Michael Curtiz

Michael Curtiz is today best remembered for directing “Casablanca”, Hollywood’s most celebrated male melodrama.  The film is a magical combination of elements, from the little known, fairly terrible play on which it was based, to a script that was constantly rewritten during production (there was no definite ending until virtually the day on which it was shot), to Max Steiner’s lush, evocative score, to the perfect casting of both charismatic stars (Humphrey Bogart, confirming his status as true leading man after over a decade of low billing; Ingrid Bergman, a Swedish beauty in her first significant American part) and a never bettered group of supporting actors (Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, and Dooley Wilson as Sam).

Curtiz had been directing movies for thirty years when he made “Casablanca” and he would go on doing so for another twenty.  His career total of 173 films makes him the most prolific of the A-list Golden Age directors. 

Hungarian born, Curtiz served his apprenticeship in Europe, directing in Denmark, Germany and Austria as well as his native country.  Head hunted by the most significant of the Warner brothers in 1926 he began his long association with the studio toward the end of the silent era, most infamously on the troubled production “Noah’s Ark”, a biblical epic in which several stunt men lost their lives.

Initially it was assumed that Curtiz’s forte would be the horror genre.  The earliest film of his stocked by Auteur House reflects this.  1933’s “The Mystery of the Wax Museum”, is an atmospheric example of period technicolour that showcases his command of light and shadow and eye for an image.  Curtiz’s expertise eventually proved such that he excelled in the gangster movie, westerns, musicals, and most especially, swashbucklers.

A collaboration with Errol Flynn proved productive for both men.  Curtiz made Flynn a star with the granddaddy of all pirate films, 1935’s “Captain Blood”, and the hard living Australian was then cast in a range of roles from both British and American history, including the definitive swashbuckler, “The Adventures of Robin Hood”.

Curtiz’s other great star from this period was James Cagney.  In “Angels with Dirty Faces” Cagney has his most interesting 1930s part, a gangster who feigns cowardice when going to the chair so as to undermine any potential as a role model.  Curtiz’s brilliant chiaroscuro lighting ensures a fever pitch of melodramatic excess. In “Yankee Doodle Dandy” Cagney won an Oscar playing a completely different role, Broadway legend George M Cohan.  Curtiz proves equally adept at staging song and dance numbers with complex mis en scene.

Amongst Curtiz’s more amusing traits were his faulty command of the English language and his sexual proclivities.  The former led to the famous pronouncement, “bring on the empty horses”, that gave David Niven a title for his book of Hollywood reminiscence.  The latter involved getting a blow job from a script girl every lunchtime, an act of “relaxation” that helped keep the horny Hungarian going for half a century.

17 Michael Curtiz films are available for rental at Auteur House.