The distinguished film director Anatole Litvak was born in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, the son of Jewish parents. His very first job was as a stage hand, and in 1915 he became an actor, performing at a little-known experimental theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. As a teenager he witnessed the 1917 Russian Revolution and the consequent nationalization of all theaters and drama schools. It was at this time Litvak decided to quit the stage and join the burgeoning Soviet cinema industry. He was given a job at the Leningrad Nordkino studio as a set designer, but before long he worked his way up to directing short features, notably Tatiana (1925), a film about children.
In 1925, he left the Soviet Union for Berlin, where he was hired by famed director Georg Wilhelm Pabst to edit La rue sans joie (1925) ("The Joyless Street") with Greta Garbo. He then began directing numerous short films for Ufa, and, eventually, full-length features. The most important of these was the romantic comedy Dolly macht Karriere (1930). Litvak's stay in Germany was cut short by te rise to power of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Litvak moved to France, and directed Mayerling (1936), starring Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux. This production was the turning point in Litvak's career, being a major hit on both sides of the Atlantic. He received effusive praise from critic Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times, who commented on the director's "superb assembling of scenes" and the "matchless performances" of the stars (September 14,1937). Hollywood soon beckoned, and, from 1937 to 1941, Litvak became a contract director for Warner Brothers. His first film was La femme que j'aime (1937), which starred his future wife Miriam Hopkins. His experience with diverse aspects of stagecraft, as well as his speaking four languages (Russian, German, French and English), enabled him to competently tackle a wide variety of subjects, from sophisticated continental comedy (Cette nuit est notre nuit (1937)) to historical drama (Anastasia (1956)) and romance (L'étrangère (1940)).
Litvak was at his best directing taut, suspenseful crime dramas, such as Le mystérieux docteur Clitterhouse (1938) with Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart, hailed by Variety as "an unquestionable winner"; and two tough actioners starring John Garfield, Castle on the Hudson (1940) and Out of the Fog (1941). Having become an American citizen in 1940, Litvak enlisted in the US army and collaborated with Frank Capra on the wartime "Why we Fight" series of documentaries. At war's end he left the army with the rank of colonel and returned to Hollywood to direct the classic thriller Raccrochez, c'est une erreur (1948) with Barbara Stanwyck. Possibly his best film was the superb psychological drama La fosse aux serpents (1948), the first film to seriously deal with the treatment of mental illness. Indeed, the film was so influential that it precipitated changes in the American mental health system. Litvak was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director, but lost out to John Huston for Le trésor de la Sierra Madre (1948).
In 1949 the director, who had once described Hollywood as a "Mecca", returned to Europe and settled in Paris, working only infrequently. He did some more work for 20th Century Fox, under contract in 1951 and from 1955 to 1956. Notable among his later efforts are two contrasting films with Ingrid Bergman: the lavishly produced Anastasia (1956), about a woman claiming to be the Romanoff dynasty's last living direct descendant), and the sad, introspective romantic drama Aimez-vous Brahms? (1961), shot on location in Paris. In stark thematic contrast to these, he also directed the suspenseful war/crime drama La nuit des généraux (1967) (with Peter O'Toole). Anatole Litvak died in a hospital in Neuilly, Paris, in December 1974 at the age of 72.
