He put Doris Day and John Garfield on screen for the first time, and he made stars of Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Bette Davis.

He directed leading musicals, including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), This Is the Army (1943), and White Christmas (1954), and he made comedies, with Life with Father (1947) and We're No Angels (1955).

[10] Curtiz briefly worked at UFA GmbH, a German film company, where he learned to direct large groups of costumed extras, along with using complicated plots, rapid pacing, and romantic themes.

[e] The Warners were impressed that Curtiz had developed a unique visual style which was strongly influenced by German Expressionism, with high crane shots and unusual camera angles.

The film also showed that Curtiz was fond of including romantic melodrama "against events of vast historical importance, for driving his characters to crises and forcing them to make moral decisions," according to Rosenzweig.

[14]: 136  He offered Curtiz a contract to be a director at his new film studio in Hollywood, Warner Bros., where he would direct a similar epic that had been planned, Noah's Ark (1928).

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.

[21]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.

[1] 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.

[14]: 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.

The most obvious aspect of Curtiz's directorial signature is his expressionistic visual style, and its most obvious feature is its unusual camera angles and carefully detailed, crowded, complex compositions, full of mirrors and reflections, smoke and fog, and physical objects, furniture, foliage, bars, and windows, that stand between the camera and the human characters and seem to surround and entrap them.

[2]: 63  In the early 1930s, Warner Bros. was struggling to compete with the larger MGM, which was releasing costume dramas such as Queen Christina (1933) with Greta Garbo, Treasure Island (1934) with Wallace Beery, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1934).

However, in March 1935, Warners announced it would produce Captain Blood (1935), a swashbuckler action drama based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, and directed by Curtiz.

[2]: 64  It was followed by The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, co-directed with William Keighley whom Curtiz replaced), the most profitable film that year,[2]: 64  also winning three Academy Awards and being nominated for Best Picture.

"[35] Reviews praised his role: "Perhaps the greatest single occurrence having to do with Four Daughters on reading the critics appears to be the debut of John Garfield, a brilliant young actor recruited from the Broadway stage.

[38] The following year, Curtiz directed a short subject, Sons of Liberty (1939), starring Claude Rains, in a biopic which dramatizes the Jewish contribution to America's independence.

Some critics felt the story was equivalent to actual events then taking place in Europe, describing it as a "thinly veiled diatribe against American isolationism on World War II's brink.

[57] Shortly after Captains of the Clouds was completed, but released after his next picture, Casablanca, Curtiz directed the musical biopic, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), a film about singer, dancer, and composer George M.

[69] In photographing her, he used careful film noir camera techniques, a style he learned in Europe, to bring out the features of Crawford's face, using rich black-and-white highlights.

Some of the box office successes and well-received films during the 1950s included Young Man with a Horn (1950), Jim Thorpe – All-American (1951), The Story of Will Rogers (1952), White Christmas (1954), We're No Angels (1955), and King Creole (1958).

[18]: 183–184 A few months after arriving in Hollywood as Warner Bros.' new director, Curtiz explained that he wanted to make viewers feel as though they were actually witnessing a story on screen: To accomplish this end the camera must assume many personalities.

However, during his career, this "individualism," says Robertson, "was hidden from public view" and undervalued because, unlike many other directors, Curtiz's films covered such a wide spectrum of different genres.

[2]: 74 Curtiz was always extremely active: he worked very long days, took part in several sports in his spare time, and was often found to sleep under a cold shower.

[56]He earned the nickname "Iron Mike" from his friends, since he tried to keep physically fit by playing polo when he had time, and owned a stable of horses for his recreation at home.

[100] Similar stories abound: For the final scene in Casablanca Curtiz asked the set designer for a "poodle" on the ground so the wet steps of the actors could be seen on camera.

He had a lengthy affair with Lili Damita starting in 1925 and is sometimes reported to have married her, but film scholar Alan K. Rode states in his 2017 biography of Curtiz that this is a modern legend, and there is no contemporary evidence to support it.

"[95] He directed 10 actors to Oscar nominations: Paul Muni, John Garfield, James Cagney, Walter Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden, and William Powell.

[56]Some, such as screenwriter Robert Rossen, ask whether Curtiz has "been misjudged by cinema history," since he is not included among those often considered to be great directors, such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock: "He was obviously a talent highly alert to the creative movements of his time such as German expressionism, the genius of the Hollywood studio system, genres such as film noir, and the possibilities offered by talented stars.

"[9]: 161  Film theorist Peter Wollen wanted "to resurrect" Curtiz's critical reputation, observing that with his enormous experience and drive, he "could wring unexpected meanings from a script through his direction of actors and cinematographers.

Six of Curtiz's films were nominated for Best Picture: Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Four Daughters (1938), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Casablanca (1943), and Mildred Pierce (1945).