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Hollywoodland.

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Hollywoodland

Produced by Glenn Williamson; directed by Allen Coulter; screenplay by Paul Bernbaum; cinematography by Jonathan Freeman; production design by Leslie McDonald; costumes by Julie Weiss; edited by Michael Berenbaum; original music by Marcel Zarvos; starring Ben Affleck, Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Lois Smith, Robin Tunny, and Joe Spano. Color, 126 mins. A Focus Features release.

A dead body, a private detective, a squadron of corrupt coppers, a phalanx of lunkheaded hoodlums, and, check and double check, a slinky femme fatale--the familiar cut-out pieces of a puzzle strewn along palm-lined streets decorated with vintage American-made automobiles. Settle in and sniff the aphrodisiacal air and secondhand smoke and mirrors of retro-noir, a genre that makes up in convoluted self-reflexivity what it lacks in monochromatic chiaroscuro. Rest assured, though, that behind all the chalk outlines and devious machinations is an ingenious villain, part crime lord, part civic official, wiring the characters like marionettes and knitting together the conspiratorial threads like a quilt, someone of untold power and utter ruthlessness, someone whose very name sends a shiver of fear down the spine of even our antihero of the mean streets, someone like--Eddie Mannix.

Eddie Mannix? Vice president and general manager of MGM from 1926 to 1956, Edgar I. Mannix has not heretofore ascended to notoriety as a byword for grand larceny or contract hits, at least of the kind committed off the soundstage. As studio overseer and hands-on enforcer for Leo the Lion when the beast still had fangs, Mannix was less well known among civilians than the legendary Louis B. Mayer or Irving Thalberg, but (by all accounts) the gruff, former bouncer (he broke into the business when the Schenck brothers tagged him for a job working security at the ticket gate of their amusement park in Palisades, New Jersey) was considered a stand-up guy within the studio system ranks, earning the respect of the industry unions who regarded him as one of the few executives who could be trusted to give the below-the-line minions a fair shake. In an affectionate obituary upon Mannix's death in 1963, Variety told a story about Clark Gable, recently returned from WWII, who never bothered...