The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz

2018 brings an aptly titled essay collection, The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz. . . Perhaps pointedly, none of the essayists focus on Casablanca (1942). Instead, The Many Cinemas examine genres Curtiz worked in, his handling of political messages and his relations with actors. ~Shepherd Express

The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz goes a long way to explaining and clarifying how and why the uncanny medium of cinema makes it a fair claim that filmmakers such as Michael Curtiz were actually painters with light and sound. It’s just that their paintings spoke and moved like living things, because that’s what they were: darkly shining reflections from behind the mirror. ~Critics at Large

The twenty essays here amply demonstrate how rich and productive readings of a director's work can be when due attention is paid to easing out the complex webs of collaboration, studio/commercial pressures, external factors (such as censorship), and cultural discourse that contribute to the shaping of film content and reception. ~Western Historical Quarterly

An exemplary volume. The points of view of the contributors are as diverse as the ‘many cinemas’ they write about, but every essay is scrupulously researched and lucidly written, and draws reasonable conclusions that illuminate both the circumstances of production and Curtiz’s contribution, technically and aesthetically, to the final film. The essays collectively challenge the field to revise and deepen its prevailing views as to what, in the medium of film, authorship is. ~William Rothman, University of Miami, author of Must We Kill the Thing We Love? Emersonian Perfectionism and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock

This book is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date of Curtiz’s work, with an eclectic range of approaches that not only make it useful to the discussion of Curtiz, but also provide a fine set of models for writing film criticism. ~James Morrison, Claremont McKenna College, author of Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors