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82-405: Michael Curtiz ( / k ɜːr ˈ t iː z / ; born Manó Kaminer ; from 1905 Mihály Kertész ; Hungarian : Kertész Mihály ; December 24, 1886 – April 10, 1962) was a Hungarian-American film director, recognized as one of the most prolific directors in history. He directed classic films from the silent era and numerous others during Hollywood's Golden Age , when the studio system

164-615: A Turkic language continued to be a matter of impassioned political controversy throughout the 18th and into the 19th centuries. During the latter half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian, or, alternatively, that both the Uralic and the Turkic families formed part of a superfamily of Ural–Altaic languages . Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború ("the Ugric-Turkic war"),

246-417: A circumfix , to change a word's meaning and its grammatical function. Hungarian uses vowel harmony to attach suffixes to words. That means that most suffixes have two or three different forms, and the choice between them depends on the vowels of the head word. There are some minor and unpredictable exceptions to the rule. Nouns have 18 cases , which are formed regularly with suffixes. The nominative case

328-645: A Curtiz film in most years during the 1930s. Hungarian language It is also spoken by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide, especially in North America (particularly the United States and Canada ) and Israel . With 14 million speakers, it is the Uralic family's largest member by number of speakers. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family . Linguistic connections between Hungarian and other Uralic languages were noticed in

410-405: A book and find out anything you want to know. Curtiz never gave second-hand treatment to an assignment once it was accepted. He went ahead and graced plot and character with fluid camera movement, exquisite lighting, and a lightning-fast pace. Even if a script was truly poor and the leading players were real amateurs, Curtiz glossed over inadequacies so well that an audience often failed to recognize

492-577: A chance and produce their own costume drama. Until then, it was a genre in which Warners' had assumed they could never succeed, owing to its higher production budgets during the years of the Great Depression . However, in March 1935, Warners announced it would produce Captain Blood (1935), a swashbuckler action drama based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini , and directed by Curtiz. It would star

574-416: A foreigner, could make American films, he told them, "human beings are the same all over the world. Human emotions are international." He treated his first films in the U.S. as learning experiences: The only things that are different in different parts of the world are customs ... But those customs are easy to find out if you can read and investigate. Downtown there is a fine public library. There you can open

656-707: A high proportion of words specific to agriculture and livestock are of Chuvash origin. A strong Chuvash influence was also apparent in Hungarian burial customs. The first written accounts of Hungarian date to the 10th century, such as mostly Hungarian personal names and place names in De Administrando Imperio , written in Greek by Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII . No significant texts written in Old Hungarian script have survived, because

738-399: A millennium. These include tehén 'cow' (cf. Avestan daénu ); tíz 'ten' (cf. Avestan dasa ); tej 'milk' (cf. Persian dáje 'wet nurse'); and nád 'reed' (from late Middle Iranian ; cf. Middle Persian nāy and Modern Persian ney ). Archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between

820-750: A million additional people scattered in other parts of the world. For example, there are more than one hundred thousand Hungarian speakers in the Hungarian American community and 1.5 million with Hungarian ancestry in the United States . Hungarian is the official language of Hungary, and thus an official language of the European Union. Hungarian is also one of the official languages of Serbian province of Vojvodina and an official language of three municipalities in Slovenia : Hodoš , Dobrovnik and Lendava , along with Slovene . Hungarian

902-703: A near-violent confrontation between Curtiz and star Errol Flynn , which led to the U.S. Congress and the ASPCA to enact legislation and policy to prevent cruelty to animals on the sets of movies. Curtiz helped popularize the classic swashbuckler , with films such as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He directed many other dramas which are considered classics: Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Sea Wolf (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Mildred Pierce (1945). He directed leading musicals, including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), This Is

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984-508: A place he had never been about American underworld figures he had never met. To gain some direct experience about the subject, Curtiz convinced the Los Angeles sheriff to let him spend a week in jail. "When I came out, I knew what I needed for the picture." Curtiz firmly believed that investigating the background of every story should be done first and done thoroughly before starting a film. He said that whenever someone asked him how he,

1066-406: A process of nyelvújítás ( language revitalization ). Some words were shortened ( győzedelem > győzelem , 'victory' or 'triumph'); a number of dialectal words spread nationally ( e.g. , cselleng 'dawdle'); extinct words were reintroduced ( dísz , 'décor'); a wide range of expressions were coined using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less frequently used methods of expanding

1148-624: A sequence shot from the perspective of a bullet in motion. The film was the first of eight Curtiz films to have Dolores Costello as its star. Warner Bros. had Curtiz direct three other mediocre stories to be sure he could take on larger projects, during which time he was able to familiarize himself with their methods and work with the technicians, including cameramen, whom he would use in subsequent productions. As biographer James C. Robertson explains, "In each case, Curtiz strove valiantly, but unsuccessfully to revitalize unconvincing scripts through spectacular camera work and strong central performances,

1230-520: A shallow substance until it was hungry for another film a half-hour later. – Author William Meyer Although the language barrier made communicating with the casts and crews a hardship, he continued to invest time in preparation. Before he directed his first Western, for example, he spent three weeks reading about the histories of Texas and the lives of its important men. He found it necessary to continue such intensive studying of American culture and habits in preparation for most other film genres. But he

1312-533: A similar epic that had been planned, Noah's Ark (1928). By the time Curtiz accepted Warner's offer, he was already a prolific director, having made 64 films in countries including Hungary, Austria, and Denmark. Curtiz arrived in the United States in the summer of 1926, and began directing at Warner Bros. under the anglicised name Michael Curtiz. During what became a 28-year period at Warner Bros., he directed 86 films, including his best work. Although he

1394-1069: A similarly dramatic way over these three centuries. After the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin , the language came into contact with a variety of speech communities , among them Slavic , Turkic , and German . Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians , who settled in Hungary during the 12th and 13th centuries: e.g. koboz " cobza " (cf. Turkish kopuz 'lute'); komondor "mop dog" (< * kumandur < Cuman ). Hungarian borrowed 20% of words from neighbouring Slavic languages : e.g. tégla 'brick'; mák 'poppy seed'; szerda 'Wednesday'; csütörtök 'Thursday'...; karácsony 'Christmas'. These languages in turn borrowed words from Hungarian: e.g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hungarian ásó 'spade'. About 1.6 percent of

1476-483: A then unknown extra, Errol Flynn , alongside the little-known Olivia de Havilland . The film was a major success with positive critical reviews. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture , and though not nominated, Curtiz received the second-highest number of votes for Best Director , solely from write-in votes. It also made stars of both Flynn and de Havilland, and it elevated Curtiz to being

1558-531: A unique visual style which was strongly influenced by German Expressionism , with high crane shots and unusual camera angles. The film also showed that Curtiz was fond of including romantic melodrama "against events of vast historical importance, for driving his characters to crises and forcing them to make moral decisions," according to Rosenzweig. He offered Curtiz a contract to be a director at his new film studio in Hollywood, Warner Bros. , where he would direct

1640-472: A while, but then returned to join another group of travelling players for a few more years. They played Ibsen and Shakespeare in various languages, depending on what country they were in. They performed throughout Europe, including France, Hungary, Italy, and Germany, and he eventually learned five languages. He had various responsibilities: We had to do everything—make bill posters, print programmes, set scenery, mend wardrobe, sometimes even arrange chairs in

1722-461: A year. I never turned down a single story. That was my schooling. I worked hard on every one of them. That is how you learn. – Michael Curtiz Learning English quickly was an immediate hurdle, however, since he had no free time. When Jack Warner gave him the film to direct, Curtiz recalls, "I could not speak one word of English." It was a romantic story about jail life and gangsters in Chicago,

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1804-400: Is subject–verb–object (SVO). However, Hungarian is a topic-prominent language , and so has a word order that depends not only on syntax but also on the topic–comment structure of the sentence (for example, what aspect is assumed to be known and what is emphasized). A Hungarian sentence generally has the following order: topic, comment (or focus), verb and the rest. The topic shows that

1886-589: Is always on the first syllable of a word, as in Finnish and the neighbouring Slovak and Czech . There is a secondary stress on other syllables in compounds: viszontlátásra ("goodbye") is pronounced /ˈvisontˌlaːtaːʃrɒ/ . Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables may seem to be stressed to an English-speaker, as length and stress correlate in English. Hungarian is an agglutinative language . It uses various affixes , mainly suffixes but also some prefixes and

1968-549: Is expressed by a possessive suffix on the possessed object, rather than the possessor as in English (Peter's apple becomes Péter almája , literally 'Peter apple-his'). Noun plurals are formed with –k ( az almák 'the apples'), but after a numeral, the singular is used ( két alma 'two apples', literally 'two apple'; not *két almák ). Unlike English, Hungarian uses case suffixes and nearly always postpositions instead of prepositions. There are two types of articles in Hungarian, definite and indefinite, which roughly correspond to

2050-442: Is marked with boldface. Hungarian has a four-tiered system for expressing levels of politeness. From highest to lowest: The four-tiered system has somewhat been eroded due to the recent expansion of " tegeződés " and " önözés ". Some anomalies emerged with the arrival of multinational companies who have addressed their customers in the te (least polite) form right from the beginning of their presence in Hungary. A typical example

2132-623: Is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria , Croatia , Romania , Zakarpattia in Ukraine , and Slovakia . In Romania it is a recognized minority language used at local level in communes, towns and municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over 20%. The dialects of Hungarian identified by Ethnologue are: Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. These dialects are, for

2214-399: Is sometimes described as having free word order, different word orders are generally not interchangeable, and the neutral order is not always correct to use. The intonation is also different with different topic-comment structures. The topic usually has a rising intonation, the focus having a falling intonation. In the following examples, the topic is marked with italics, and the focus (comment)

2296-482: Is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer , which dates to the 1190s. Although the orthography of these early texts differed considerably from that used today, contemporary Hungarians can still understand a great deal of the reconstructed spoken language, despite changes in grammar and vocabulary. A more extensive body of Hungarian literature arose after 1300. The earliest known example of Hungarian religious poetry

2378-700: Is the 14th-century Lamentations of Mary . The first Bible translation was the Hussite Bible in the 1430s. The standard language lost its diphthongs , and several postpositions transformed into suffixes , including reá "onto" (the phrase utu rea "onto the way" found in the 1055 text would later become út ra ). There were also changes in the system of vowel harmony . At one time, Hungarian used six verb tenses , while today only two or three are used. In 1533, Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti published Letters of St. Paul in Hungarian (modern orthography: A Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven ),

2460-532: Is the Swedish furniture shop IKEA , whose web site and other publications address the customers in te form. When a news site asked IKEA—using the te form—why they address their customers this way, IKEA's PR Manager explained in his answer—using the ön form—that their way of communication reflects IKEA's open-mindedness and the Swedish culture. However IKEA in France uses the polite ( vous ) form. Another example

2542-485: Is the communication of Yettel Hungary (earlier Telenor, a mobile network operator) towards its customers. Yettel chose to communicate towards business customers in the polite ön form while all other customers are addressed in the less polite te form. During the first early phase of Hungarian language reforms (late 18th and early 19th centuries) more than ten thousand words were coined, several thousand of which are still actively used today (see also Ferenc Kazinczy ,

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2624-407: Is unmarked ( az alma 'the apple') and, for example, the accusative is marked with the suffix –t ( az almát '[I eat] the apple'). Half of the cases express a combination of the source-location-target and surface-inside-proximity ternary distinctions (three times three cases); there is a separate case ending – ból / –ből meaning a combination of source and insideness: 'from inside of'. Possession

2706-684: The Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin. In the 21st century, studies support an origin of the Uralic languages, including early Hungarian, in eastern or central Siberia , somewhere between the Ob and Yenisei rivers or near the Sayan mountains in the Russian – Mongolian border region. A 2019 study based on genetics, archaeology and linguistics, found that early Uralic speakers arrived in Europe from

2788-520: The Tudor and subsequent periods. They toured the country delivering theatrical performances. They performed in barns and in the courtyards of inns. One of the most popular plays performed by these strolling players was Robin Hood . The English government of the period was concerned that plays such as Robin Hood would promote rebellious acts. The emergence of the Black Death also increased fear that

2870-845: The Volga River and the Ural Mountains . The Onoğurs (and Bulgars ) later had a great influence on the language, especially between the 5th and 9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied (e.g. szó ' word ' , from Turkic ; and daru ' crane ' , from the related Permic languages ), and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic ; e.g. borjú ' calf ' (cf. Chuvash păru , părăv vs. Turkish buzağı ); dél 'noon; south' (cf. Chuvash tĕl vs. Turkish dial. düš ). Many words related to agriculture, state administration and even family relationships show evidence of such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in

