Director Michael Mann won’t going back to the crime genre well for his next film, but it will be something of a biopic, similar to this year’s earlier effort, Public Enemies. Mann will direct an adaptation by Jez Butterworth of the novel “Waiting for Robert Capa,” written by Susana Fortes. The film is about renown war photographer Robert Capa and his romance with fellow photographer Gerda Taro during the Spanish Civil War.
“Variety” offers this description:
The story begins in Paris in 1935, where Capa, a refugee from fascist Hungary, met Taro, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War a year later began Capa’s emergence as the most renowned war photographer ever and established Taro as the first frontline female battle photographer. She was killed in the Battle of Brunete in 1937.
Mann’s latest opus seemed to let a lot of people down, even after we held a “Michael Mann Week” at The Film Nest. Mann has done historical romances before, in the form of The Last of the Mohicans, but this will give him an entirely different backdrop. You have to imagine he’ll be bringing along his digital cameras again and wonder how they’ll make the mid-1930s appear. I’m honestly not familiar with Capa, but at this point if he’s a good enough subject for Mann, he’s a good enough subject for me. Any Capa-philes care to weigh on on the film prospects?
