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Description
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.
About the Author
R. Barton Palmer is Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, and author or editor of many books, including Hollywood's Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America and After Hitchcock: Influence, Imitation, and Intertextuality..
Murray Pomerance is Professor of Sociology at Ryerson University. He is the author or editor of many books, including The Man Who Knew Too Much, Moment of Action: Riddles of Cinematic Performance, and The Eyes Have It: Cinema and the Reality Effect. He is also the editor or coeditor of several book series in film studies.
Praise For…
2018 brings an aptly titled essay collection, The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz. . . Perhaps pointedly, none of the essayists focus on Casablanca (1942). Instead, The Many Cinemas examine genres Curtiz worked in, his handling of political messages and his relations with actors.
— Shepherd Express
The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz goes a long way to explaining and clarifying how and why the uncanny medium of cinema makes it a fair claim that filmmakers such as Michael Curtiz were actually painters with light and sound. It’s just that their paintings spoke and moved like living things, because that’s what they were: darkly shining reflections from behind the mirror.
— Critics at Large
The twenty essays here amply demonstrate how rich and productive readings of a director's work can be when due attention is paid to easing out the complex webs of collaboration, studio/commercial pressures, external factors (such as censorship), and cultural discourse that contribute to the shaping of film content and reception.
— Western Historical Quarterly