releases, and people continue to make the upgrade with new TVs and players. These next three sets are for those tech-heads who want to see their favorites remastered into 4K and collected for their convenience. Columbia Classics – 4K UltraHD Collection brings together six of the studio’s hits including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, Gandhi, A League of Their Own, and Jerry Maguire.

The case is big but beautifully crafted to allow room for artwork and individual slipcases for each film — most have yet to be released individually making this an eclectic but limited opportunity — the transfers, extras, and packaging are all aces, and the included hardcover book is fantastic.

Rambo: The Complete Steelbook Collection [4K UltraHD] brings the entire franchise together in one of my favorite packages of the year. Each of the five films gets a 4K remaster and its own slick steelbook with new art inside and out, and the five are then fitted into stiff styrofoam sleeves within a metal hardcase that’s also adorned with new art. It’s a must-own for fans with 4K.

Finally, Resident Evil: The Complete Collection [4K UltraHD] collects all six films in the long-running videogame adaptation franchise in sharp 4K with loads of extras. Each film is in its own thin cardboard case, and they all fit into the outer box.

Horror fans have had an embarrassment of riches this year with box sets celebrating everything from giallos to creature features. The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection [Severin Films] delivers on the former with four films featuring the collaboration between director Umberto Lenzi and star Carroll Baker. The titles alone tell you you’re in for a memorable time — Orgasmo, So Sweet So Perverse, A Quiet Place to Kill, Knife of Ice — and the new remasters and a bevy of extras don’t disappoint.

Forgotten Gialli: Volume 1 [Vinegar Syndrome] brings three more brilliantly titled giallos into newly remastered glory with The Killer Is One of 13, Trauma, and The Police Are Blundering in the Dark all getting facelifts and new extra features. The glorious weirdos at Vinegar Syndrome have a second volume coming soon as well.

If you’re open to overseas imports, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead has just arrived in its ultimate incarnation from Second Sight. Available in both 4K UltraHD and Blu-ray, their smart-looking box houses seven discs featuring three different cuts of the film and an epic amount of extras. It’s getting insanely positive responses, and I’ll add my voice to the chorus once I track one down!

More delights for horror fans arrived this year highlighting complete (and semi-complete) franchises, and the big title in that regard is Friday the 13th Collection: Deluxe Edition [Scream Factory]. Not all of the films have been remastered, but the box is gorgeous, the extras are copious, and if you don’t currently own the series this is the way to go.

Gamera: The Complete Collection [Arrow Video] brings an older franchise home with a monster that may be unfamiliar to many. The beast is a Godzilla type, and its thirteen films from 1965 through 2006 deserve the attention this set demands.

Finally, the exploitation “classic I Spit on Your Grave [Ronin Flix] got a box set this year too, and you’ve never seen such an ugly film receive such beautiful treatment. The original film as well as its direct sequel, with the returning director and star, are included in separate cases with a third holding a feature-length documentary on the films. While the movies are ugly in content, fans will be blown away by the original’s 4K remaster delivering an incredibly impressive transfer.

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Small Labels, Big Studios, All New to 4K UltraHD!

 

In addition to the handful of box sets released in 4K UltraHD above, the format has seen a surge of standalone older films getting the upgrade this year too. My own personal most-anticipated 4K release is Vinegar Syndrome’s upcoming edition of Don Coscarelli’s The Beastmaster (1982) — the first in their new VSU line of titles given the “ultra” treatment. A new 4K remaster and some new extras including an exhaustive feature-length making-of documentary are complemented by a hard case with a magnetic clasp holding the slipcased release and a forty-page hardbound book within. Gorgeous.

The label previously got into 4K releases with remasters of 1994’s Tammy and the T-Rex, 1986’s Rad, and 1989’s undersung slice of kiddie Christmas horror, Deadly Games. All of them have delivered the goods so far, so expect The Beastmaster release to be the best it’s ever looked.

 

Blue Underground is another genre-happy indie label, and they’ve gone big into the world of 4K with some stellar remasters from their back catalog. Their latest release brings Daughters of Darkness (1971) into the modern era with stunning clarity, depth, and definition. The film’s lush cinematography and production design find new life in UHD, and the label brought the same kind of love to other titles as well including Maniac (1980) and Vigilante (1982).

Three Lucio Fulci films — Zombie (1979), The House By the Cemetery (1981), and The New York Ripper (1982) have also gotten the 4K upgrade treatment, and in some cases, the results have been the difference between night and day. Here’s hoping 1981’s Dead & Buried is next on their list.

 

Arrow Video has been delivering fantastic special editions of beloved older films for years now, and they’ve also jumped into 4K recently with some equally memorable results. Flash Gordon (1980) probably isn’t the first film you think of when imagining older “classics” rebirthed in 4K, but the campy good time is a world of color and motion meaning 4K enhances the already sensory experience of watching it. It’s still a gloriously cheesy film, but it’s also still a damn delight.

Arrow also released Pitch Black (1990) in 4K, a film built on darkness which has never looked richer, and they’re about to unleash a new 4K version of the beloved creature feature, Tremors (1990).

 

Indies aren’t the only ones jumping into 4K as big studios see the benefits as well. Paramount Home Video delivered a bevy of 4K upgrades to films from some of their biggest stars this year. Michael Mann’s Collateral (2004) benefits immensely and beautifully from the new master as the film captures the Los Angeles night as few films do, and the detail in Mann’s digital video comes through with clarity and effect.

