The European Influence

My first column of this year was on the subject of the Hungarian born director Michael Curtiz, a man who is still best known for directing one of the glories of Hollywood’s golden age, “Casablanca”. 

Curtiz’s granddaughter Michelanne Forster recently spoke on campus about her famous ancestor.  She is currently putting the finishing touches on a long term project, a play about her paternal grandmother that deals directly with Curtiz and his philandering ways.

One of the points the play makes about Curtiz’s career is how substantial his work was in Europe.  Known as the ‘father of Hungarian film’, Curtiz directed the first of his continental movies in 1912.  By the time he arrived in America in 1926 he had made a further 60.  The definitive studio workhorse, he toiled right up until his death in 1962, making 110 Hollywood features of which “Casablanca” was merely one.

Curtiz was definitely the most prolific A list filmmaker of his generation but he is seldom celebrated to the extent that other European immigrants are.  Certainly his reputation in the 1920s was nowhere near that of two figures that contributed immeasurably to the sophistication of Hollywood: Ernst Lubitsch and FW Murnau.

Lubitsch’s way with light comedy, sexual farce and later musicals was thought so distinctive and so far in advance of his peers that the phrase “the Lubitsch touch” was coined to describe it.  Fellow German Murnau arrived in America slightly later but with such a reputation that he was guaranteed complete artistic license to express himself, winning a contract the equal of the one later enjoyed by the young Orson Welles.  The resulting masterpiece, “Sunrise”,  has perhaps never been equalled  aesthetically or as powerful love story.

Lubitsch and Murnau both died before their time.  The latter’s death became the subject of a bit of Kenneth Anger muck raking, with claims in the infamous book “Hollywood Babylon” that FW lost control of his automobile whilst being orally serviced by his chauffeur.  Lubitsch’s expiry also involved a degree of notoriety: his heart gave out after an an ill-advised, against-doctors-orders bout with a prostitute.

The rise of Hitler saw many artistic refugees from fascism find refuge - temporary or otherwise - in the movie making capital of the world.  Some of them could even control their libidos.  However, while truly great directors such as Germany’s Fritz Lang and France’s Jean Renoir made interesting, sometimes even superb films, studio politics and cultural differences meant they could never hope to replicate their home country successes.

The two Europeans who adapted best developed careers that shaped Hollywood and set standards for what could be achieved in terms of personal expression within the studio system.  Alfred Hitchcock shifted stateside just before the war broke out and after an uneasy association with uber producer David O Selznick managed to marry the wit and style of his British thrillers with Hollywood production values and become the ‘master of suspense’.  Billy Wilder followed up a screenwriting apprenticeship in the 1930s with an acerbic body of work that drew on and surpassed that of his idol Lubitsch, making farces, film noirs, dramas and even war movies like no one else before or since.