2952-705: The 1670s, and the family itself was established in 1717. Hungarian has traditionally been assigned to the Ugric branch along with the Mansi and Khanty languages of western Siberia ( Khanty–Mansia region of North Asia ), but it is no longer clear that it is a valid group. When the Samoyed languages were determined to be part of the family, it was thought at first that Finnic and Ugric (the most divergent branches within Finno-Ugric) were closer to each other than to

3034-412: The 1930s, Curtiz directed at least four films each year. The most obvious aspect of Curtiz's directorial signature is his expressionistic visual style, and its most obvious feature is its unusual camera angles and carefully detailed, crowded, complex compositions, full of mirrors and reflections, smoke and fog, and physical objects, furniture, foliage, bars, and windows, that stand between the camera and

3116-892: The 2011 Hungarian census, 9,896,333 people (99.6% of the total population) speak Hungarian, of whom 9,827,875 people (98.9%) speak it as a first language, while 68,458 people (0.7%) speak it as a second language . About 2.2 million speakers live in other areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Of these, the largest group lives in Transylvania , the western half of present-day Romania , where there are approximately 1.25 million Hungarians . There are large Hungarian communities also in Slovakia , Serbia and Ukraine , and Hungarians can also be found in Austria , Croatia , and Slovenia , as well as about

3198-537: The Army (1943), and White Christmas (1954), and he made comedies, with Life with Father (1947) and We're No Angels (1955). Curtiz was born Manó Kaminer to a Jewish family in Budapest in 1886, where his father was a carpenter and his mother an opera singer. In 1905, he Magyarised his name to Mihály Kertész. Curtiz had a lower middle class upbringing. He recalled during an interview that his family's home

3280-575: The Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, mainly based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz . Hungarians did, in fact, absorb some Turkic influences during several centuries of cohabitation. The influence on Hungarians was mainly from the Turkic Oghur speakers such as Sabirs , Bulgars of Atil , Kabars and Khazars . The Oghur tribes are often connected with

3362-504: The Hungarian lexemes collected from technical texts, dialects etc. would total up to 1,000,000 words. Parts of the lexicon can be organized using word-bushes (see an example on the right). The words in these bushes share a common root, are related through inflection, derivation and compounding, and are usually broadly related in meaning. Strolling players Strolling players were travelling theatre groups in England during

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3444-534: The Hungarian language contains 75,000 words, and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian Language (to be published in 18 volumes in the next twenty years) is planned to contain 110,000 words. The default Hungarian lexicon is usually estimated to comprise 60,000 to 100,000 words. (Independently of specific languages, speakers actively use at most 10,000 to 20,000 words, with an average intellectual using 25,000 to 30,000 words. ) However, all

3526-514: The Hungarians whose exoethnonym is usually derived from Onogurs (> (H)ungars), a Turkic tribal confederation . The similarity between customs of Hungarians and the Chuvash people , the only surviving member of the Oghur tribes, is visible. For example, the Hungarians appear to have learned animal husbandry techniques from the Oghur speaking Chuvash people (or historically Suvar people ), as

3608-587: The Red Sea. Shot in Vienna with a cast of 5,000, it had for its theme the love story of an Israelite maiden and an Egyptian prince. Paramount Pictures in the U.S. bought the rights to the film to compete with Cecil B. DeMille 's The Ten Commandments . However, The Moon of Israel caught the attention of Jack and Harry Warner , and Harry went to Europe in 1926 just to meet Curtiz and watch him work as director. The Warners were impressed that Curtiz had developed

3690-687: The Samoyed branch of the family, but that is now frequently questioned. The name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian , and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg. Ǫgrinŭ ) seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onoğur (which means ' ten arrows ' or ' ten tribes ' ). There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and

3772-452: The Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular. The traditional view holds that the Hungarian language diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in western Siberia east of the southern Urals . In Hungarian, Iranian loanwords date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over

3854-535: The army for a year, before he was wounded fighting on the Russian front. Curtiz wrote of that period: The intoxicating joy of life was interrupted, the world had gone mad ... We were taught to kill. I was drafted into the Emperor's Army ... After that, many things happened: destruction, thousands forever silenced, crippled or sent to anonymous graves. Then came the collapse [of Austria-Hungary]. Fate had spared me. He

