Film director, born in Budapest, Hungary. He was a stage actor from 1906, then became a film actor and director in 1912. By the time he moved to Hollywood (1926), he had directed some 60 films in Europe. Working in every film genre he made some 125 Hollywood films, winning an Oscar for Casablanca (1942). Known for his fractured English and regarded as a production-line director, he later gained from re-appraisals of his best work.
| Michael Curtiz | |
|---|---|
| Born |
24 December 1886 Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) |
| Died |
10 April 1962 Hollywood, California, USA |
Michael Curtiz (December 24, 1886 - April 10, 1962) was a Hungarian-American film director. He directed at least 50 films in Europe and a further hundred in the US, among the best-known being The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy and White Christmas.
Life
Early life
Curtiz was born Manó Kertész Kaminer to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary).
Details of his early experience as a director are sparse, and it is not clear what part he may have played in the direction of several early films, but he is known to have directed at least one film in Hungary before spending six months in 1913 at the Nordisk studio in Denmark honing his craft.
Curtiz left Hungary when the film industry was nationalised in 1919, and soon settled in Vienna. He made at least 21 films for Sascha Films, among them the Biblical epics Sodom und Gomorrha (1922) and Die Sklavenkönigin (1924). The latter, released in the US as Moon of Israel, caught the attention of Jack Warner, who hired Curtiz for his own studio with the intention of having him direct a similar film for Warner Bros.
Career in the US
Curtiz arrived in the United States in 1926 (according to some sources on the fourth of July, but according to others in June); During the 30s, Curtiz was often credited on four films in a single year, although he was not always the sole director on these projects. In the pre-Code period Curtiz directed such films as Mystery of the Wax Museum (shot in two-strip Technicolor) and The Kennel Murder Case with William Powell as Philo Vance.
In the mid-30s, he began the highly successful cycle of adventure films starring Errol Flynn that included Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Santa Fe Trail (1940).
By the early 1940s Curtiz had become fairly wealthy, earning $3,600 per week and owning a substantial estate, complete with polo pitch. Wallis' wife, the actress Louise Fazenda, and Curtiz's third wife, Bess Meredyth, an actress and screenwriter, had been close since before Curtiz's marriage to Meredyth in 1929. Curtiz was frequently unfaithful, and had numerous sexual relationships with extras on set; Meredyth once left him for a short time, but they remained married until 1961, shortly before Curtiz's death. She was Curtiz's helper whenever his need to deal with scripts or other elements went beyond his grasp of English, and he often phoned her for advice when presented with a problem while filming.
Prime examples of his work in the 1940s are The Sea Wolf (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945).
While Curtiz himself had escape Europe before the rise of Nazism, other members of his family were not so lucky. Curtiz paid part of his own salary into the European Film Fund, a benevolent association which helped European refugees in the film business establish themselves in the US.
In the late 1940s, he made a new agreement with Warners under which the studio and his own production company were to share the costs and profits of his subsequent films. These films did poorly, however, whether as part of the general decline in the film industry in this period or because Curtiz, "had no skills in shaping the entirety of a picture". After his relationship with Warners broke down, Curtiz continued to direct on a freelance basis from 1954 onwards.
Curtiz was always extremely active: he worked very long days, took part in several sports in his spare time, and was often found to sleep under a cold shower.
Curtiz had a lifelong struggle with the English language and there are many anecdotes about his failures. David Niven liked Curtiz's phrase "bring on the empty horses" (for "bring on the horses without riders") so much that he used it for the title of his autobiography.
Criticism
Curtiz's work has received relatively little attention from film critics: his phenomenal productivity and the variety of his output seem to make him the antithesis of the auteur theory. However these characteristics were typical of the studio system within which Curtiz worked rather than being unique to him; Curtiz can be seen as the ultimate studio director, who excelled at direction on set but was out of his depth when he tried to take greater control of a picture, as with his work from the late 40s onwards.
Sidney Rosenzweig argues that Curtiz did have his own distinctive style, which was in place by the time of his move to America: "high crane shots to establish a story's environment; While Rosenzweig accepts that almost every film involves such moral dilemmas to some extent, it is Curtiz's directorial decisions which place the element center stage in his films, albeit at an emotional rather than an intellectual level.
Awards
Curtiz received four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director: before Casablanca won in 1944, he was nominated for Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1943, and for Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters in 1939.
Select Hollywood filmography
Goodbye Again (1933) Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) The Kennel Murder Case (1933) The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) Dodge City (1939) The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) Santa Fe Trail (1940) Virginia City (1940) The Sea Hawk (1940) Casablanca (1942) Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) Mildred Pierce (1945) Night and Day (1946) (starring Cary Grant as Cole Porter) The Breaking Point (1950) White Christmas (1954) (starring Bing Crosby) King Creole (1958) (starring Elvis Presley) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960) The Comancheros (1961)|
Preceded by: William Wyler for Mrs. Miniver |
Academy Award for Best Director 1943 for Casablanca |
Succeeded by: Leo McCarey for Going My Way |
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