No complete evaluation of the director can ignore his European work, which numbered well over 50 films before Jack L. Warner imported him to Hollywood at the ripe old age of 38. Curtiz participated in the beginning of the Hungarian film industry, usually receiving credit for directing that country's first feature film ("Today and Tomorrow" 1912). After he apprenticed at Denmark's Nordisk Studios, his Hungarian films exhibited a Scandinavian influence, particularly in the naturalism of their outdoor settings. With the nationalization of Hungary's film industry by Bela Kun's communist regime, he fled the country, eventually working for Vienna's Sascha Films where he came in contact with German expressionism as embodied by the work of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. He established his reputation with two DeMille-style biblical spectaculars, "Sodom and Gomorrah" (1922) and "Moon of Israel" (1924), the latter prompting Jack Warner's job offer. Curtiz's first US film, "The Third Degree" (1926), revealed a mastery of the moving camera in its flashy expressionistic sequences, at one point presenting the action from the perspective of a lethal bullet. It also marked the first of eight collaborations with Dolores Costello, one of the studio's few established female stars.

Warner Bros. thrust Curtiz into its attempts at sound innovation, and two part-talkies "Tenderloin" (1927) and "Noah's Ark" (1928), both starring Costello, achieved considerable popularity and garnered millions in box office revenues. In 1930, he directed no less than six Warner talkies, but the studio's attempt to partially introduce color that year in Curtiz's commercially successful "Mammy" (a backstage murder vehicle for Al Jolson with songs by Irving Berlin) fell short of expectations. Warners was the fastest-growing studio in Hollywood, and the director's fortunes rose with them. "The Cabin in the Cotton" (1932) delivered the first of Bette Davis' malicious Southern belles while "20,000 Years in Sing Sing" (1933) presented her in a more sympathetic light as the girlfriend of noble Spencer Tracy, who sacrifices his life for the murder she committed. He also helmed two of the studio's rare excursions into horror, "Dr. X" (1932) and "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933), both all-color and both exhibiting the influence of Lang and Murnau in their vividly atmospheric scenes.

Despite his early penchant for Swedish naturalism, Curtiz in the USA followed in the footsteps of the great German studio directors, transporting his audiences to distant lands while all the time remaining on the back lots of Hollywood. He began his 12-film collaboration with Errol Flynn (often paired with Olivia de Havilland) in "Captain Blood" (1935), and together director and actor became synonymous with the "swashbuckler" genre, which they reprised marvelously in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) and "The Sea Hawk" (1940). Flynn was no great actor, but his sheer vitality as personified by his swordsmanship made him a star, and the pair continued working together despite their animosity. "Dodge City" (1939) marked the first of three big-budget Westerns, and they followed with perhaps their best, "Virginia City" (1940), rounding out the trilogy with that year's "Santa Fe Trail". By then, Flynn had had it with the director, and the mediocre "Dive Bomber" (1941) closed out their association.

One actor who apparently did not mind the director's imperious ways was Claude Rains, appearing in 10 Curtiz films, including three sentimental small-town soapers ("Four Daughters" 1938 and its two 1939 sequels "Daughters Courageous" and "Four Wives") which introduced Garfield to the public. He also elicited some of the finest work from both Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, the former giving a bravura performance as the tough, sardonic, ultimately soft-hearted boxing manager of "Kid Gallahad" (1937) and providing perhaps an even richer portrayal as the intellectual, rampaging captain of "The Sea Wolf" (1941, the quintessential adaptation of the Jack London novel). As for Cagney, Rocky Sullivan in "Angels with Dirty Faces" (1938) represented a high point from the actor's gangster oeuvre, and his Academy Award-winning turn as George M. Cohan in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942) stands at the very pinnacle of his career. Though Curtiz's prodigious output slowed some during the 40s, his films reflected the efficiency of the studio system at its best, and "Casablanca" (1943), the cult classic that earned him his only Oscar as Best Director, is a shining example of what could go right in that setting.

Originally scheduled as a low-budget melodrama starring Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan, "Casablanca" acquired some cachet when Warners upgraded it to major-budget status and brought in Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as the leads. The supporting actors were all first rate, led by Rains as Vichy police chief Louis Renault, Paul Henreid as resistance leader Victor Lazlo (and ultimate winner of the Bergman sweepstakes), Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt and Dooley Wilson, playing that haunting melody again for Rick, the character in which Bogie, more than in any other, established his iconographic screen persona. Longtime Curtiz screenwriting collaborators Julius and Philip Epstein fresh from scripting the director's "Mission to Moscow" (also 1943), worked alongside Howard Koch to provide what was often pure schmaltz ("I remember every detail--the Germans wore gray, you wore blue."). If the result was not great art, beyond all doubt, it was great cinema. Legend has it that shooting was only days ahead of the script. What clearer proof could there be of a director's instinct working within the American studio system at its most stable and powerful.

"Casablanca" was a tough act to follow. "Passage to Marseille" (1944) rounded up some familiar suspects (Bogart, Rains, Greenstreet and Lorre) but fell far short of its precursor. There still remained the wonderful "Mildred Pierce" (1945), which earned Joan Crawford a Best Actress Oscar, but after that, consensus has it that the master fell victim to the sheer volume of his output. People didn't stop going to his movies. In fact, some of his biggest moneymakers lay ahead. "Night and Day" (1946), a sanitized biopic of Cole Porter (with a miscast Cary Grant), which pales in comparison with "Yankee Doodle Dandy", and "Life with Father" (1947) were optimistic, upbeat fare that enjoyed a healthy box office, and the Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye vehicle "White Christmas" (1954), sad to say, was the biggest commercial success of his career (ironically made for Paramount soon after he ended his 28-year run with Warner Bros.). Curtiz shouldered on, directing more than 20 additional pictures, after his excellent film noir (and last with Garfield) "The Breaking Point" (1950), including "King Creole" (1958), which starred box office monarch Elvis Presley.

In the saddle nearly to the end, Curtiz died six months after the release of his final film, "The Commancheros" (1961), a well-paced actioner with John Wayne as a Texas Ranger out to bring in the gang supplying liquor and guns to the Comanches. Though he may not have demonstrated the easily identifiable style demanded by the 'politique des auteurs' of the CAHIER DU CINEMA, Curtiz left behind an impressive body of work possessing an incredibly consistent narrative energy. He scoffed at attempts to delve beneath the polished surface of his films: "I put all the art into my pictures I think the audience can stand. I don't see black-and-white words in a script when I read it. I see action." The director displayed his "personal vision" in the "look" of his films. Curtiz instinctively understood where to put the camera in relation to the action to achieve maximum emotional identification from his audience. Perhaps only John Ford and William Wyler enjoyed comparable success directing within the studio system.