Who is it?
That we'll know better when you've opened the door.
Well, who might that be, do you suppose?
Well, who is Michael Curtiz?
Welcome to Sherwood, my lady.
Who is Michael Curtiz?
Get out before I kill you.
Fire!
We'll always have Paris.
Who is Michael Curtiz?
Don't "Your Majesty" me, you slimy toad.
I don't know why Michael Curtiz is not a household name, but he should be.
Serve you right if I knocked your boneheads together.
Curtiz is just possibly the greatest filmmaker ever to work in America.
- Who is this? - He's the greatest director...
...you've never heard of.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
...award for the best achievement in directing.
Michael Curtiz , Casablanca.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you and I'm humbly grateful.
Most of all, I am grateful for the BO-second time limit.
I thank you.
Michael Curtiz made over 160 films.
His films are so good...
...so well made...
...that you forget there's a director.
He was the top director at Warner Bros.
And it wasn't just that he was doing swashbucklers...
...or just Dodge City, the Western, or Virginia City or Santa Fe Trail.
Even a comedy.
Don't worry, Mr. Buckley, I wouldn't consider wasting my time.
I wouldn't have you. If I wanted brains, I'd go out and hire some.
In his golden years, between the '30s and the '50s...
...he did Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk...
...and The Sea Wolf and Young Man with a Horn...
...and, my God, the list is endless.
Why isn't he more known?
He was just too good.
One would think you been doing this all your life.
What makes you think I haven't?
You couldn't imagine the man that made Casablanca...
...also made Yankee Doodle Dandee.
And it's hard to believe the guy that did that did Mildred Pierce.
I don't think there's ever been a filmmaker in the great history of our business...
...that is as eclectic and has such a variety in his body of work as Curtiz.
It's only after you realize that some of your favorite films...
...were directed by the same guy...
...that you begin to think of what a fantastic artist he was.
And I don't know how somebody from Budapest...
...comes into this country and then turns around...
...and has a career like Michael Curtiz.
Michael Curtiz was born Christmas Eve in 1888.
Curtiz came from an Orthodox Jewish family.
Large family, very poor. His father was a bricklayer.
Curtiz's father, a man of modest circumstances.
He'd come to Budapest from the provinces...
...at this moment in time when Budapest presented opportunities...
...and, of course, it was his son who made good on this promise.
He was an actor early in his career...
...and he made films in Hungary, and then later Austria and then Berlin.
But he was directing pretty soon after getting into the business...
...in the teens, before the 1920s.
For Curtiz, really the center of his universe was the Cafe New York in Budapest...
...where you could escape your rather squalid circumstances.
What do you say we have another drink, baby?
And it was the Café New York that was really the inspiration...
...for Rick's Café in Casablanca.
Tonight he'll be at Rick's. Everybody comes to Rick's.
In this café, you could bump into a remarkably colorful gang...
...of talented and promising young people.
For example, Alexander Korda...
...the man who really invented British cinema...
...and great rival of Michael Curtiz to be the bigshot filmmaker in Budapest.
Curtiz made Hungary's first feature film...
...so in Hungary, he kind of invented the industry.
Curtiz worked all over Europe.
In Denmark. In Austria. In Hungary.
So Harry Warner, who was the big man, the big brother of Warner Bros...
...would go to Europe to see what was going on.
And he'd heard about Michael Curtiz.
And they found a print of this film Moon Over Israel.
And as Jack Warner put it in his autobiography:
"We were bowled over in the aisles...
...at the camera angles and the craftsmanship."
And so Harry signed him to come to America.
Michael Curtiz was born Kaminer Mihély.
From Kaminer, he became Kertész, which means gardener in Hungarian.
And then ultimately Kertész became Curtiz...
...when he reinvented himself yet again in Hollywood.
Curtiz had said, "I want you to give me a big buildup and big publicity."
And Harry Warner said, "Sure, sure, sure."
So when the boat pulled in to New York...
...there were all these fireworks and everything going on...
...and Curtiz says, "This is for me?"
And Harry Warner said, "Well, yes, but it's also the fourth of July."
In 1928, Curtiz got to direct the Biblical epic, Noah's Ark.
What Noah's Ark is remembered for...
...is the flooding scene.
He was so eager to make the flood realistic...
...that he loved the idea of all these extras scrambling for air.
According to Dolores Costello, there were certain sets...
...that were made to be flooded that were breakaway sets.
There were other sets that were standing sets...
