Man's Fate (unfinished film)
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''Man's Fate'' was an abandoned 1969 film adaptation of the novel ''
Man's Fate ''Man's Fate'' (French: ''La Condition humaine'', "The Human Condition") is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux about the failed communist insurrection in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associa ...
'' 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 The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category ...
and earned Zinnemann the Best Director Oscar, the filmmaker announced plans to create a film version of André Malraux's ''
Man's Fate ''Man's Fate'' (French: ''La Condition humaine'', "The Human Condition") is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux about the failed communist insurrection in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associa ...
'' (''La Condition Humaine''), a 1933 novel about the failed 1927
Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
revolution that took place in Shanghai, China, and the existential quandaries facing a group of people whose lives were changed by the event. "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." MGM agreed to produce the film. Zinnemann began his career as a feature film director at that studio with the thriller ''
The Seventh Cross ''The Seventh Cross'' (german: Das siebte Kreuz) is a novel by Anna Seghers, one of the better-known examples of German literature circa World War II. It was first published in Mexico by ''El Libro Libre'' In 1942. The English translation came o ...
'' (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 Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch (28 September 191614 January 1977) was an English-Australian actor of theatre, film and radio. Born in London, he emigrated to Australia as a teenager and was raised in Sydney, where he worked in vaudeville ...
and
Liv Ullmann Liv Johanne Ullmann (born 16 December 1938) is a Norwegian actress and film director. Recognised as one of the greatest European actresses of all time, Ullmann is known as the muse and frequent partner of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. She acted in m ...
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 James Thomas Aubrey Jr. (December 14, 1918 – September 3, 1994) was an American television and film executive. As president of the CBS television network from 1959 to 1965, with his "smell for the blue-collar," he produced some of televi ...
, 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. Zinnemann's $US 3 million version of ''Man's Fate'' was one of 12 films that Aubrey halted. The production of ''Man's Fate'' was canceled one week before filming was to begin. (The others included a big screen version of ''
Tai-Pan A tai-pan (,Andrew J. Moody, "Transmission Languages and Source Languages of Chinese Borrowings in English", ''American Speech'', Vol. 71, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 414-415. literally "top class"汉英词典 — ''A Chinese-English Dictionary' ...
'' by
James Clavell James Clavell (born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell; 10 October 1921 – 7 September 1994) was an Australian-born British (later naturalized American) writer, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war. Clavell is best ...
.) 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 ''Huangdi'' (), translated into English as Emperor, was the superlative title held by monarchs of China who ruled various imperial regimes in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was considered the Son of Heaven ...
Puyi. In 2001, U.S. filmmaker Michael Cimino announced he would write and direct a film version of ''Man's Fate'',“War Stories, The Guardian, December 6, 2001
/ref> with Daniel Day-Lewis, John Malkovich, Uma Thurman and
Johnny Depp John Christopher Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor and musician. He is the recipient of multiple accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Award ...
in the lead roles. The project fell through for lack of funding; Cimino, who died in 2016, never made another feature film.


References

{{Fred Zinnemann Cancelled films Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films Unreleased American films Films directed by Fred Zinnemann 1970s unfinished films Films shot at MGM-British Studios 1970s English-language films