3936-500: The auditoriums. Sometimes we travelled in trains, sometimes in stage coaches, sometimes on horseback. Sometimes we played in town halls, sometimes in little restaurants with no scenery at all. Sometimes we gave shows out of doors. Those strolling actors were the kindest-hearted people I have ever known. They would do anything for each other. He worked as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912. and

4018-420: The biblical flood, and the other a World War I-era romance. It was the first epic film attempted by Warner Bros., and in handing production over to Curtiz, they were hoping to assure its success. The climactic flood sequence was considered "spectacular" at the time, observed historian Richard Schickel , while biographer James C. Robertson said it was "one of the most spectacular incidents in film history." Its cast

4100-435: The career of Lucy Doraine , who went on to become an international star, along with that of Lili Damita , who later married Errol Flynn . I was laid in the aisles by Curtiz's camera work ... [by] shots and angles that were pure genius. – Jack L. Warner , after watching Moon of Israel The Moon of Israel (1924) was a spectacle of the enslavement of the children of Israel and their miraculous deliverance by way of

4182-399: The cellar of his family home when he was 8 years old, where he and five of his friends re-enacted plays. They set up the stage, with scenery and props, and Curtiz directed them. After he graduated from college at age 19, he took a job as an actor with a travelling theatre company, where he began working as one their travelling players . From that job, he became a pantomimist with a circus for

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4264-682: The count's film studio, Sascha Films . Curtiz later wrote that at Sascha, he "learned the basic laws of film art, which, in those days, had progressed further in Vienna than anywhere else." Among the films he directed were Biblical epics such as Sodom und Gomorrha (1922) and Die Sklavenkönigin (1924) (titled Moon of Israel in the U.S.). He also made Red Heels (1925) and The Golden Butterfly (1926), and once directed 14-year-old Greta Garbo in Sweden. During this period, he tended to specialize in directing two kinds of films, either sophisticated light comedies or historical spectaculars. He launched

4346-465: The east, specifically from eastern Siberia. Hungarian historian and archaeologist Gyula László claims that geological data from pollen analysis seems to contradict the placing of the ancient Hungarian homeland near the Urals. Today, the consensus among linguists is that Hungarian is a member of the Uralic family of languages. The classification of Hungarian as a Uralic/Finno-Ugric rather than

4428-474: The end of the war, in 1919, the new communist government nationalized the film industry, so he decided to return to Vienna to direct films there. Curtiz briefly worked at UFA GmbH , a German film company, where he learned to direct large groups of costumed extras, along with using complicated plots, rapid pacing, and romantic themes. His career truly started due to his work for Count Alexander Kolowrat (known as Sascha), with whom he made at least 21 films for

4510-630: The equivalents in English. Adjectives precede nouns ( a piros alma 'the red apple') and have three degrees: positive ( piros 'red'), comparative ( pirosabb 'redder') and superlative ( a legpirosabb 'the reddest'). If the noun takes the plural or a case, an attributive adjective is invariable: a piros almák 'the red apples'. However, a predicative adjective agrees with the noun: az almák piros ak 'the apples are red'. Adjectives by themselves can behave as nouns (and so can take case suffixes): Melyik almát kéred? – A piros at . 'Which apple would you like? – The red one'. The neutral word order

4592-452: The film and was impressed enough by Tracy's acting that he hired him on to MGM's roster of stars. Curtiz's American career did not really take off until 1935. In the early 1930s, Warner Bros. was struggling to compete with the larger MGM, which was releasing costume dramas such as Queen Christina (1933) with Greta Garbo , Treasure Island (1934) with Wallace Beery , and The Count of Monte Cristo (1934). Warner Bros. decided to take

4674-419: The first Hungarian-language book set in movable type . By the 17th century, the language already closely resembled its present-day form, although two of the past tenses remained in use. German, Italian and French loans also began to appear. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the period of Ottoman rule (1541 to 1699). In the 19th century, a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy , spearheaded

4756-423: The first time, and he made stars of Errol Flynn , Olivia de Havilland , and Bette Davis . He himself was nominated five times, and won twice, once for Best Short Subject for Sons of Liberty and once as Best Director for Casablanca . Curtiz was among those who introduced to Hollywood a visual style using artistic lighting, extensive and fluid camera movement, high crane shots, and unusual camera angles. He