...that had people and cattle that were not made to be deluged with this water.
Well, Curtiz, according to her, reversed that...
...and flooded these standing sets.
And that whole sequence has been the stuff of Hollywood legend since 1928.
This seemed to really be the kind of signature to Curtiz's method of directing.
He really wanted things to happen in front of camera.
He was one of the first ones that put the camera on wheels...
...inside its blimp, which dampened the sound of the camera...
...and started moving the camera.
Curtiz was a master at the dolly shot, the crane shot...
...but he always moved the camera with a purpose.
Curtiz was an intensely visual man.
It's the killer.
Doctor X was made 'm 1932...
...directed by Curtiz.
It's a horror film.
It has some of the best special-effects makeup I've ever seen.
I used that as inspiration for The Exorcist.
Doctor X as a horror film, in my view, is as good as The Exorcist.
What Curtiz had to work with more than anything...
...was his imagination and his skill...
...his ideas and his abilities as a storyteller.
The Hollywood work ethic appealed to Curtiz...
...because he was such a hard-charging guy.
He hated the idea of lunch, because everybody would leave...
...and then, you know, come back, and it slowed people down.
This is his theory.
You know, "lunch burns."
Compassion and concern...
...for the actors' welfare was not high on his list of priorities.
If somebody got hungry, he would offer them an aspirin...
...because that was his diet.
An aspirin for lunch.
He told me that he was always very proud...
...of the fact that he would finish a picture on a Saturday...
...and Sunday he'd read a new script...
...and Monday he'd come in and be ready to talk about it.
It's the world against us, and us against the world.
Errol Flynn had only done a couple of very small parts here...
...before he was cast in Captain Blood.
Errol Flynn was really Mike's creation...
...because he had seen this fellow and was impressed by him.
He said, "I can remember first time I saw Flynn, he was playing a corpse."
And he said he even had a personality as a corpse.
Your slave is grateful for all marks of favor.
Now, this was a million-dollar picture.
1935, big deal.
You talk about apprehension, here's Errol cast as the lead...
...here's Olivia de Havilland under contract at this time to Warner Bros.
They're putting these two people...
...who meant nothing at the box office, in the leads.
Mike, he was very rough on actors.
He could be very rough.
But he brought something out in them.
Flynn actually improved so much during the filming...
...that when they got toward the end of the picture...
...they actually went back and reshot some of the early footage...
...because Flynn was so much better.
You could learn a lesson in gratitude.
I could thank you for not interfering.
Captain Blood was a huge hit.
It made an instant star out of Errol Flynn and also Olivia de Havilland.
And Errol Flynn and Curtiz made 12 movies together.
My poor head has been dancing with rum this whole week past.
Even so drunk, your brain is the greatest this side the Caribbean.
In the early days of the Academy Awards, it was a very clubbish thing...
...and the ballots came out, and Michael Curtiz wasn't on the ballot...
...but he was nominated as a write-in candidate.
...which kind of shows you how much of an impression...
...Captain Blood made on his contemporaries.
They say the first 40 years are about the hottest up here on the frontier.
- After that, you get used to it. - Really?
When Curtiz arrived in Hollywood...
...the Warners had a young publicity man...
...come down to the train station and pick him up.
And that gentleman was named Hal Wallis.
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
He became an executive producer...
...and Hal Wallis and Michael Curtiz...
...really became the yin and the yang of Warner Bros. Studios.
Not only from a business perspective of all the great films that they made...
...but also on a personal level.
Curtiz and Hal Wallis were-- They were--
They played sports together, you know?
Hal Wallis knew him when he came from Hungary.
You have a very difficult job ahead of you.
- Yes I think so. - But I'm sure you're equal to it.
Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936.
Curtiz went to Hal Wallis and begged to be put on this movie...
...and Wallis said, "I'll let you direct, but only if you behave yourself."
And of course that went to hell in a handbasket right away...
...because what Curtiz was doing was cutting in the camera...
...as Hitchcock and Ford and other directors had done...
...so the movie would be made his way rather than Hal Wallis' way.
If Curtiz played his cards right, and he probably did...
...because his films are extraordinarily surgically precise...
...in terms of camera movement...
...and where the cut happens and where the scene starts.
I'm sure he didn't give them very much...
...except to cut off the slates and put the two pieces together.
And there are a lot of memos...
...of Wallis saying, "Are you doing this just to drive me crazy?
You promised not to do this" and, you know.
So finally Wallis threatened to fire him if he didn't comply.