The studio also released new 4K versions of other Tom Cruise films including Top Gun (1986), Days of Thunder (1990), and War of the Worlds (2005). Two of Eddie Murphy’s biggest hits got the 4K upgrade this year too. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) sees a Detroit cop head west to a far sunnier LA than Mann’s film captures, and the fast-moving, faster-talking antics shine with clarity in action and colorful depth. They also released Coming to America (1988) in a 4K steelbook.

Not to be outdone, Warner Bros. gave Martin Scorsese’s epic Goodfellas (1990) a 4K bump bringing the film’s sharp visuals and music cues to even more vivid life.

 

One of the year’s biggest 4K releases is actually two, and both belong to Peter “I’ve forgotten all about my earlier genre classics and sold out for the big bucks” Jackson. The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy features all three films — The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King — and nothing on the special features front. It’s bare-bones, but the films, both theatrical and extended spread across six discs, look pretty damn great in 4K.

The Hobbit: The Motion Picture Trilogy is available, too, in a similarly supplement-free release, and while it’s the lesser trilogy it looks even better as its effects have aged more skillfully. If you absolutely must have special features, they’ll be releasing a massive six-film collection complete with new and old extras in Summer 2021.

Kino Lorber’s new 4K release of Mad Max (1979) doesn’t include the entire trilogy (yes I’m pretending Thunderdome doesn’t exist), but it’s still a major release as Kino’s new transfer brings the apocalypse to light in gorgeous fashion. The action unfolds with crisp attention to detail, and the Australian landscape explodes with life (and death if we’re being honest).

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The Identity Crisis of Internet Horror

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video on how two very different films, Pulse and FeardotCom, epitomize the early days of the internet horror subgenre.

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From atomic behemoth B-movies to satanic panic pictures, horror has always had a finger on the pulse of what ails us. Naturally, when the abject horror of Being Online reared its pale face, horror was eager to oblige. After all, genre film had been plugged into the terrifying potential of technology long before dot com anxieties. Films like 1977’s Demon Seed and James Cameron’s The Terminator presciently theorized about our slavish relationship to black-box tech long before the internet even existed.

However, when it comes to the internet, few things are scarier than the real deal. This is why web-based horror has a reputation for being hit-and-miss, to put it mildly. The subgenre often resorts to out-of-touch exaggeration and the dull trope of the web as a modern haunted house filled with jump scares. These critiques are more than deserved. But it’s worth remembering what the best showings of the subgenre can offer. Namely: a stern reminder that we’re all-too-willing to surrender our attention, our privacy, and ourselves to this ubiquitous thing very few of us understand.

The video essay below unpacks two very different films that epitomize the early days of internet horror: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s slow-burning masterpiece Kairo (2001), a.k.a. Pulse, and William Malone’s expressionistically schlocky FeardotCom (2002). The essay compares and contrasts the two films and theorizes about what they can tell us about the complicated identity of the subgenre.

Watch “PULSE & FEARDOTCOM: The Rise of “Internet Horror“:

Who made this?

This video is by Ryan Hollinger, a Northern Irish video essayist who specializes in horror films. Hollinger’s analysis usually takes the shape of a personal retrospective. Indulging in a healthy dose of nostalgia, Hollinger’s videos are contagiously endearing, entertaining, and informative. You can also check out Hollinger’s podcast The Carryout on SoundCloud here. And you can subscribe to Hollinger’s YouTube account here.

More Videos Like This

• First, here’s another sample of  Hollinger’s work: a video on how the found-footage disaster picture The Bay unpacks the horror of inaction during a public health crisis.
• And here’s another video essay from Hollinger, on the forgotten legacy of the proto-slasher The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
• And, one more: an argument for why The Poughkeepsie Tapes is such a disturbing found-footage horror film.
• Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the differences between Kairo and its American remake.
• Finally, here’s Hollinger on 2018’s Slender, a horror film based on a ten-year-old meme that basically misunderstands internet cryptids.

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Tradition of McCarthy/Falcone Misfires Continues in ‘Superintelligence’

If nothing else, it takes real guts to unironically name your fairly stupid comedy Superintelligence. You’re asking for trouble with a title like that, but while there are moments that work in the latest feature from director Ben Falcone and star Melissa McCarthy, the end result is yet another reminder that the success of their personal love story really doesn’t carry over to their onscreen collaborations.

McCarthy stars as Carol, the most average person in the world and someone who cares about other people far more than she does her own advancement in the game of life. When a newly awakened artificial intelligence catches wind of her existence, it decides to judge humanity based on her and her alone — appearing to her in digitally created form of her favorite celebrity’s (James Corden) voice, the AI tells her its plans for humankind rest on her shoulders. Will it destroy civilization, enslave people, or work to help humanity better itself? It all depends on if Carol can get back together with her ex, George (Bobby Cannavale), apparently, but with Microsoft engineers, the US military, and copious Corden appearances meddling throughout there’s a real argument that maybe humanity should go the way of the dinosaurs.

Falcone and McCarthy have made four feature films together now as director and star, respectively, and while I’ll go to bat for 2014’s Tammy as an unconventional romantic comedy, both The Boss (2016) and Life of the Party (2018) are massive misuses of McCarthy’s comedic genius. Superintelligence, unfortunately, falls in line with those last two as it’s rarely humorous, shoddily written, and pure padding for everyone’s resume. The super smart choice here is to go rewatch McCarthy in the utterly brilliant Spy (2015) instead.

Steve Mallory‘s script is the biggest issue here, and while it’s unclear what blackmail material he’s holding over McCarthy it’s obviously working for him. After tagging along and playing characters like “Party Guy” in Identity Thief (2013) and “Cashier” in Tammy, he graduated to co-writer on The Boss and co-producer on Life of the Party. He’s listed as the sole writer on Superintelligence, and one can only hope that’s the end of the gravy train as neither his story nor his dialogue generate anything resembling a laugh.

What humor does land here comes courtesy of the various talents roped into starring in the film. McCarthy is first and foremost among them, and she does her best with material existing well beneath her. She earns smiles with some brief bits of physical comedy — her failed attempts at sitting on a large beanbag chair are as close as you’ll get to laughing aloud here — but she can only do so much with the dialogue. Falcone and Sam Richardson are mildly amusing as federal agents hoping to stop the AI from destroying the world, and Brian Tyree Henry avoids embarrassing himself as Carol’s best friend. Cannavale can’t quite claim the same.

But, and I ask this with the utmost respect, who the hell thought that what the world needs now is more James Corden? He appears onscreen a few times, both as himself and as a digital rendition of himself, but in voice form he’s present throughout the bulk of Superintelligence. The script gives him little in the way of funny beats, and he brings even less on his own merits, but even those who do find him entertaining should be put off by the film essentially being an advertisement for how nice, funny, and beloved he seems to be. And seriously, enough with the Carpool Karaoke. It’s tiring. To be fair, he’s not the only product being sold here as the film also goes out of its way to praise the brains at Microsoft and Tesla for its “really cool car(s).”

The singular good bit to come out of Tesla’s product placement here is a Knight Rider joke complete with voice work by William Daniels as KITT. Well, joke’s a bit of a reach, but it is a reference — and like every other pop culture reference here its presence is neutered by onscreen explanation. A visual nod to WarGames (1983) is followed by multiple characters saying its WarGames, an initially humorous use of the iconic Law & Order sound cue is followed by others identifying it as the Law & Order sound cue. Nothing intended as funny is allowed to exist on its own without neon-lit arrows pointing at it to ensure viewer attention.

The actual story unfolding in Superintelligence is the least of its concerns — quite literally, it makes a minimal effort here — but even the initial promise of its premise is left to wither. Meant as something of a comedic riff on Skynet, everything from the AI’s plans to the human response is presented without much thought. It wants to judge people based on Carol’s actions, but it manages her actions every single step of the way. The US government plans a massive, global data shutdown, but everything’s still working up to and including commercial flights. Want a smarter, more entertaining movie about artificial intelligence nudging its way into matters of the human heart? Seek out Her (2013) or Electric Dreams (1984) instead.

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Kathy Bates is the Face of Toxic Fandom in ‘Misery’

Acting is an art form, and behind every iconic character is an artist expressing themselves. Welcome to The Great Performances, a bi-weekly column exploring the art behind some of cinema’s best roles. In this entry, we explore Kathy Bates’ terrifying superfan in Misery.

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Two months after the 1990 debut of Misery, the New York Times interviewed Kathy Bates, who plays Annie Wilkes, the film’s homicidal number-one fan. The actress is very candid in the profile about how she’s perceived as an actor:

“I never was an ingenue; I’ve always just been a character actor […] The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually, a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you. And you think, ‘Well, y’know, I’m a real person.’”

The honest self-awareness that she expresses offers insight as to why she’s such a powerful actor. Bates looks for the inner truth in each character she plays, regardless of the size of the role or how eccentric they may be written. She uses that truth as a foundation to take more risks in her performances, approaching her characters from unique angles that can surprise even the writers who created them.

Marsha Norman, who wrote Bates’ breakout Broadway show ‘night, Mother, had written her character Jessie as waifish, slowly fading away in front of our eyes as she plans her own suicide. The natural energy Bates brought to the role was diametrically different from what Norman had envisioned, but it’s what made Bates so electrifying on stage: she felt astonishingly real. As the playwright said, “Here, in fact, was someone who had managed to disappear, because in public you would look right past her.” 

This ability to blend into a crowd is a major reason Bates was cast as Annie, the delusional fan of author Paul Sheldon (James Caan), whose romance novels chronicling the many loves of Misery Chastain have consumed her life. Director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman, who adapted the story from Stephen King’s bestselling novel, wanted Annie to have a face you couldn’t recognize.

As Goldman said on the casting process, “My feeling is that even with as brilliant a performer as [Meryl] Streep in the part, it would not have worked because sitting out there in the dark, some part of us would have known that Meryl Streep wasn’t really going to incinerate James Caan. But no one knew Kathy Bates was.”

By casting Bates, Reiner and Goldman made Annie Wilkes an everyday stranger, someone we wouldn’t notice passing on the street. Since audiences weren’t as familiar with her as an actor, they would only see Annie and her twisted mix of rage and innocence. 

That’s another quality that Reiner felt Bates encapsulated, “She has that look of someone who’s a fan. That eager, naive look.” Bates uses that innocence to create a character that acts as a composite of modern fandom, both effusive and toxic. We can see our own selves in Annie’s excitement over the Misery books, twirling on the balls of her feet, exploding with genuine enthusiasm as she reads the new chapter she’s forced the imprisoned author to write, “Misery’s alive! Misery’s alive! Oh, it’s so romantic! I’m going to put on my Liberace records!”

What diehard fan isn’t stoked when their headcanon becomes a reality? As she vomits virtuosic praise on Paul, begging him to give her hints of the new book’s conclusion, Bates plays it without a hint of irony or cheesy intentional hyperbole. We believe that Annie legitimately thinks Paul’s steamy novels are works of art on par with the Sistine Chapel, “That and Misery’s Child. Those are the only two divine things in this world!”

