Robert Capa, The Action Film?

 

HOLLYWOOD, CA (October 5, 2009) – American film director Michael Mann, known to many for his role as executive producer for the television series "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story," is reportedly teaming with Columbia Pictures to make a movie of Susana Fortes' novel "Waiting For Robert Capa."

According to Variety, Mann will work with screenwriter Jez Butterworth to adapt the book, written in Spanish, for the silver screen, and Mann will produce and direct the film.

The tale begins in Paris in 1935, according to Variety, and will be a "snapshot of a torrid two-year romance with Gerda Taro during the Spanish Civil War." According to Fortes' novel, Taro and Capa, both refugees fleeing the Nazis, had the shared intention when they met of becoming photographers and that the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War a year later gave them their big opportunity.

In the promotion for Fortes' book, the photographers are described as "young, antifascist, good looking, and nonconformist ... they created their own legend, and remained faithful to it until the last consequences."

For a story that dates back to the mid-1930s, Capa's been a hot topic in the past few months in the journalism world as the debate continues over whether his iconic image "The Falling Soldier" was really a picture capturing the moment of death of a Spanish soldier or a fake. Photography researchers have also disagreed over where the picture was taken, spending a nearly unimaginable amount of time and energy bickering over the exact location. The reining concensus now is that the photograph was "real" in the result, that a soldier was shot by a sniper and killed in front of his camera, but that the soldiers may in fact have been staging scenes for Capa and Taro, who were also shooting newsreel film with a motion picture camera in addition to their still photography.

But no one denies that "The Falling Soldier" was an image that launched into fame and mystique the swashbuckling self-invented Capa, a name the photographer picked for himself to replace his real Hungarian moniker, Andre Friedmann.

Capa himself worked in Hollywood later in his career, and dated actress Ingrid Bergman. Their love affair started at the Ritz Hotel in Paris a month after VE-Day, and she convinced Capa to come to Hollywood to shoot the stills for the movie "Notorious." They were an item for two years until Capa had a "run in" with the Bergman's husband, Petter Lindstrom, during a ski vacation. Later, in New York, the actress and photographer decided to go their separate ways.

Filmmaker Mann, who recently directed "Ali' and produced "Hancock" with actor Will Smith, and directed Johnny Depp in "Public Enemies," has reportedly been waiting some time to make a movie about Capa, and plans for the film to be a "low budget" and "gritty" feature, according to Hollywood's trade paper.

 

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