So they were able to find a happy medium.
Curtiz's films always had lots of bullet holes.
Other studios didn't have bullet holes.
This kind of started with Charge of the Light Brigade.
There's a whole sequence, this kind of horrifying scene...
...of all the bullets going through windows and shattering lamps...
...and people being cut down.
I'm sure Curtiz just loved that kind of action...
...and you don't see those kinds of things in too many other films of that era.
The highlight is the charge of the light brigade.
And that was filmed out in the San Fernando Valley...
...with 400 horsemen.
Curtiz set up a thousand-foot dolly track...
...so it could drive at the same pace of the riding horses.
It was just a phenomenal innovation.
Cameras were put in dugouts, so they were jumping around cameramen...
...and it's really one of the great battle scenes ever put on film.
I was a kid growing up in front of the television set...
...and Charge of the Light Brigade came on television.
I was so knocked out by Light Brigade...
...that I'd made special note of the name Michael Curtiz.
It was just a great adventure story.
And it was a tragedy at the end because Errol Flynn dies.
One of the first times, next to Bambi, as a child...
...that I lost somebody I really cared about as a movie hero.
Compliments of your royal brother, King Richard. God bless him.
By my faith, but you're a bold rascal.
I'm gratified, Your Highness.
I actually saw Robin Hood in a movie theater.
Beautifully projected with rich three-stripe Technicolor.
And was just transported by that story.
This was going to be a location up in Chico, California, for Sherwood Forest.
Was going to be 2 million bucks in 1938.
Nothing but problems along the way.
You started with William Keighley directing, who's a good Warners director.
Somewhere along the way...
...the studio thought maybe the film should have a little better action in it...
...maybe move faster.
So they turned to Curtiz and turned it over to him to complete.
Curtiz came in and saved the day...
...and that banked a lot of capital in Hal Wallis' heart.
- Locksley. - The thing that he did so beautifully...
...was the way he was able to light and set a mood...
...the feel for visual. And that comes from Curtiz...
...because it's in all of his films.
You know, his real signature...
...imagery is using shadows.
In The Sea Hawk, King Phillip talks about the conquest of the New World.
We see his shadow crossing a giant map. And this idea of using shadows...
...comes out of a German tradition in the 1920s called Expressionism.
And Curtiz brought that to the studio in a very powerful way.
L Upset your plans?
You've come to Nottingham once too often.
And Robin Hood.
You'd see them fighting, and then they go off camera...
...but their shadows would remain on the screen...
...you know, 10 times taller than they ever were.
And in the same shot, as the camera kind of cranes to the right..
...you know, the shadow goes around the huge pillar...
...and just as the shadow disappears the characters come back in again.
I did that in Indiana Jones. I copied Curtiz in Raiders of the Lost Ark...
...and did the shadow in the well of the souls.
I said, "I figured out how Curtiz did it," because I couldn't...
...with Harrison and John Rhys-Davies.
I had to have two other stand-ins in their costumes...
...in front of the light. So I'd get Harrison to come into the shot...
...carrying the Ark, and then he'd go out of the light...
...and then two other doubles would be the shadow against the wall.
Now, for me that had to be the way Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn...
...created the shadows. Because it wasn't Flynn and Rathbone.
It was two stunt guys just giving you the shadows...
...to allow the actors to come back into frame...
...and it was all one shot.
Robin Hood comes out and is an astounding success.
May I obey all your commands with equal pleasure, sire.
Curtiz's pictures were outrageously successful in the box office...
...and then The Adventures of Robin Hood separated him...
...from the other Warner Bros. directors.
- Where were you last night? - That's so long ago, I don't remember.
- Will I see you tonight? - I never make plans that far ahead.
Another technique that Curtiz used in a lot of movies is where he would...
...start outside of a setting. And then he would go inside.
In Casablanca, you had this long dolly shot...
...where you introduce this incredible cafe where it's unbelievably busy.
But then, instead of just dollying along and there's a guy playing the piano...
...and it turns out to be Sam. But instead of just dollying over, you now dolly into him...
...and you now know that he's an important character.
It's a wonderful way of introducing a character.
Angels with Dirty Faces was kind of the apex...
...of the Warner Bros. gangster film...
...that they really invented in the 1930s...
...beginning with Public Enemy and Little Caesar.
In the last interview Cagney gave, he said, "Mike was a great director...
...and you knew that if you worked in a film with him, it was gonna be well done...
...but I didn't like the way that he treated actors."