It’s in these genuine moments of joy that Bates makes the audience briefly forget Annie is a psychopath. We just see a fan, like you or me, excited about the thing she loves more than life itself. But Bates weaponizes this earnestness so the audience doesn’t anticipate the moment her passion turns destructive. To make her switch in personalities feel real, Bates and Reiner gave Annie an emotionally devastating backstory unique to the film. 

In King’s novel, Annie is conventionally evil, having killed an entire family in a house fire by the time she’s eleven before going on to murder her father, among countless others. With Reiner, Bates honed in on Annie’s patricide for the source of her character’s motivations. Rather than Annie killing her father because of some inborn evil, Bates’ saw it as retribution for a history of sexual abuse, giving a psychological backbone for Annie’s rage.

As Bates described her, “Annie isn’t a monster in a horror movie; she’s a human being who is a psychopath.” Even though it’s never verbalized, Bates bears the weight of Annie’s trauma throughout the film. She becomes a character we can almost pity and empathize with, even as we revile her descent into madness.

It is in Annie’s fury towards Paul’s dismissal of Misery that we see her embody toxic fandom. When she learns he’s killed his title character, she takes it as a personal betrayal. She has emotionally invested so much in Misery that she feels possession over her, and in killing her off, Paul has unwittingly murdered a part of Annie herself. It’s a problematic level of ownership from fans we see amplified today through social media. 

Just look at the uproar from certain Star Wars fans when Rian Johnson took the beloved series in a new direction that they didn’t like. These toxic fans felt like they understood the characters better than those who were writing them, so when The Last Jedi subverted their expectations, they took it as a slap in the face of everything they profess to love. This is precisely how Annie feels towards Paul, and it’s what pushes her over the edge. It’s an aspect of her character that many fans will relate to, no matter how much they may not want to admit it.

In King’s novel, Annie Wilkes is a metaphor for cocaine addiction, a way for the writer to subconsciously confront his own struggles with substance abuse. The themes central to the book are mostly absent from the film, but Annie still serves as a commentary on a different kind of addiction, the type superfans can have towards the movies, books, and television shows they’ve devoted their life to. Annie is hooked on Paul’s novels, craving each new book like an addict looking for their next fix. When a fan loves something, it’s their greatest high. But if they think a creator doesn’t respect the work as they do, they hit rock bottom and lash out in an overprotective rage.

Annie Wilkes can be seen as a personification of both addiction and toxic fandom, but an actor can’t play a metaphor, only the character’s reality. Bates shines because she finds pathos in Annie, discovering who she is underneath all of the anger and violence. She doesn’t play her as an archetype, but a real person with dark secrets hidden below the surface of a disarming grin.

Finding the truth in a character as complex as Annie is one of Bates’ greatest strengths as an actor, one that’s been evident since she first started working on the New York stage. Athol Fugard, who directed her in an Off-Broadway play early in her career said, “Performance, for an actor, can either be telling the truth or telling a lie[…] Kathy has that formidable honesty: she never pretends. She has a way, in performance, of being.” 

With Misery, Kathy Bates made a psychopath feel both real and relatable — an emotional balancing act that makes Annie Wilkes one of the most terrifying and fascinating movie villains of all time.

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No Way Back: How They Shot the Bridge Scene in ‘Sorcerer’

Welcome to How’d They Do That?, a bi-monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off. This entry explains the making of the scene in William Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’ where two enormous trucks cross a rotting suspension bridge.

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William Friedkin‘s nihilistic opus may share its name with “Sorcerer,” one of the two hulking transport trucks that propel the film’s nail-biting second half, but the film’s ultimate fate took after the second vehicle’s namesake: “Lazarus.” Despite its commercial and critical death in 1977, Sorcerer was later revived, in large part thanks to Friedkin’s efforts to ensure the film’s survival on home video. Today, many regard the film as a grueling, beautiful, and underappreciated triumph.

The film follows four criminals who have sought refuge in a remote village: Jackie Scanlon (Roy Scheider), a getaway driver marked for death; Victor Manzon (Bruno Cremer), a disgraced investment banker; Kassem (Amidou), a politically-motivated terrorist, and Nilo (Francisco Rabal), an assassin.

One day, a nearby oil rig explodes, sending a turret of fire scorching into the sky. To stifle the flames, the oil company needs explosives. And the only dynamite available is rotting in a shed 218 miles away, sweating volatile nitroglycerine that could explode with the slightest jostle. The only way to transport the stuff through the hostile terrain is by truck. Incentivized by a financial reward that could pay their way home, the four men volunteer for the job.

Well into their journey, the two trucks come to a crossroads. Despite taking different paths, fate ultimately dumps them both at the same place: the bank of a raging river. A dilapidated bridge lies ahead, stitched together with loosening rope and soggy, splintering wood. Wind gusts violently, spraying torrents of rain in every imaginable direction.

The task is clear but impossible: to cross this bridge, in these trucks, and to make it to the other side alive. The Lazaro arrives first and incrementally begins its agonizingly slow crawl. Nilo guides Scanlon as the bridge buckles and tilts, cracking under their weight. Each sway is a threat, but somehow they make it across. And before you can catch your breath, Sorcerer arrives to attempt the same treacherous negotiation. Which it does. Barely.

While studio executives may have found its title misleading, the effect of Sorcerer is, ultimately, an otherworldly one where lumbering metal tanks growl like tigers and purgatory takes on a decaying, desperate aspect. The bridge sequence is no different: it is a spellbinding Sisyphean centerpiece that dangles redemption in the face of assured catastrophe. It is one of the most astonishing sequences ever put to film; cinematic magic performed by an accomplished — if wantonly reckless — sorcerer.

