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Man's Fate (film)

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Wikipedia article




'Man's Fate' was an abandoned 1969 film adaptation of the novel 'Man's Fate' by Andre Malraux to have been directed by Fred Zinnemann and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

Pre-production



Following the critical and commercial success of his 1966 film 'A Man for All Seasons', which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and earned Zinnemann the Best Director Oscar, the filmmaker announced plans to create a film version of Andr Malraux's 'Man's Fate' ('La Condition Humaine'), a 1933 novel about the failed 1927 Communist revolution that took place in Shanghai, China, and the existential quandaries facing a group of people whose lives were changed by the event.[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/books/review/10HITCHEN.html "'Malraux': One Man's Fate," New York Times, April 10, 2005]

"I had an enormous, enormous need to do 'Man's Fate' because that book was a bible to us in my generation," said Zinnemann in a late-life interview. "It was one of the great novels of the '30s and '40s and to be asked to make a film of it was one of the greatest events of my life."[https://books.google.com/books?id=8L1NQtj-XZAC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=%22man's+fate%22+%22fred+zinnemann%22&source=bl&ots=wQK_Dc1r9p&sig=fvXiWZqRmunqPBsJqaIftwoSGak&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA31,M1 Fred Zinnemann by Fred Zinnemann, Gabriel Miller, Google Books]

MGM agreed to produce the film. Zinnemann began his career as a feature film director at that studio with the thriller 'The Seventh Cross' (1944).Zinnemann, Fred. A Life in the Movies: An Autobiography. Macmillan, 1992.

The screenplay for the film adaptation was created by the Chinese-born novelist Han Suyin, best known for her 1952 book 'A Many-Splendoured Thing'. Zinnemann scouted out locations in Malaysia and Singapore, with interior scenes to be shot at the MGM studios in London, where sets and costumes were created. David Niven, Peter Finch and Liv Ullmann were signed as the stars of the film.

Cancellation



The pre-production process for 'Man's Fate' stretched three years before it reached the production stage. During this period, MGM began to experience severe financial problems. James T. Aubrey, a former production chief for the CBS television network, was hired in 1969 as the studio's new president. One of his earliest decisions was to cancel all planned films that did not show signs of commercial viability. Zinnemanns $US 3 million version of 'Man's Fate' was one of 12 films that Aubrey halted.[https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/58595020.html?dids=58595020:58595020&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Apr+27%2C+1986&author=PAUL+ROSENFIELD&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&desc=Aubrey+A+Lion+in+Winter&pqatl=google Aubrey A Lion in Winter, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1986 (fee access required)][https://web.archive.org/web/20100905022631/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876581-3,00.html Hollywood: Will There Ever Be a 21st Century-Fox?, Time Magazine, February 9, 1970] The production of 'Man's Fate' was canceled one week before filming was to begin.[http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/film/film-571436-details/Act+Of+Violence/filmReview.do?reviewId=571441 "Classic tale enjoys revival," This is London/Evening Standard, May 12, 2001] (The others included a big screen version of 'Tai-Pan' by James Clavell.[https://www.variety.com/article/VR1117949787 Jill Goldsmith and Nicole Laporte, 'When Harry Met Leo, 'Variety', 10 Sept 2006] accessed 15 April 2012)

Zinnemann would later state that his cast and crew continued working without salaries in the period between the news of the cancellation being made public and the scheduled start of filming on November 24, 1969. "I soon found that no one in the unit wanted to stop rehearsing, salary or no salary," he later recalled. "We worked for three more days until the script was fully rehearsed, scene by scene. Then, after the usual farewell party as if on the set of a real picture, everybody went home."

Aftermath



Zinnemann later sued MGM for damages relating to the cancellation, with the case being settled in his favour in 1973.

The Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci proposed adapting the film in the 1980s to the Chinese government; they preferred his alternative proposal, 'The Last Emperor', a 1987 biopic based around the life of the Chinese Emperor Puyi.

In 2001, U.S. filmmaker Michael Cimino announced he would write and direct a film version of 'Man's Fate',[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/dec/06/artsfeatures War Stories, The Guardian, December 6, 2001] with Daniel Day-Lewis, John Malkovich, Uma Thurman and Johnny Depp in the lead roles. The project fell through for lack of funding; Cimino, who died in 2016, never made another feature film.

References



Category:Cancelled films

Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films

Category:Unreleased American films

Category:Films directed by Fred Zinnemann

Category:1970s unfinished films

Category:Films shot at MGM-British Studios

Category:1970s English-language films

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