And Cagney said, "Well, of course he never did that to me...
...because he knew if he did, I'd knock him on his ass."
Those cattle aren't for sale to you at any price.
Dodge City gets overlooked because 1939 was such an epochal year for Hollywood.
Just the opening of the film...
...where you have this train roaring along the track, racing a stagecoach.
It was a huge, sprawling Western starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland...
...and of course, the Warners stock company, Alan Hale...
...and "Big Boy" Williams along for comedy relief.
Are you married?
Dodge City is a convincing Western because Dodge City is a city.
It wasn't the plains of Dodge or the Monument Valley...
...you know, epics that Ford made...
...but it was a city, and you felt the hubbub and you felt the crowds in the bars.
And so it had thick, dense production value. It was a very urban--
It might have been one of the first urban Westerns.
Curtiz added to his repertoire the biggest saloon fight ever filmed.
The bar was, like, bigger than a Beverly Hills mansion.
I mean, my God, you know, the size of some of those sets.
Come get these fleas out of my hair.
He researched the historical background of a lot of his films...
...and knew things about the technology, the culture, the social mores of any era...
...because he was able to make that Western a very solid, American Western.
To America.
What watch?
- Ten watch. - Such much?
You will get along beautifully in America.
Michael Curtiz was convinced that this was the greatest country in the world.
He wanted to be more American than the Americans.
But he never did learn English. He certainly didn't learn American.
One of the things about Mike Curtiz...
...that was being said at the time: "Mike Curtiz speaks five languages...
...all badly."
Among the many wonderful stories about Curtiz's colorful language...
...is when he once asked an aid to get him a Coke.
And the aid was a little too slow coming back.
So when he finally did...
...he said in a very loud voice so that everybody could hear it:
"Next time I send a dumb son of a bitch to get a Coke...
...I go myself."
He evidently had an acerbic way of treating the people he worked with.
Mary Astor described a moment...
...where she made a film that he directed and there was an extra that he didn't like.
So he said, "You, on the end. Keep moving to your right.
Keep going to your right. More to your right. More."
He said, "Okay, good. Now you're out of the picture."
He basically never learned much beyond verbs.
Because through the use of verbs...
...he could control his actors. He could tell them to leap, jump, sprint.
He was a pretty rough character.
A real autocrat on the film set.
And he threw those verbs around.
A real picnic with everything but red ants.
David Niven entitled his memoir Bring on the Empty Horses...
...because that was yet another Curtizism. He gave the cue:
"Bring on the empty horses," meaning the riderless horses, of course.
In the late '30s, the War in Europe had started.
And there was all kinds of talk about being prepared and so forth.
So there were pictures made about the service such as Dive Bomber...
...which Mike Curtiz did with Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray.
And he certainly did something that would be a very patriotic film.
Yankee Doodle Dandy. James Cagney doing one of his finest pictures.
The first day of shooting was December 7, 1941.
And they were listening to the news...
...that the Japanese have attacked our fleet in Pearl Harbor...
...and thousands are dead and we are now at war.
And Cagney said, "I think, boys and girls, it's time for a prayer."
And there was a moment of silence. Everyone bowed their heads...
...and then Curtiz said, "Everybody, we are at war.
This is a terrible thing, but we have a job to do...
...and this is an important movie about America. Let's go to work."
Yankee Doodle Dandy is a great story of George M. Cohan.
It's less of a musical and more of a biography.
Everybody sing.
To see Cagney dance and perform that way...
...you know, and to know he was a martial arts expert anyway.
He had a black belt, Cagney did.
And he put those black belt martial arts skills to work as a dancer, as a hoofer.
It was almost like Riverdance.
When you watch Cagney dance, he danced mainly from the waist down.
Not a lot happens from the waist up.
And that is what gives him a really unique presence as a dancer.
Rick, help me.
- Don't be a fool. You can't get away. - But, Rick, hide me. Do something!
All of the movies Curtiz made before Casablanca...
...must have been, in some way...
...the practice runs for this movie.
Because he had already made comedies. He had already made film noir.
He had already made extraordinary melodramas and dramas.
And he was able to bring all of those skills into one film.
Which is quite amazing.
This is Curtiz at the top of his game. Pure genius.
Such masterful control.
Now, we must remember that of course when Casablanca was being made...
...we're now in 1942 and things are not going well for the Allies.
Here's Mike Curtiz, who was trying to get his family out of Europe.
And he did manage to get his mother and two brothers...