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How’d they do that?

Long story short:

While the core of the bridge was made of steel and hydraulics instead of decayed wood and rope, ultimately: they drove a real truck, across a real bridge, over a real river.

Long story long:

Friedkin regularly describes the suspension bridge scene in Sorcerer as the most arduous sequence of his career. Which, considering all of Friedkin’s shenanigans, is saying something. Despite the danger, according to Friedkin, there was no resistance from the crew or the financiers. “That was never an issue,” stresses Friedkin in an interview with The Dissolve. “I must say that while they were concerned, they had total faith in me. And I had a kind of sleepwalker’s certainty that I could pull it off.”

The trucks on-screen were two and a half-ton capacity GMC M211 military transport vehicles, first deployed during the Korean War. Per the Sorcerer press booklet, Freidkin hired a local Dominican artist to decorate the trucks like the haulers he’d seen while location-scouting in Ecuador.

Champion motorcyclist and repeat Steve McQueen collaborator Bud Ekins served as the film’s stunt coordinator — it is perhaps not unrelated that McQueen was Friedkin’s first choice to play Jackie Scanlon. Famously, the main cast did much of the driving themselves. “Every time you see one of the actors in the truck, they are driving,” emphasizes Friedkin in a 2018 interview with Empire. “The fear they show and the caution that they show is real…It’s only in the long-shot sequences that there’s a stuntman.”

Speaking with The New York Times in 1977, Scheider stressed that shooting Sorcerer “made Jaws look like a picnic.” He adds that what you see in the suspension bridge scene is “what really happened.” No optical effects. No rear projection. “Today it would be computer-generated, and it wouldn’t be life-threatening,” supposes Friedkin, correctly.

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The bridge itself was the creation of legendary production designer John Box, whose previous credits include Laurence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. The bridge was originally constructed and assembled in the Dominican Republic at a cost of one million dollars, a price tag justified because this was, after all, the big set-piece of the film. As Friedkin tells it, the river was reliably deep during the months they planned to shoot.

And the river dried up. The studio executives suggested that Friedkin scrap the scene for something less sophisticated. But Friedkin, of course, ignored them and immediately sent Box to find a different river. Box found a promising alternative near Tuxtepec, Mexico. The section of Papaloapan River had a similar topography and deep rushing waters that “had not diminished in living memory,” as Friedkin puts it. The bridge was dismantled, shipped to Mexico, and re-anchored. And then, like a cosmic joke, the Papaloapan started to dry up too.

Without the time or money to find another river, the production had to make the Papaloapan work. In addition to clever camera angles to disguise the true depth of the river, the production employed a series of mechanical effects: piping and pumping equipment re-routed the water and the river was dammed to inflate the current; wind machines and giant hoses gave the impression of a monsoon, and a massive sprinkler system created an artificial rainstorm that obscured the low water levels. Because the rain required cloud-coverage, they could only film in the morning and the evening with a hiatus in between.

A carefully concealed hydraulic system controlled the movement of the bridge and the trucks. The frayed ropes along the bridge’s sides cleverly disguised supporting steel cables. And, as a precaution, the crew lashed the trucks to the bridge so that as it tilted and swayed, they wouldn’t topple over. In theory.

Despite the cast and crew’s best efforts, the trucks did topple over into the shallow water often with actors and stuntmen inside them. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Friedkin estimates this happened seven or eight times, after which they would repair the damaged section and keep going. According to Ekins’ obituary, right after the frame reproduced on the poster that adorns the Tangerine Dream album, the truck fell in the drink.

In fact, even Friedkin’s truck overturned while he was filming handheld footage over the dashboard. Describing the experience, he explains: “you fell in the water…and you counted yourself lucky that the truck didn’t fall on you or anyone else.” Personally, I like to think that as Friedkin was launched into the water, he recalled the words of Robert Mitchum, who turned down a role in Sorcerer with the following dismissal: “Why would I want to go to Ecuador for two or three months to fall out of a truck? I can do that outside my house.”

In a 2017 interview with British film critic Mark Kermode for Sight & Sound, Friedkin reminds us that during the shoot a good deal of the crew (Friedkin included) contracted gangrene and malaria. To make matters worse, during the reconstruction of the bridge, an undercover Mexican federal officer took issue with the drug use of certain crew members (twenty-some stuntmen, key grips, makeup artists, and special effects artists). Friedkin was forced to send the offenders home to the US — the alternative was that everyone working on the production would be imprisoned.

Ultimately, the bridge sequence took months and a mostly un-budgeted three million dollars to film. But all told: that money, toil, fear, and desperation is up there on the screen.

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What’s the precedent?

Sorcerer is the second film based on Gerges Arnaud‘s 1950 French novel Le Salaire de la Peur. The first adaptation, 1953’s The Wages of Fear, is Henri-Georges Clouzot‘s masterpiece. Friedkin is vocal (as ever) that Sorcerer is not a remake of Clouzot’s film but rather is a separate, distinct adaptation of Arnaud’s novel. In fact, another rarely-discussed American adaptation proceeds Friedkin’s: 1958’s Violent Road.

Neither Arnaud’s novel nor Clouzot’s film contains a stormy river crossing. As far as I can tell, it is an original invention of Friedkin and screenwriter Walon Green. If The Wages of Fear has an analog stunt, it is the scene in which the trucks are forced to make a hairpin turn up a mountain using only a rotted-wood outcropping as their support. Like Sorcerer‘s bridge sequence, the stunt makes ample use of clever camera placement and editing to elevate its stakes.

