Director Michael Curtiz was the mastermind behind some of the most iconic films of classical Hollywood-Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Sea Hawk, White Christmas, and Mildred Pierce, to name only a few. The most prolific and consistently successful Hollywood generalist with an all-embracing interest in different forms of narrative and spectacle, Curtiz made around a hundred films in an astonishing range of genres: action, biopics, melodramas/film noir, musicals, and westerns. But his important contributions to the history of American film have been overlooked because his broadly varied oeuvre does not present the unified vision of filmmaking that canonical criticism demands for the category of "auteur."
Exploring his films and artistic practice from a variety of angles, including politics, gender, and genre, The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz sheds new light on this underappreciated cinematic genius. Leading film studies scholars offer fresh appraisals of many of Curtiz's most popular films, while also paying attention to neglected releases of substantial historical interest, such as Noah's Ark , Night and Day, Virginia City, Black Fury, Mystery of the Wax Museum, and Female. Because Curtiz worked for so long and in so many genres, this analysis of his work becomes more than an author study of a notable director. Instead, The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz effectively adds a major chapter to the history of Hollywood's studio era, including its internationalism and the significant contributions of European émigrés.
Acknowledgments
Introduction. The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz (R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance)
1. Bending It Like Curtiz: Gender and Genre in The Scarlet Hour and The Helen Morgan Story (Rebecca Bell-Metereau)
2. Making a Life with Father (David Desser)
3. The Jewish Jazz Singer Remakes His Voice: Michael Curtiz's Update of the Warner Bros. Classic (Seth Friedman)
4. "Don't Fence Me In": The Making of Night and Day (Mark Glancy)
5. Long Love the Queen: Bette Davis, Curtiz, and Female Melodrama (David Greven)
6. Double-Time in America: Yankee Doodle Dandy (Julie Grossman )
7. Mildred Pierce: From Script to Screen (Kristen Hatch)
8. Curtiz at Sea: Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Sea Wolf, and The Breaking Point (Nathan Holmes)
9. Curtiz in the White House (Bill Krohn)
10. The Spectacle of the Ages: Noah's Ark (Katharina Loew )
11. Jazz Me Blues: Lo-Fi, Fantasy, Audiovisuality in Young Man with a Horn (Robert Miklitsch)
12. A Setting Sun: The Egyptian (Deron Overpeck)
13. King Creole: Michael Curtiz and the Great Elvis Presley Industry (Landon Palmer)
14. Michael Curtiz's Political Cinema of Sorts (R. Barton Palmer)
15. Curtiz's New Western Aesthetic (Homer B. Pettey)
16. Michael Curtiz's Gamble for Christmas (Murray Pomerance)
17. Film Performance before and after the Code: Mandalay and Stolen Holiday (Steven Rybin)
18. "A Mass of Contradictions": Michael Curtiz and the Women's Film (Michele Schreiber)
19. Devil-May-Care: Curtiz and Flynn in Hollywood (Constantine Verevis)
20. Uncanny Effigies: Early Sound Cinema and Mystery of the Wax Museum (Colin Williamson)
Michael Curtiz Filmography
Contributors
Index
