Sixty years ago, on 10th April 1962, one of the most famous and influential film-makers of all time died, aged 75.
Budapest-born Michael Curtiz was a major player in getting his country’s film industry under way. When he moved to America, he worked with Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, James Cagney, Boris Karloff, Errol Flynn and Elvis. Nine of his films were Oscar-nominated.
And yet he is still widely remembered only for one masterpiece, Casablanca (1942). There is, though, so much more to Michael Curtiz than one brilliant film.
Following the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the military dictatorship ended and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was born in 1867. In the economic boom that followed, the Hungarian film industry