Ultimately, the two sequences (like their two directors) have very different strengths and priorities: one tension, the other dread; one details, the other spectacle. To compare the two of them feels unfair. After all, Sorcerer is not a slow-burning thriller. It is a document, on-screen and off, of a desperate, often arrogant attempt — and only an attempt — to overcome and control the uncontrollable.

In this vein, it makes more sense to seat Sorcerer at the same table as Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), a destructive journey down the Amazon River in search of El Dorado. Or better yet, Herzog’s later Klaus Kinski joint Fitzcarraldo (1982), where a rubber baron’s quest to drag a steamship through the Brazillian jungle reflects the real-life production where Herzog forced his crew to haul a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-ton boat up a hill.

While it premiered two years after Sorcerer, Francis Ford Coppola’s infamously troubled Apocalypse Now (1979) also deserves a mention as a film whose making-of documentary proved a more faithful adaptation of Heart of Darkness than the film itself.

All to say: despite its source material and preceding peers, Sorcerer‘s suspension bridge stunt was born from a very specific and often dangerous attitude particular to the ’70s auteur brats. Namely: that, no matter the risk or the price, the most important thing was to realize the vision.

And if you’re thinking to yourself no one could make a film like that today, Friedkin agrees! “Nor should they,” he states in a 2014 Esquire interview. “I believe today that there is no film and no shot in a film that is worth a squirrel getting a sprained ankle. We were irresponsible in that regard.”

And so, there it is: a perilous if astounding journey, concluding not in redemption, but in too-late understanding.

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Good News is No News: The Corruption of American Media in ‘Ace in the Hole’

Welcome to The Noirvember Files, a new series dropping the spotlight on essential film noir selections. The titles celebrated here exemplify the style and substance of cinema’s grimiest, most-relatable underbelly. In this entry, we’re digging into Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole.

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In the late 1940s, when the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating alleged political subversion in Hollywood, director Billy Wilder was among its fiercest opponents. He played a hand in the short-lived resistance movement led by a group of actors and directors, championing freedom of speech and press. When the group known as the Committee for the First Amendment dissolved — mostly out of an increasing reluctance to be associated with communism — Wilder continued to channel his frustrations with American society into his work.

Wilder’s 1951 film noir, Ace in the Hole, reflects the atmosphere of suspicion sowed during the HUAC hearings and further entrenched during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red scare years. A satire of American media, the film is a ferocious, almost agonizing addition to the canon, a portrait of a depraved big-city journalist who takes a job with a scruffy Albuquerque newspaper and milks a local story until it ends in tragedy. Ace in the Hole (under the title The Big Carnival) was rejected by audiences, its cynical assessment of the American journalist too much even by film noir standards.

Played by a menacing Kirk Douglas, Charles “Chuck Tatum” arrives in New Mexico having just lost another newspaper job. Was it the libel suit, the adultery, or the alcoholism? It doesn’t matter; he’s about to score a position at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin, a modest, mid-sized paper that will be his ticket back to the big leagues, preferably New York or Chicago. “I’m a $250-a-week newspaperman,” Chuck tells the boss, Mr. Boot (Porter Hall). “I can be had for $50!” He’s gangster-like and impossibly arrogant, swaggering around the office, addressing his news colleagues as “fans.”

What makes Chuck so frightening a presence is that his talent is undeniable. And it’s not just his knack for writing copy. He can disarm almost anyone with his charisma — if not, he’s an effective blackmailer. He somehow towers over men much taller than he is, and he has an exact understanding of the relationship between the American media and its audience. He gloats that reputation is beside the point for journalists as skilled as he. “When they need you, they forgive and forget,” he tells Boot.

After a year on the job, a bored Chuck stumbles upon a story ripe for embellishment: a man named Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) is trapped inside an old mining cave, his elderly parents fretting after him, and his wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) cursing his folly. Chuck steps up, filling a power vacuum. Bullying a police officer into letting him venture inside the cave where Leo is pinned down by fallen rocks, Chuck presents himself as a savior and a friend. “Don’t worry, Leo,” he says. “I’m your pal.” He schemes to organize the search effort himself, ensuring that Leo will be kept trapped for longer than necessary so as to extend the story’s shelf life.

It’s a heinous plan, but Ace in the Hole is onto something brilliant. Chuck settles into his role as puppet master, positioning himself as a mediator between all of the institutional representatives involved in the rescue: the contractor responsible for drilling through the mine, the sheriff managing law and order, the doctor tending to Leo’s fragile health, and even his big-city newspaper nemeses who are on assignment. In the film, the operation can’t exist without the journalist who functions as its central organ — not unlike the idealist’s vision of American democracy, which claims a free press as its beating heart.

But because Chuck is sour, everyone around him turns sour too. Some have it in them more than others: the Sheriff needs momentum for his reelection platform, whereas the young, impressionable photojournalist Herbie (Robert Arthur), Chuck’s shadow through much of the film, is taken in by their sudden celebrity. Chuck’s moral rot exists in everyone, just bubbling under the surface. Wielding his charms and his authority as a newsman, Chuck upends all of the fundamental values of honest journalistic work: he lies to the public, deceives a vulnerable source — and, it is implied, sleeps with his wife — dragging out a life-threatening predicament for his own personal enrichment. The people are along for the ride, flooding the grounds near the mine where Leo is trapped, frenzied over the next national story.

