I finally purchased Casablanca a while back. (I know, I know. It’s one of my favorite movies; it was about time I owned it!) Included in the special features was a documentary by Gary Leva titled “Michael Curtiz: The Greatest Director You Never Heard Of.”
Despite having grown up watching Casablanca and White Christmas, the title of the documentary was true: I had never heard of Michael Curtiz. I had technically seen his name in the opening credits, but I never paid much attention to it. After seeing this documentary, part of me wanted to go actively searching for his films, but I decided it would be more fun to just see how many movies his name popped up in without my looking for him. Now it seems as though his name is everywhere!
Curtiz was born in Budapest in 1886, and was already a successful director in his own right when Harry Warner signed him to come to America in 1926. Curtiz went on to direct some of the greatest films of all time, including Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Here are some of my personal favorite Michael Curtiz films!
Casablanca (1942)
Curtiz had an extraordinary eye, and his techniques, such as the use of shadows and dolly shots, have been imitated by countless directors. But Curtiz also had a secret weapon: His wife, Bess Meredyth, was a writer, and Curtiz looked to her often for suggestions regarding the scripts. “Paul Henreid talked about Curtiz coming on the set and going through a scene, and he goes, ‘wait a minute, I forgot what Bessie told me last night,’” film preservationist Alan K. Rode explains in Leva’s documentary.
Aljean Harmetz also writes about Meredyth’s contributions in her book Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca—Bogart, Bergman, and World War II. Francis Scheid, who worked in the sound department, remembered that “‘Bogart would say ‘why do I do it this way?’ And Mike would walk away and call Bess.’”
Screenwriter Julius Epstein said “‘When we had a story conference and Mike came in the next day and made criticisms or suggestions, we knew they were Bess Meredyth’s ideas and not his. So it was easy to trip him up. We’d make a change and say, ‘what do you think, Mike?’ and he’d have to go back to Bess.’”
Romance on the High Seas (1948)
Doris Day was singing in a band and had no ambitions to be an actress when Curtiz discovered her. When he gave Day her screen test, she burst into tears in the middle of it.
“Curtiz loved that,” author Kati Marton says in Leva’s documentary. “It was so unpolished; it was so authentic. And he told her ‘please, don’t take acting lessons. Just stay as you are. You’re a great talent, you’re going to have a great future.’”
He directed her first two pictures, Romance on the High Seas and My Dream is Yours. In the former, Day’s costar was Jack Carson, who also appeared in Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce in 1945. Joan Crawford won an Academy Award for Mildred Pierce, but was so nervous that she feigned illness and asked Curtiz to accept the Oscar in her place.
Although he didn’t direct it, Curtiz made a cameo (as did Joan Crawford and another big player in several of Curtiz's films, whom I won't name for spoiler reasons) in another Doris Day/Jack Carson film, It’s a Great Feeling, in 1949.
White Christmas (1954)
The special feature “Backstage Stories from White Christmas”* from the Diamond Anniversary DVD, also includes some nods to Curtiz’s specific influences on the film.
“Even though [the opening scene] is done on a soundstage, if you look at the way Dean Jagger’s dressed, at the rumpledness of the uniform, he’s been through the battle,” explains film critic F.X. Feeney. “All those guys are wearing such heavily worn uniforms, and when they’re bowing their heads to hear White Christmas, they’ve got such roughed up faces. Those guys look like they’ve been in combat. That is an effect that Curtiz must have labored over in preparation. You can just see it, ‘cause you believe you’re looking at guys from a war.”
“I’ll give you just one exquisite Curtiz touch,” continues Dr. Drew Casper, a USC professor. “The four [cast members] are sitting in this table on the train [during the Snow number], and there’s a poster about snow in Vermont. And Curtiz, with his framing, could take the four people and the poster, and then dollying back, on the rhythm of the song, come to a stop. But then [when the camera stops, you see] the hands of a bartender, who is shaking a cocktail, and he pours out of the cocktail this white foam… to connect with the whole idea of snow.”
“There’s a moment when Danny Kaye throws a napkin over, I think the salt shakers, and he puts little sprigs, and we actually close in on the mountain, and then we move away from it, and we’re at a completely different angle,” Feeney adds. “That’s another bit of Curtiz’s visual niceties, ‘cause he needed to be able to start to get the camera moving around that scene. And it was a clever way to make visual the idea of Vermont.”
Michael Curtiz has influenced so many filmmakers today, and his films will be loved by generations to come. These were just a few of his films that I love, but I’d encourage you to explore Curtiz’s movies on your own (or just keep an eye out and see how many films you happen to watch are directed by him)!
*The link provided for this special feature does not have subtitles, but it is subtitled on the 2014 Diamond Anniversary Edition DVD.
Sources:
Harmetz, A. (1992). Round up the usual suspects the making of Casablanca ; Bogart, Bergman, and World War II. Hyperion.
King, T., & Wolcott, S. R. (2009). Backstage Stories from White Christmas. United States of America; Paramount.
Leva, G., & Wilkes, A. (2012). Michael Curtiz: The Greatest Director You Never Heard Of. United States of America; Leva FilmWorks.
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