4838-665: The human characters and seem to surround and entrap them. – Biographer Sidney Rosenzweig Although unusual projects for Warner Bros., Curtiz directed two horror films for the studio, Doctor X (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), both in early Technicolor , with numerous atmospheric scenes filmed on the studio's back lot. Another breakthrough film was 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), starring then little-known actors Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis in one of their earliest films. MGM head Louis B. Mayer saw

4920-482: The language holds official status nationally in Hungary and regionally in Romania , Slovakia , Serbia , Austria and Slovenia . In 2014 The proportion of Transylvanian students studying Hungarian exceeded the proportion of Hungarian students, which shows that the effects of Romanianization are slowly getting reversed and regaining popularity. The Dictate of Trianon resulted in a high proportion of Hungarians in

5002-436: The language were utilized. This movement produced more than ten thousand words, most of which are used actively today. The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between mutually comprehensible dialects gradually diminished. In 1920, Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon , losing 71 percent of its territory and one-third of the ethnic Hungarian population along with it. Today,

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5084-489: The leading figure of the Hungarian language reforms.) Kazinczy's chief goal was to replace existing words of German and Latin origins with newly created Hungarian words. As a result, Kazinczy and his later followers (the reformers) significantly reduced the formerly high ratio of words of Latin and German origins in the Hungarian language, which were related to social sciences, natural sciences, politics and economics, institutional names, fashion etc. Giving an accurate estimate for

5166-448: The medium of writing used at the time, wood, is perishable. The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000 by Stephen I . The country became a Western -styled Christian ( Roman Catholic ) state, with Latin script replacing Hungarian runes . The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, intermingled with Latin text. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian

5248-579: The most noteworthy features of all those films." On a visit to Hollywood in 1927, Ilya Tolstoy , Leo Tolstoy 's son, who had been a friend of Curtiz in Europe, wanted him to direct several films based on his father's novels. He chose Curtiz because he already knew the locale and its people. During this period, Warner Bros. began experimenting with talking films. They assigned two part-talking pictures for Curtiz to direct: Tenderloin (1928) and Noah's Ark (1928), both of which also starred Costello. Noah's Ark included two parallel stories, one recounting

5330-574: The most part, mutually intelligible . The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is mentioned but not listed separately by Ethnologue, is spoken primarily in Bacău County in eastern Romania. The Csángó Hungarian group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people , and therefore preserved features that closely resemble earlier forms of Hungarian. Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of short and long vowels such as o and ó . Most of

5412-475: The most profitable film that year, also winning three Academy Awards and being nominated for Best Picture. It is in Rotten Tomatoes ' list of Top 100 Movies. That being their third Curtiz film together, Flynn and de Havilland continued to star in other hugely successful films under his direction, including The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), also co-starring Bette Davis. Davis starred in

5494-553: The name of the country, " Magyarország " (Hungary), pronounced /ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ/ . It is one of three palatal consonants, the others being ⟨ty⟩ and ⟨ny⟩ . Historically a fourth palatalized consonant ʎ existed, still written ⟨ly⟩ . A single 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar tap ( akkora 'of that size'), but a double 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar trill ( akkorra 'by that time'), like in Spanish and Italian . Primary stress

5576-407: The new information for the listeners that may not have been known or that their knowledge must be corrected. For example, "Én vagyok az apád". ('I am your father'. Literally, 'It is I who am your father'.), from the movie The Empire Strikes Back , the pronoun I ( én ) is in the focus and implies that it is new information, and the listener thought that someone else is his father. Although Hungarian

5658-443: The other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, and Hungarian /h/ corresponds to Khanty /x/ , while Hungarian final /z/ corresponds to Khanty final /t/ . For example, Hungarian ház [haːz] ' house ' vs. Khanty xot [xot] ' house ' , and Hungarian száz [saːz] ' hundred ' vs. Khanty sot [sot] ' hundred ' . The distance between

5740-485: The pairs have an almost similar pronunciation and vary significantly only in their duration. However, pairs a / á and e / é differ both in closedness and length. Consonant length is also distinctive in Hungarian. Most consonant phonemes can occur as geminates . The sound voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/ , written ⟨gy⟩ , sounds similar to 'd' in British English 'duty'. It occurs in

5822-411: The proposition is only for that particular thing or aspect, and it implies that the proposition is not true for some others. For example, in " Az almát János látja". ('It is John who sees the apple'. Literally 'The apple John sees.'), the apple is in the topic, implying that other objects may be seen by not him but other people (the pear may be seen by Peter). The topic part may be empty. The focus shows

