Editing Michael Curtiz (section)

=== 1920s ===
Curtiz arrived in the United States in the summer of 1926,<ref name=Harmetz />{{rp|63}} and began directing at Warner Bros. under the [[anglicised]] name Michael Curtiz. During what became a 28-year period at Warner Bros., he directed 86 films, including his best work.

Although he was an experienced filmmaker, now aged 38, Warners assigned him to direct a number of average-quality films to break him in, the first being ''[[The Third Degree (1926 film)|The Third Degree]]'' (1926).<ref name=TCM /> Curtiz's unique camerawork technique was used throughout, visible in dramatic camera angles, in a style which one critic assumed other directors would likely envy.<ref>''Oakland Tribune'', December 19, 1926, p. 58</ref>

{{quote box|align=left|width=25em|bgcolor = LightCyan|quote=When I first came here I was called on to direct six or seven pictures a year. I never turned down a single story. That was my schooling. I worked hard on every one of them. That is how you learn.|source=– Michael Curtiz<ref name=Journal />}}
Learning English quickly was an immediate hurdle, however, since he had no free time. When Jack Warner gave him the film to direct, Curtiz recalls, "I could not speak one word of English."<ref name=Journal />  It was a romantic story about jail life and gangsters in Chicago, a place he had never been,  about American underworld figures he had never met.<ref name=Tennessee>''The Tennessean'' (Nashville), April 12, 1962, p. 57</ref>

To gain some direct experience about the subject, Curtiz persuaded the Los Angeles sheriff to let him spend a week in jail. "When I came out, I knew what I needed for the picture."<ref name=Journal>Gunson, Victor. "Hard-to-do Films Best Training School for Directors, Declares Michael Curtiz", ''The Journal News'', New York, September 27, 1946</ref>

Curtiz firmly believed that investigating the background of every story should be done first and done thoroughly before starting a film.<ref name=Journal /> He said that whenever someone asked him how he, a foreigner, could make American films, he told them, "human beings are the same all over the world. Human emotions are international." He treated his first films in the U.S. as learning experiences:
{{blockquote|The only things that are different in different parts of the world are customs ... But those customs are easy to find out if you can read and investigate. Downtown there is a fine public library. There you can open a book and find out anything you want to know.<ref name=Journal />}}

{{quote box|align=right|width=25em|bgcolor = MistyRose|quote=Curtiz never gave second-hand treatment to an assignment once it was accepted. He went ahead and graced plot and character with fluid camera movement, exquisite lighting, and a lightning-fast pace. Even if a script was truly poor and the leading players were real amateurs, Curtiz glossed over inadequacies so well that an audience often failed to recognize a shallow substance until it was hungry for another film a half-hour later.|source=– Author William Meyer<ref name=Wakeman>Wakeman, John. ed. ''World Film Directors: 1890–1945'', H. W. Wilson Company (1987)</ref>{{rp|174}}}}

Although the language barrier made communicating with the casts and crews a hardship, he continued to invest time in preparation. Before he directed his first Western, for example, he spent three weeks reading about the histories of Texas and the lives of its important men.<ref name=Gutterman>Gutterman, Leon. "Our Film Folk", ''The Wisconsin Chronicle'', April 30, 1954, p. 6</ref> He found it necessary to continue such intensive studying of American culture and habits in preparation for most other film genres.<ref name=Gutterman /> But he was quite satisfied being in Hollywood:

{{blockquote|It is splendid to work here in this country. One has everything at hand to work with. The director does not have to worry about anything except his ideas. He can concentrate on those with no worry about his production otherwise.<ref>Kingsley, Grace. "Will Make 'Noah's Ark'", ''Los Angeles Times'', Oct. 2, 1926, p. 6</ref>}}

''[[The Third Degree (1926 film)|The Third Degree]]'' (1926), available at the [[Library of Congress]], made good use of Curtiz's experience in using moving cameras to create expressionistic scenes, such as a sequence shot from the perspective of a bullet in motion.<ref name=TCM />  The film was the first of eight Curtiz films to have [[Dolores Costello]] as its star.<ref name=TCM />

[[File:Poster - Noah's Ark (1928) 01.jpg|thumb|1928 Curtiz film]]
Warner Bros. had Curtiz direct three other mediocre stories to be sure he could take on larger projects, during which time he was able to familiarize himself with their methods and work with the technicians, including cameramen, whom he would use in subsequent productions.<ref name=Pontuso />{{rp|137}}  As biographer James C. Robertson explains, "In each case, Curtiz strove valiantly, but unsuccessfully to revitalize unconvincing scripts through spectacular camera work and strong central performances, the most noteworthy features of all those films."<ref name=Pontuso />{{rp|137}}

[[File:Michael Curtiz and Ilya Tolstoy.jpg|thumb|left|Curtiz (r) with [[Ilya Tolstoy]] in 1927]]
On a visit to Hollywood in 1927, [[Ilya Tolstoy]], [[Leo Tolstoy]]'s son, who had been a friend of Curtiz in Europe, wanted him to direct several films based on his father's novels. He chose Curtiz because he already knew the locale and its people.<ref>''Los Angeles Times'', August 4, 1927, p. 11</ref> During this period, Warner Bros. began experimenting with talking films. They assigned two part-talking pictures for Curtiz to direct: ''[[Tenderloin (film)|Tenderloin]]'' (1928) and  ''[[Noah's Ark (1928 film)|Noah's Ark]]'' (1928), both of which also starred Costello.<ref name=arkvid />

''Noah's Ark'' included two parallel stories, one recounting the biblical flood, and the other a World War I-era romance. It was the first epic film attempted by Warner Bros., and in handing production over to Curtiz, they were hoping to assure its success. The climactic flood sequence was considered "spectacular" at the time, observed historian [[Richard Schickel]],<ref name=Schickel>Schickel, Richard, and Perry, George. ''You Must Remember This: The Warner Brothers Story'', Running Press (2008)</ref>{{rp|31}} while biographer James C. Robertson said it was "one of the most spectacular incidents in film history."<ref name=Robertson />{{rp|16}} Its cast was made up of over 10,000 extras. However, the reissue of the film in 1957 cut an hour off the original time of 2 hours and 15 minutes. The story was an adaptation written by [[Bess Meredyth]], who married Curtiz a few years later.<ref>Parsons, Louella O. In Movie Studios", ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'', February 9, 1927, p. 4</ref>

The critical success of these films by Curtiz contributed to Warner Bros' becoming the fastest-growing studio in Hollywood.<ref name=TCM />