 Starring: John Wayne, Stuart Whitman, Ina Balin, Nehemiah Persoff, Lee Marvin
Director: Michael Curtiz
Year Of Release: 1962
Plot: Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as the Comancheros. |
When you see lists of great directors from the Golden Age of Hollywood, you’ll often see the likes of John Huston, John Ford, Cecil B. Demille, Howards Hawks, Billy Wilder and Elia Kazan, but one who often gets missed off the roll call is Michael Curtiz. To most people, he’s just known as the guy who directed Casablanca, but the fact is he was a brilliant director with an incredible visual style, who was behind quite a lot of classic films.
Although he had a bit of reputation for being irascible, it just goes to show what high esteem Curtiz was held in that he was allowed to direct The Comancheros even though everyone involved knew he was seriously ill (while his doctor had known he was dying of cancer for years, Curtiz himself only found out just before filming began on the John Wayne flick). Indeed, he became so sick during the production that much of the movie was actually helmed by John Wayne, who had to step in for Curtiz on the days he was too ill to work. However at the end of production, Wayne insisted the studio didn’t give him a co-director credit, knowing it would be Curtiz’s last film.
Born in Hungary in 1886 as Manó Kertész Kaminer (or at least it's believed that's when he was born, as he was well known for lying about his age), Curtiz started acting and directing films in his native country in 1912, making an endless string of silent one-reelers. However during the brief Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, the film industry was nationalised and Curtiz decided to leave the country, both because of what was happening to movies under the new regime and also because he felt his Jewish background would make it difficult for him to find work under the new system (he later said one of the things that made him so good at directing American films, was that he knew firsthand what it was like to see people who didn’t have the freedom those in the US take for granted, and so his films were never blasé about it).
Curtiz first moved to Vienna, making numerous movies there, one of which caught the eye of Hollywood mogul Jack Warner, who lured him to America in 1926. This made him one of the few Jewish émigré directors working in Hollywood during the Golden Age who arrived before the Nazis took power. Despite this, when Nazism did rear its head, he was incredibly active in helping European refugees, especially those who had been employed in the arts in their native countries but had to escape oppression, as well as raising awareness of what was happening to the Jews in Europe (Curtiz lost numerous family members in the Holocaust).
Once he arrived in the US, he adopted the anglicised name, Michael Curtiz, and started working for Warner Bros. He quickly became one of their most prolific and well respected directors, seen as one of the few people the studio felt they could trust with virtually any film in any genre (and during his career there was pretty much no type of film he didn’t touch). He often made four films a year, which even in the 20s and 30s was a huge amount.
However it wasn’t until the mid-30s that he really broke into the top rank of directors, largely thanks to his collaborations with Errol Flynn, who he helped turn in one of the world’s biggest stars. Curtiz helmed Flynn’s first major starring role, Captain Blood, and then solidified the Aussie actor’s swashbuckling image with the likes of The Adventures Of Robin Hood, The Private Lives Of Elizabeth & Essex and The Sea Hawk. Altogether they made 12 films together, including all of Flynn’s most famous roles.
However he certainly worked with more than just Errol Flynn. For example he made eight movies with Humphrey Bogart, and was one of the few helmers that Bogey pre-approved in his contract with Warner Bros as being allowed to make any film the screen legend was going to star in.
In all, Curtiz directed 10 people in Oscar nominated performances, which is perhaps a little surprising, as he had a bit of reputation for not caring about actors. There are stories of stars stopping in the middle of scenes, because they realised Curtiz wasn’t paying any attention to what they were doing, as he was too concerned with the camera or the dolly, or something technical. However others give him a bit more credit, saying he gave actors direction if needed, but largely trusted them to do their job, while he concentrated on the best way to capture what they were doing and tell the story.
His sets were well known for being difficult to work on, because he was a perfectionist and quick to anger, however his expertise kept people coming back time and time again.
1942 was probably his greatest year, when he made both Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy, the former winning numerous Oscars (including one for Curtiz as Best Director) and becoming one of cinema’s greatest classics, while the latter won James Cagney the Best Actor Academy Award. In fact it just shows how diverse Curtiz was, as a few years before he’d help solidify Cagney’s gangster image with Angels With Dirty Faces, but then directed him to an Oscar win in a musical (believe it or not, but despite his tough guy image Cagney started out in vaudeville, and was a true song and dance man).
Curtiz’s career also included such great films as the film noir/melodrama Mildred Pierce, the Cary Grant romance Night and Day and the classic White Christmas. He was an unabashedly commercial director and made over 100 movies in Hollywood, but despite the number of classics he made, he still often gets missed off lists of the great directors of the Golden Age, which is a real shame.
His reputation may have dwindled because his films fell out of favour towards the end of his career and started losing money, meaning he was even being forgotten while he was still alive. It may also be because he wasn't a particularly showy director, and while he had a definite visual style, it was more to do with capturing the action and telling the story the best way, rather than making the audience aware there was a man behind the camera calling the shots.
Michael Curtiz may have annoyed actors by concentrating on the filmmaking craft rather than them (where he didn’t mind if a character behaved illogically as long as it helped the pace of the film), but even they had to admit he had an incredible way with the camera. Curtiz died of cancer in 1962, leaving behind a great body of work. The Comancheros may not be his finest film, but it marks the end of the careers of one of Hollywood’s greatest.
TIM ISAAC
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