Who is Michael Curtiss? You may not remember exactly, but you must have heard of his famous work Casablanca. Over the course of six decades of his film career, he has created more than 170 works, covering almost all genres. From filming silent films in Europe, to early sound films, to the Golden Age of Hollywood, Curtis' film career spans an important film history of the last century.
If someone asks you: Who is the most successful director of all time? You probably think of Spielberg, George Lucas or James Cameron, but if you only use box office numbers as a criterion, the title should go to michael Curtiss, the director who has directed many classics such as Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Silver Christmas.
Critics have mixed reviews of Michael Curtis. On the one hand, he had an undisputed influence, and his masterpieces were wildly popular and influential from the beginning, and continue to be popular for the next hundred years. On the other hand, his work has long been recognized by academics, especially those who espouse the theory of film authorship.
Casablanca
Curtis has the ability to control various film genres, but the lack of consistent ideological themes and original settings in the work, coupled with his insistence on making films under the Hollywood studio system, has earned him the reputation of "master of skills" and "master craftsman", but Curtis is not regarded as a real artist like Truffaut or Bergman.
Curtiz's only immortal masterpiece can only be "Casa Plaka", which has the most joyful coincidence and is the most prominent negative example of the film's authorship. (Andrew Sarris, excerpt from the Chapter of the American Film Review Casablanca)
Andrew Sarris original English words, background "Casablanca"
However, throughout Curtis's 60-year career, we can see that it was his innate talent for storytelling, acting and video that helped him complete his faltering career in Turn-of-the-Century Europe.
Through the early sound age and into the golden age of Hollywood, he actively applied the latest technology to improve the storytelling ability of films, and his film style evolved with the times, sometimes even influencing the overall style of Hollywood in the first half of the twentieth century.
Born at the end of the 19th century, Kotiz witnessed the birth of cinema when he was a child when the early films of the Lumière brothers were screened in his native Hungary.
After graduating from the Royal Academy of Arts in Budapest, he turned to the production of Hungary's earliest films, and soon after he traveled around Europe, working for small film companies that were new on the continent, honing his directing skills and taking on more and more film projects.
Sodom and Gomorrah (1922)
Finally, he directed the largest production in Europe during the silent film era, directing thousands of extras, as well as a large number of assistant directors, makeup artists, cinematographers and technicians, and his huge production attracted the attention of Hollywood, especially Warner Bros. Pictures. There, he spent most of his career and created some of Hollywood's finest pieces.
In 1926, at the age of 39, Curtis moved to the United States and began working for Warner, which was still a small studio. Among his early American films, the two most brilliant works were "Dr. X" and "The Mysterious Wax Museum".
"Dr. X"
These two early horror films use two revolutionary cinematic techniques from the early 1930s, acoustic technology and beautiful two-tone printing and dyeing. Curtis used these new technologies to create two of the most memorable horror films of the pre-Code period. The film's gruesome ideas and themes could only have existed before the Hayes Code, such as substance abuse, sex, cannibalism, the Holocaust, and other elements.
As with many early sound films, filmmakers have not yet fully introduced non-plot elements such as background music and sound effects, which means that these early sound films, while including dialogue, still have to use picture as the main way of expression.
Mystery Wax Museum
Curtis's incorporation of nascent vocal dialogues into his almost expressionist personal style, which he had developed since the silent era, resulted in two of the best horror films of the early 30s, a combination of European art theatre technology and modern Hollywood style that permeated Curtis's entire career.
In 1933, Curtis directed the prisoner escape film Twenty Thousand Years of Star Prison, which was fairly simple, but it was the first repetitive theme in Curtis's films, namely the rehabilitation of criminals and morally corrupt people into good people, which is a common theme in classic films, such as "The Newswoman", "Casablanca", "The Hero of the First World" and Curtis's last film, "The Western Mafia".
20,000 Years of Star Prison
In 1935, Curtiss welcomed his first blockbuster film, the Rogue Adventure Film Captain Blood. Curtis's masterful cinematography skills, genius storytelling skills, and ability to inspire actors to their fullest strength make him the perfect candidate to direct a large-scale adventure film.
The success of Captain Blood led to a boom in rogue adventure films, not only did Curtiss and the actor Errol Flynn prosper, but the entire film industry also prospered.
Captain Blood
The 1940s were probably Curtis's most artistic decade, during which time films with his most prominent personal style were born.
The 1941 Seawolf Commando was a condemnation of fascist ideas that devastated the whole of Europe and devastated Kottez's hometown and family, and reflected the standout feature of Curtis's work at that time, namely a strong pro-American propaganda and the protagonist of the story of the victims and rebels of fascism.
Seawolf Commando is probably Curtis's second best film, but it's only eclipsed by his career laurels, Casablanca.
In my opinion, it is the best work under the Hollywood studio system, and it is also a masterpiece of classic Hollywood style, casablanca's achievements come from many aspects, the wonderful script of the Epstein brothers, the screen interpretation of Bogart and Bowman, the excellent soundtrack and photography, but in the end it is thanks to the directing of Michael Curtis, it is his superb overall scheduling that has produced one of the greatest films in the history of cinema.
Although Casablanca has become the pinnacle of Curtis's film career, he did not stop creating masterpieces, and in the same year he also directed the American theme classic film "Victory Song".
In 1945, he directed the film noir on mother-daughter ethics, The Devil of the Sea, a return to film by Joan Crawford that deeply dissected American class and self-worth.
"Desire for the Sea Demon"
In 1947, Curtis left Warner Bros. to start his own film company, starting with the film The Suspect, a brilliant film noir that returned to his expressionist roots.
Unfortunately, the decision to leave Warner led to a decline in his film production, bearing in mind that in the 50s he made an average of two films a year, and although not as prolific as in the past, Curtis was still able to bring great works such as "Lone Sail", "Silver Christmas", "Hero Nature" and so on.
Curtis died during the filming of his last film, The Western Mafia, and although it was only a mediocre Western, we can still see the unique creativity and talent of the director who created the best work in film history.
The Western Mafia
With a career spanning more than 60 years, producing more than 170 films and dabbling in almost every genre, Curtis is still debatable whether he can be called an "author director," but there's no doubt he's a genius.
Michael Curtiss has a lot of work, this article can only be regarded as a kind of introduction, if you want to know more, please pay attention to us, we will continue to read in depth.