Word: litvak
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Colonel Anatole Litvak, who made The Battle of Russia, is Russian-born, but his nostalgic love for Russia and its people is uncomplicated by political finepoint. As a director in France, Colonel Litvak made one of the best screen romances (Mayerling). As a director in Hollywood, he found out (All This and Heaven Too, This Above All) what U.S. filmgoers want to see. Colonel Litvak's special qualifications converge, in Battle of Russia, to create a superb and deeply moving film...
...developed a warm but somewhat spongy liberalism. The war and the Army seem to have stiffened his humanitarian fiber. Never a bossy boss, he leaves his assistants much to their own devices. He can well afford to-among the film virtuosi now under his command are Major Anatole Litvak, Major Anthony Veiller, and veteran cutter Captain William Hornbeck. Among their projects is a series of three films called Know Your Enemy, seven called Know Your Allies...
...goes away with him to a seaside resort, where he leaves her, eventually rejoins him for keeps after the Luftwaffe has almost battered his brains out in a London bombing. It is a restrained, sensitive, appealing performance-a tribute to beauteous Joan Fontaine, to the intelligent direction of Anatole Litvak, and to the painstaking coaching of Director Alfred Hitchcock, who nosed her into a 1941 Oscar (best actress) with his picture Suspicion...
...sooner was the shock of this major change absorbed than Fox delivered another, announced that a second independent unit had been signed to furnish two more pictures a year. Backbone of this addition were Stars Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne, Ronald Colman, Directors Lewis Milestone (Of Mice and Men), Anatole Litvak (All This and Heaven...
With the script thus carefully prepared, Director Litvak, a notoriously slow worker, was able to whizz along with almost no changes in filming (a Hollywood record), finishing some three weeks ahead of schedule. Whenever two or three reels could be got in a can, the film was rushed to Hal Wallis, who sat with a dictaphone in front of him, spouting such corrections as "Take out the noise when she blows the lamp out"; "Get a new voice for the old man roasting apples"; "See if you haven't another angle where Davis doesn't yank the little...