In many ways, Ace in the Hole seems like a response to the media’s failures during the HUAC and early McCarthy era: exhaustive coverage without analysis, a campaign of lies running virtually unchecked. But its sharpest achievement is that it pinpoints a damaged relationship between the press and the people as a turning point in society’s degradation, one that was somewhat rehabilitated during Watergate but has been in steady decline since. So it’s no surprise that the story is a prescient illustration of today’s relationship between Americans and the media.

Most viciously, the film assesses the tendency towards news-making for entertainment’s sake and our gleeful consumption of it. Chuck explains to Herbie that people want a “human interest” story about a single individual onto whom they can project their own fears and desires. He identifies his prey early on: the Federbers are the first tourists who make the trip to witness Leo’s plight. Chuck calls them “Mr. and Mrs. America” because they’re the target of his operation, the starry-eyed common folk who eat up the sensation that he’s handing them on a silver platter. They put faith into an institution they trust, but they are taken in by people like Chuck who slip through the cracks and poison the well.

But Chuck isn’t the only bad egg; Lorraine is a worthy femme fatale to his antihero. Not because she’s virtuous where he’s corrupt, but because she’s just as opportunistic and selfish, banking on her husband’s suffering to make some extra dough at their nearby trading post/restaurant. Chuck loathes her for it. As Imogen Sara Smith notes in her essay on the femme fatale, “[Lorraine] reflects back at [Chuck] the worst of himself, and despite his cynicism, he can’t face the truth, so he takes out his own mounting guilt on her.”

Chuck’s facade crumbles the more time he spends with both Leo and Lorraine. Leo adores her, the poor man, but she has nothing kind to say about him in return. What Chuck can’t accept is that his dynamic with Leo is virtually the same: he uses his source like a pawn, but Leo believes Chuck to be his only true confidant, the only person who cares about him, a trusted friend. Even as Chuck gains momentum professionally, the truth begins to drive him mad, tenfold when he realizes that Lorraine’s sick ways are his own.

The irony of Chuck’s desire to find a “human interest” angle for his story is that he effectively dehumanizes Leo. His sensationalistic reporting makes everything spiral out of control: as Leo’s health deteriorates, the crowd outside his cave turns the grounds into a carnival, a stomach-churning display of phony support. Leo becomes an indiscernible symbol for a culture with the wrong priorities, and his rescue mission an exercise in absurdity. Chuck has ruined him in ways he never intended; when the news cycle ends, will Leo go with it?

In Ace in the Hole’s opening scene, Chuck is tickled by an embroidered sign hanging on the wall of the Sun-Bulletin office. “Tell the Truth,” it reads. He laughs it off as small-town naïveté: “Wish I could coin ‘em like that.” But the phrase isn’t meant to be an instruction or a principle. It’s a warning. What unravels between his first and last look at that sign is a cautionary tale of American culture’s pollution, a film that so sharply embodies the post-war cynicism of the 1950s.

As Chuck tells Mr. Boot during a final confrontation, “I don’t belong in your office; not with that embroidered sign on the wall. It gets in my way.” Guilt-ridden to the point of madness, Chuck finally wants to tell the truth. But nobody will believe him; nobody sticks around long enough to hear him tell it.

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David Fincher’s Long and Winding Road to ‘Mank’

To lay the groundwork of any discussion of David Fincher and his films, I’m tempted to paraphrase the opening voiceover from Gone Girl and imagine what it would be like to unspool the director’s brain in an attempt to get answers. Fincher is known as something of a mastermind; his reputation is that of a perfectionist with an impeccable eye for detail and a blunt disposition that emboldens him to ensure all his demands for precision are carried out. He’s a filmmaker who invites a desire to wonder what makes him tick and to imagine what all the gears must look like as they turn in his mind.

Appropriating the opening lines from Gone Girl would be especially apt in an assessment of Fincher’s latest, Mank, as that film also begins with borrowed lines, those of the director’s father, Jack Fincher. The elder Fincher wrote the script for Mank in the 1990s with the younger Fincher planning to adapt it after The Game in 1997. Those plans fell through. Jack Fincher passed away from cancer in 2003, and seventeen years later, his script has made its way back into his son’s filmography.

Mank, which tracks the exploits and endeavors of the titular Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) through the 1930s and leads up to him completing the script for Citizen Kane, opens with the click-clack of a typewriter and text that reads:

EXT. Victorville - Guest Ranch - Day - 1940.

Throughout the film, this motif recurs as a similar text format is used to introduce various locations and dates. These words and their apt connotations of the importance of the screenplay begin what is already being hailed as the most un-Fincher-like film of his career.

Indeed, as much as Mank‘s origins as a film date back over two decades, it does seem to be a curious choice of film for Fincher, who is most known for the thrillers that populate his filmography, from the true-crime chronicles of Zodiac and the Netflix original series Mindhunter to the generation-defining antihero icons of Fight Club and Gone Girl. He has never made a movie about Hollywood or the filmmaking industry, and he doesn’t have a great deal of experience with biopics. And yet, looking past the overt trends in his career, we can find a place for Mank in Fincher’s body of work going back thirty years.

One place to begin is before his thrillers; before his narrative feature films, in fact. Fincher cut his teeth with music videos, most notably several in collaboration with Madonna beginning in 1989. One of these was for “Oh Father,” a semi-autobiographical video inspired by Madonna dealing with her mother’s death when she was five years old. The video begins with a direct reference to Citizen Kane, as a young Madonna plays in the snow, framed by the window of her parents’ house. The film is rich with stylistic allusions to Orson Welles’ film, from the snowy imagery to the stark black and white cinematography. Although conceptually driven by Madonna’s personal experiences, it’s notable that Fincher was the one who convinced her to release it as a single.

Additionally, in arguably the most iconic of their video collaborations, for the song “Vogue,” the references to Old Hollywood are readily apparent. Among the many stars that Madonna namedrops in the lyrics, there’s Marlene Dietrich, the German-American silver screen legend whose notable collaborations with director Josef von Sternberg Madonna has compared to her own collaborations with Fincher. Fittingly, the music video is also shot in black and white, with Madonna often framed, costumed, and lit so as to allude to the actress’s iconography.

While Madonna’s deep admiration for Dietrich was understandably the creative driving force, it’s not fair to entirely count out Fincher’s input. Additionally, the depiction of Madonna at her most playful in the video, with her bleach blonde hair and full, dark lips, is not dissimilar to Amanda Seyfried‘s portrayal of Marion Davies, the snappy Brooklynite actress and mistress to William Randolph Hearst (the real-life inspiration for Charles Foster Kane), as played by Charles Dance in Mank. This is not to suggest that there was any intended homage to Davies present in the music video, but rather an indicator that telegraphing allusions and tributes to the starlets of yore is not new to Fincher, but actually predates his feature filmmaking.

Once Fincher began making movies, it didn’t take long for him to bring a somewhat Kane-esque figure to the big screen. In 1997’s The Game, Michael Douglas stars as Nicholas Van Orton, a surly, isolated, uber-rich magnate. Plot-wise, there are notable differences. The film is less a survey of his life and more of a paranoia-heavy thriller about a man trapped in what was sold as the experience of a lifetime but could be a life-ruining scheme.

Still, there are some key images that can’t be overlooked. When Nicholas first visits Consumer Recreation Services, the company that creates “the game,” he undergoes a series of physical and psychological evaluations. In one scene, he sits in a private screening room while images flash on the screen before him. Frustrated by it, Nicholas stands up and stares into the projector, holding his hand up as he’s blinded by the flickering light. It recalls the newsreel sequence in Citizen Kane while also setting up “the game” as a metaphor for filmmaking.

As David Sterritt notes in his essay for the Criterion release of The Game, Nicholas goes through “movielike perils, pitfalls, traps, and tricks.” Coincidences and contrivances come to dominate the world around him as it becomes increasingly unclear what is being set up by CRS to give Nicholas a puzzle to work through and what is there to completely destroy him. Movielogic does indeed come to dominate as all of Nicholas’ experiences are too precise to be left up to chance, and the people he encounters are there to play their roles and set up familiar tropes. Near the end of the film, he directly references The Wizard of Oz as he insists that his goal is to pull back the curtain and to meet the wizard — to both solve the puzzle he’s trapped in and uncover the very mechanisms that allow it to exist.

While The Game is not outwardly about Hollywood, from its script to its striking visuals there are repeated references and allusions to the process of moviemaking. It’s also, in a more up-front manner, a film about fathers and sons. Nicholas’ late father looms large in his life, though he is only glimpsed in flashback. His suicide clouds his son’s faith and provides a path that Nicholas seems to believe he will inevitably follow. More than a decade later, Fincher would return to these parental themes, albeit with a different execution.

Fincher’s 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button begins with Cate Blanchett’s Daisy on her death bed. She relates to her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), the details of her life, and that of the eponymous and reverse-aging Benjamin (Brad Pitt), who is revealed to be Caroline’s father. As the film unfolds, we learn that Benjamin was abandoned by his own father shortly after his birth. Years later, Benjamin and his father reconnect — the latter is terminally ill and seeks solace and forgiveness from the son he abandoned.

In speaking about the film, Fincher has discussed the many ways that his relationship with his father informed his process. He sees his father in Benjamin’s stoicism and his lack of critical judgment towards others. He’s also spoken about the scenes between Daisy and Caroline, the experience of watching a parent die, and his own grief from his father’s passing.

Any film made about Herman J. Mankiewicz would surely put an emphasis on the importance of a screenwriter, but considering Mank is a film penned by the director’s late father, it’s worth noting the precedent for Fincher making a film that’s informed by his relationship with his father.

Fincher’s follow-up to Benjamin Button came two years later with The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin-scripted chronicle of the rise of Facebook and its co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). The film filters most of the story through a series of depositions that unpack the contentious claims from various parties regarding the collaborative process of starting the website. To boil it down to somewhat simplistic but not incorrect terms: it’s all about spite.

There’s spite towards ex-girlfriends, ex-friends, ex-business partners, jocks who need to be taken down a peg, investors who need to be taken down several, and a hell of a lot of people in between. That’s the thread that runs through the film, the thing upon which a legacy has been built, and it’s the driving force for a good handful of characters.

It’s also a recurring element in Mank. Mankiewicz, Hearst, and Orson Welles (Tom Burke) all operate on certain levels of pettiness. This can manifest in different ways; throwing weight behind political campaigns, penning screenplays, claiming credit, but it all comes from a similar place. Some of these examples are presented in the film as being far more justified than others, but even with justifications, the film never suggests that taking the high road is a required quality of a hero.

Mank is, of course, not just about spite. It’s about peeling back the glamor of Old Hollywood and laying some truths bare. It’s about the creative process and the very mechanisms of the moviemaking machine. It’s about legacies, those that people create for others and the ones they create for themselves. It’s about celebrating and putting emphasis on the often-underappreciated role of a screenwriter — or, rather, screenwriters. It might seem like a strange choice of film for David Fincher, but unpacking the last three decades’ worth of the director’s collaborations and various projects tells a different story. And isn’t it time for a different story?

See for yourself when Mank hits Netflix on December 4th.

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