...but there were other members of his family...
...that actually went to Auschwitz and died.
Curtiz did add heft to the script. All the little bits of business...
...of the émigrés negotiating with shady people in Rick's...
...because he recognized that was kind of the thematic background of Casablanca.
Waiting, waiting.
I'll never get out of here.
The dream, the reality that was America...
...why everyone wanted to try to get here...
...and Nazism needed to be stood up against.
See that Major Strasser gets a good table, close to the ladies.
I have already given him the best...
...knowing he is German and would take it anyway.
Now, of course, Ingrid Bergman had never worked with Michael Curtiz before.
Bergman was basically not working.
She was living with her husband in Rochester, New York...
...and she missed acting.
And just at that point, fate came together and got her into that film.
She was extraordinarily professional.
Always prepared, always out of the dressing room on time.
So she and Curtiz, they got along fine.
You are a smart fellow. Hand it over, if you please.
They cast Bogart. He had only played bad guys.
There's a memo saying, "Let's get this guy out as a leading man.
Forget the gangster, forget the supporting character."
This was done on purpose.
Casablanca is a major hit.
It's one of the top films, and, of course, Bogart became this major star.
Richard...
...I tried to stay away.
And here is Ingrid Bergman, who became a big star, naturally.
You know, after Casablanca, here she is with Spellbound and Notorious...
...and all these big pictures coming her way.
So here's Academy Award time...
...and the film gets eight nominations, and wins three.
But the three that it wins...
...you're talking about Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Director...
...Michael Curtiz.
Curtiz was married several times...
...but the enduring relationship of his life was with Bess Meredyth.
She had been married before and she had a son.
And he was very good to his stepson.
Bess Meredyth started in films before Curtiz. She was a very good writer.
Bess was also looking over scripts that Mike would bring home...
...and offering some suggestions, that, the following day, Mike would present.
Everyone had the feeling that he was great with scenes, great with players...
...great with the approach, but not necessarily great with overall script.
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."
Victor, whatever I do, will you believe that l...?
You don't even have to say it.
I'll believe.
By now, they had had a nice lifestyle, and they entertained.
The Darryl Zanucks were friends...
...because Zanuck and Curtiz had done that Noah's Ark.
Curtiz had a ranch out in the San Fernando Valley, 265 acres...
...and this is a guy who grew up poor in Hungary...
...so owning land was really part of validating his success.
The would play polo together.
Zanuck, of course, was the great polo player of Hollywood.
And, you know, it was a nice lifestyle.
Yes, I'm waiting tables in a downtown restaurant.
My mother, a waitress.
Mildred Pierce is one of the best melodramas ever made.
It's a unique women's picture...
...epitomized with Joan Crawford...
...getting a divorce, two daughters striving to get ahead...
...and having it all crash down around her.
And at another level it's a film noir, it's very dark.
Mildred.
The way that light is used in Mildred Pierce...
...the way people are framed in the shots, it was eye candy.
There's cases where Joan Crawford is just a black silhouette.
Curtiz had been told in advance, "Watch Crawford. She's difficult."
Crawford was a complete professional, and she and Curtiz got along famously.
- Oh, Wally, you're wonderful. - This is all business, remember?
Crawford ended up winning the Oscar...
...and was so nervous, she could not go to the Oscar ceremony...
...and actually feigned a migraine headache or some illness...
...so Mike Curtiz went up and accepted the Oscar for her.
She asked me, in case she's fortunate enough to get this award...
...I should accept in her name, with her deepest gratitude...
...to you who made it possible, this highest honor and award for her...
...I thank you.
Very wonderful, Mike.
That'll make Ms. Crawford feel better, I'm sure.
Then he discovers Doris Day.
Oh, greetings, chum.
My, we haven't seen you...
Let's see now... Since you didn't go to Switzerland.
Yeah, I got a big kick out of planning that trip.
So he does Doris Day's two first pictures...
...Romance on the High Seas and My Dream Is Yours.
And she is a spectacular success...
...so he has her under contract.
Among Curtiz's great gifts was he was a terrific talent-spotter.
And Doris Day, who, in those days, was singing in a band...
...had no aspirations to be an actor.
And there was something about this woman.
She was vulnerable.
And he picked that up in her and he gave her a screen test.
In the middle of the screen test she burst out in tears...
...and Curtiz loved that. 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."
Okay, I'll do it.
A picture that Mike Curtiz did not direct, but Doris Day is in it...