5904-664: The studio's leading director. Curtiz continued the successful genre of adventure films starring Flynn (often with de Havilland) that included The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), a depiction of the British Light Brigade during the Crimean War . The film, another Oscar winner, was a greater success at the box-office than Captain Blood . It was followed by The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, co-directed with William Keighley whom Curtiz replaced),

5986-414: The surrounding 7 countries, so it is widely spoken or understood. Although host countries are not always considerate of Hungarian language users, communities are strong. The Szeklers , for example, form their own region and have their own national museum, educational institutions, and hospitals. Hungarian has about 13 million native speakers, of whom more than 9.8 million live in Hungary. According to

6068-517: The total word count is difficult, since it is hard to define a "word" in agglutinating languages, due to the existence of affixed words and compound words. To obtain a meaningful definition of compound words, it is necessary to exclude compounds whose meaning is the mere sum of its elements. The largest dictionaries giving translations from Hungarian to another language contain 120,000 words and phrases (but this may include redundant phrases as well, because of translation issues) . The new desk lexicon of

6150-521: Was a cramped apartment, where he had to share a small room with his two brothers and a sister. "Many times, we are hungry," he added. After graduating from high school, he studied at Markoszy University , followed by the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, in Budapest, before beginning his career. Curtiz became attracted to the theater when he was a child in Hungary. He built a little theatre in

6232-828: Was a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. Kertész directed Hungary's first feature film, Today and Tomorrow ( Ma és holnap , 1912), in which he also had a leading role. He followed that with another film, The Last Bohemian ( Az utolsó bohém , also 1912). Curtiz began living in various cities in Europe to work on silent films in 1913. He first went to study at Nordisk studio in Denmark , which led to work as an actor and assistant director to August Blom on Denmark's first multireel feature film, Atlantis (1913). After World War I began in 1914, he returned to Hungary, where he served in

6314-406: Was an experienced filmmaker, now aged 38, Warners assigned him to direct a number of average-quality films to break him in, the first being The Third Degree (1926). Curtiz's unique camerawork technique was used throughout, visible in dramatic camera angles, in a style which one critic assumed other directors would likely envy. When I first came here I was called on to direct six or seven pictures

6396-488: Was assigned to make fund-raising documentaries for the Red Cross in Hungary. In 1917, he was made director of production at Phoenix Films, the leading studio in Budapest, where he remained until he left Hungary. However, none of the films he directed there survive intact, and most are completely lost. By 1918, he had become one of Hungary's most important directors, having by then directed about 45 films. However, following

6478-519: Was made up of over 10,000 extras. However, the reissue of the film in 1957 cut an hour off the original time of 2 hours and 15 minutes. The story was an adaptation written by Bess Meredyth , who married Curtiz a few years later. The critical success of these films by Curtiz contributed to Warner Bros' becoming the fastest-growing studio in Hollywood. In 1930, Curtiz directed Mammy (1930), Al Jolson 's fourth film after being in Hollywood's first true talking picture , The Jazz Singer (1927). During

6560-529: Was prevalent. Curtiz was already a well-known director in Europe when Warner Bros. invited him to Hollywood in 1926, when he was 39 years of age. He had already directed 64 films in Europe, and soon helped Warner Bros. become the fastest-growing movie studio. He directed 102 films during his Hollywood career, mostly at Warners, where he directed ten actors to Oscar nominations. James Cagney and Joan Crawford won their only Academy Awards under Curtiz's direction. He put Doris Day and John Garfield on screen for

6642-560: Was quite satisfied being in Hollywood: It is splendid to work here in this country. One has everything at hand to work with. The director does not have to worry about anything except his ideas. He can concentrate on those with no worry about his production otherwise. The Third Degree (1926), available at the Library of Congress , made good use of Curtiz's experience in using moving cameras to create expressionistic scenes, such as

6724-472: Was versatile, and could handle any film genre: melodrama, comedy, love story, film noir , musical, war story, Western , horror, or historical epic. He always paid attention to the human-interest aspect of every story, stating that the "human and fundamental problems of real people" were the basis of all good drama. The death of 25 horses in The Charge of the Light Brigade under Curtiz's direction led to

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