[2][3] Petrovich mainly worked in German cinema, but also collaborated with established directors in some 100 Hungarian, French, Spanish, Czechoslovakian and Hollywood movies.

[2] In Vienna he met a film director Mihály Kertész, who fled Hungary after the war, and who will later make a major Hollywood career as Michael Curtiz.

Kertész directed Petrovich in three movies: The Sunflower Woman in 1918 on the play by Ivo Vojnović, The Lady with the Black Gloves in 1919 and, the most successful, The Star of Damascus in 1920.

[4] He later worked with a prominent Hungarian directors Paul Czinner (Homo immanis, 1918) and Béla Balogh (Under the Mountains, 1920), before moving to France.

[4] He marked the period, mostly being typecast as a latin lover, in the movies of Léonce Perret (Koenigsmark, 1923; The Nude Woman, 1926; Morgane, the Enchantress, 1928), Germaine Dulac (Heart of an Actress, 1924) or Marco de Gastyne (The Lady of Lebanon, 1926).

Petrovich was noticed by Hollywood director Rex Ingram who at the time lived and worked in Southern France, where he established a studio in Nice.

Tall, handsome and good looking, with a sonorous voice, he even prospered, expanding his acting range to the more character roles, like the aristocrats, noblemen, officers and priests, in the "Slavic charm" manner.

He worked often with directorial couple Jacob and Luise Fleck (The Orlov in 1927, Doctor Schäfer in 1928, The Tsarevich in 1929) and Richard Oswald (Victoria and Her Hussar in 1931, The Flower of Hawaii in 1933, co-starring Marta Eggerth).

[4] After being pressured to participate in propaganda flick Enemies, directed by Viktor Tourjansky, which tried to justify German occupation of Poland, Petrovich migrated to Hungary.

Filmmaker Marko Babac in his 2009 book Boško Tokin – novinar i pisac, prvi srpski estetičar, publicista i kritičar filma published an excerpt from the Novosti newspapers' account on Petrovich's visit:[6] "From all corners of Belgrade, like torrents, girls of Belgrade rushed to see Svetislav Petrović with a secret hope in their souls that at least one of his fiery glances will fall on them, their lipsticked lips and loving eyes.