...is It's A Great Feeling.
It's 1949. The storyline takes place on the lot.
And you get to see Michael Curtiz.
- Mr. Curtiz. - Yeah.
Mr. Trent is on the phone again.
Yes, sir.
He was not an exceptionally well-liked man by the people he worked with.
And yet, you look at the credits on his films...
...and he worked with the same people all the time.
So if they didn't like him, why did they work with him?
Maybe it's because he brought out the best in them.
Alan Ladd, he said, "Michael Curtiz is why I'm an actor.
Because I was a grip on Captain Blood, and I used to watch him...
...and watch him work with Errol Flynn.
And I said, "if I could ever get a shot like that, maybe I could make it."
All I got left to peddle is guts.
I'm not sure I got any.
The Breaking Point was Michael Curtiz's last masterpiece at Warner Bros.
John Garfield, who-- Actually, the first picture that he made, Four Daughters...
...was directed by Curtiz, at Warner Bros., in 1938, and made him a star.
He came to do the picture.
The Breaking Point was emblematic of Curtiz...
...putting his stamp on another style, another genre, and that's film noir.
But it's mounted so masterfully, and subtly.
He loves his wife, and then he's being tempted by Patricia Neal.
And he wants to do the right thing, but life is tough...
...and Curtiz just captures it perfectly.
The picture was released in September of 1950.
In June of 1950, the scurrilous periodical Red Channels was published...
...and it listed Garfield as a communist.
People who were in that publication immediately became unemployable.
So what happened?
The movie premieres in September of 1950, gets excellent reviews...
...and then Warner pulled it...
...and he also canceled the second picture on Garfield's deal.
So The Breaking Point, John Garfield, Michael Curtiz, were the victims of this.
Once everything went just the way I wanted it.
I couldn't make a mistake, I was like that. I was 8 feet tall all the time.
Not anymore.
By the time you get to 1950, '51...
...things are considerably different.
The studios became less powerful, and it was the beginning of the auteur era.
Suddenly the box office is down, and it gets worse.
And this really changed things for Michael Curtiz and Warner Bros.
He was disenchanted, so he leaves.
Mike starts his own production company, Michael Curtiz Productions.
Now, imagine, this is in '53, and he went there in 1926...
...now he's suddenly-- He's on the market.
This was not his strong suit.
Curtiz was not comfortable as a free agent.
He was really a creature of the studio system.
And of course, he's been committed to do White Christmas at Paramount...
...and, you know, it's a whole new deal, a whole new people, everything.
You know, somehow, he rose to the occasion.
The Comancheros was Curtiz' final film, and he was not well.
He actually was on location and fell.
They x-rayed his leg and his leg looked like latticework.
When he had his appendectomy, back in 1956...
...they had actually found cancer in his prostate gland...
...and his wife and the doctor decided...
...since, at that time, the cancer was inoperable...
...not to tell him.
So when he found this out now, this is 1961, he confronted his doctor.
And the doctor said, "Mike, how many movies have you made...
...since the diagnosis?"
And he said, "I don't know. Eight?"
"Well, how many movies would you have made, if I had told you?"
And Curtiz thought about that, and he said:
"Yes, you're right. It's better not to know."
He died in 1962 of cancer...
...buried at Forest Lawn, and among his pallbearers...
...were Jack L. Warner, Cary Grant, Alan Ladd...
...because, after all, this was Michael Curtiz, the man for all movies.
The problem with Michael Curtiz is that he could do everything.
You can't pigeonhole him, and therefore it's taken a long time...
...for him to get his due.
As filmmakers came along a generation later...
...like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas...
...I know that they look back on those films done by Curtiz...
...and learn from what they saw.
I'm very influenced by him, I started watching him as a kid...
...and I never stopped. I still watch him today.
Give them a taste of their own iron.
When I first started directing television, then got into movies...
...I told people, I said, "if I can have a career like Michael Curtiz...
...I'd rather have that career...
...where I have more opportunities to tell different kinds of stories.
What a genius director this guy was.
Here's looking at you, kid.
Tell me, what makes a good film, Mike?
Well, it's very difficult question.
Some people say just a good story. I think it takes more than a good story.
You must have the imagination to tell the story...
...and you must have the understanding of how to tell the story.
In addition, the director acknowledge the drama, and the success, depends entirely...
...on the sensitive observation of the characters and the material...
...and his ability to mold these substances together...
...in a tasteful, and a successful, composition...
...with the imagination, and with the understanding.