Anatole Litvak

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Anatole Litvak

Anatole Litvak born as Michail Anatol Litwak (born May 10, 1902 in Kiev ; † December 15, 1974 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris ) was a filmmaker from Ukraine who wrote films in a variety of countries and languages and produced.

Life

Initially, Litvak, son of a Jewish family, worked at a theater in Saint Petersburg . In addition to studying philosophy, he also took acting classes. After the October Revolution he was a member of a theater company and has been making films in the St. Petersburg North Cinema Studios, today's Lenfilm Studios , since 1923 . In 1925 he left the Soviet Union and went to Germany, where he edited, among other things, GW Pabst's social drama Die joudlose Gasse . In 1927 Litvak was an assistant director on the large-scale French costume film Casanova . At the beginning of the sound film era he successfully directed several comedies with Dolly Haas before he emigrated after 1933. He then worked successfully in England and France, where he directed the film Mayerling in 1935 , which showed the dramatic final years of Crown Prince Rudolf , played by Charles Boyer and his lover, played by Danielle Darrieux . All three participants received invitations to Hollywood after the international success . Working on Tovarich , the adaptation of a Broadway hit starring Claudette Colbert and Boyer, paved the way for Litvak to a successful career. In 1938 he shot the melodrama Three Sisters from Montana with Bette Davis . The two got together again in 1940 at work in hell, where is your win? , a dramatic love story between a governess and a baron, played by Charles Boyer. The film was a commercial success and helped Litvak direct the adaptation of This Above All , the patriotic portrayal of a love story between Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine . He reached the peak of his career in 1948, when he directed Barbara Stanwyck to her fourth Oscar nomination through the crime drama Du live for 105 minutes ( Sorry, Wrong Number ) . In the same year he made - based on the novel by Mary Jane Ward - with The Snake Pit, a film that for the first time cast a concerned look at the intolerable conditions in American mental hospitals. Olivia de Havilland played a young woman who wrongly ends up in a psychiatric ward, struggling with electroshock treatments and sadistic guards.

One of the best-known films of his later years was the 1955 adaptation of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, starring Vivien Leigh and Anastasia , for which Ingrid Bergman won her second Oscar in 1956. A few years later he shot with Bergman among other things Do you love Brahms? who is based on the novel Aimez-Vous Brahms? based by Françoise Sagan . Litvak's later career was unspectacular.

One of Litvak's wives was the actress Miriam Hopkins .

He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his achievements .

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Kay Less : 'In life, more is taken from you than given ...'. Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. S. 315 ff., ACABUS-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8

Web links

Commons : Anatole Litvak  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FAZ.net June 30, 2013: Better to kiss the dog than the prince. - "Mayerling", a lost film with Audrey Hepburn, had its late theatrical premiere in Munich.
personal data
SURNAME Litvak, Anatole
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Litwak, Michail Anatol (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION filmmakers
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiev
DATE OF DEATH 15th December 1974
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris