Curtiz

One of the few grinnable moments. Dark and confusing. No sympathetic characters. Depressing account of the greatest film ever made.

The story of hungarian director michael curtiz, while putting together the film casablanca. And dealing with his own love life issues. The opening scenes are a bit sensationalist... a dinner, where we hear both sides of the argument. Some wish to be protectionist, some want to get involved and stop wars where they start. Ferenc lengyel is michael curtiz, director. He wants to make this film, but the studio isn't sure where they want it to go. The music is out of control... always dramatic and fantastic. Not sure why. It's a netflix release..... a bit spacey, ethereal, over the top. Big band numbers always in the background. Lots of discussion between jack warner and hal wallis, who had produced several humphrey bogart films, and also a bunch of elvis movies. Towards the end, curtiz is shown to be a tyrant on the set, angry at the film code rep, who insists that everything must be shown to be patriotic. It's watchable. Directed by tamas topolanszky. He has written and directed a few projects, and received film festival awards for his work.

This Hungarian production focuses on an unlikely "local hero". Michael Curtiz was a very prolific director who arrived in the US in the late Twenties, after having directed over 60 films in Europe.

Besides being prolific he was also versatile. A true "studio system" director and not an "auteur" famous for a genre or style, he never achieved great fame but did achieve great financial success. He also had a reputation for being difficult and for his dreadful English. See the "poodles" scene :-)

The plot is a fictional tale about Curtiz's estranged daughter, Kitty, coming to Hollywood and wanting to get to know daddy, during the filming of Casablanca. It is interesting to see some Casablanca sets, like Rick's Cafe partially recreated and luckily we get only glimpses of main characters Bogey and Bergman.

For unknown reasons Curtiz doesn't tell anybody that Kitty is his daughter and, given his womaniser reputation, everybody - his wife included - thinks Kitty is yet another "dame". This create some friction and minor misunderstandings, while the twins scriptwriters are busy improvising new scenes, making it up as they go. Until the very last moment nobody knew how the movie would end and they finally came up with a great ending to please almost everybody.

Casablanca was supposed to be yet another wartime movie to boost moral and it's unlikely it received special attention from the secret service, although an agent plays the "baddie".

The movie has great black&white photography, an excellent soundtrack with period songs not overused and great costumes. Shame about the acting, barely decent. The actress playing Kitty is the worst of the bunch, totally unable to be convincing but she also has the difficult task to carry the secondary, absurd main plot.

With the right title, a different angle and better actors, it could have been a great movie.

The sets and costums were fantastic! I would give them credit for that. It was interesting in it's basics and I liked it a little, also I just loved the actor who played Kertész.

Now let's move on to the bad things. The movie was just a nonsense. There were some things that were indeed decided during the production but there was no such drama at all. I don't think they can make up a fake story like that..

The rest of the actors were not good. Especially the girl played by Evelin Dobos. She looked nice but she ends there.

The technical part.. The cinematography! TERRIBLE! There were some longer shots that were just ruined with that spinning camera. The camera was just spinning for no reason at all. HOW can they get a "cinematographer" and a "director" like that? Seriously.. Also, there was no push at all when it was needed..

The red color idea.. Stolen from an other movie. STOP IT. Don't mess with the red color in a black and white movie. It was done before with a much bigger meaning.

The sound.. I don't know how they recorded the sound but many times it was annoying. Did anyone paid attention what they were recording? Not really. Two talking to each other, one of them sounds weird because the sound is messed up (probably the guy with the boom can't even hold it properly and nobody noticed it) and you you can hear even when one of them grabs something in his pocket while they are talking to each other -.-

The music was ok, sometimes out of the world and way too loud..

And after all this I'll just lower my rating to 5, just because of the main actor.

(Worth to check out the ratings on this one. EU voters gave it 7+, most of them 10.. Real users gave around 5-6. That's more realistic.)

I found the film one of the best Hungarian films of the last few years. This movie was truly emotional with wonderful music and appealing acting. The script is clever, does not only show the negative human character of Curtiz but also made him seen as complex as he must have been. I liked the acting of Lengyel in the lead role with his genious way of shaping Curtiz. I think the film is mostly about identity search of a man who is a Hungarian Jewish man living in America, who is a man loving women but also a father, so in this film I can recognise the problematic character of today's person, it is not a film about history, rather a film about human emotions, the complexity of a man's character, about us who try to find ourselves in this chaotic world. Multiculturalism in the 1940's did not differ from that of today. The film made me rewatch many of Curtiz's films, especially Casablanca. I definitely recommend it to anyone who loves the world of movies, who longs for sense and sensibility in films, who would like to see passion for profession.