Trivia

Directed 4 actresses to Oscar nominations: Barbara O'Neil (Best Supporting Actress, All This, and Heaven Too (1940)), Barbara Stanwyck (Best Actress, Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)), Olivia de Havilland (Best Actress, The Snake Pit (1948)), and Ingrid Bergman (Best Actress, Anastasia (1956)). Bergman won an Oscar for her performance in Litvak's film.

Litvak was especially fond of Paris.He lived there between 1933 and 1936, and again between 1949 and 1974. Thirteen of his thirty seven feature length films were set there.

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955.

He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6633 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 677-683. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power with the Nazi Party in 1933, Litvak moved to France. Paris became his favored locale for shooting films.

As a refugee from Nazi Germany, Litvak was among the few directors who tried to open Hollywood's eyes to the threat Germany posed to Europe and the world.

During World War II, he enlisted and co-directed documentaries with Frank Capra, including Why We Fight films.

He returned Swedish star Ingrid Bergman to popularity with American audiences in 1956 with Anastasia, in which she won her second Oscar.

Litvak directed Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939, starring Edward G. Robinson, which used actual newsreel footage from U.S. Nazi rallies.

At the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, Litvak's Goodbye Again (also starring Ingrid Bergman) was nominated for the Palme d'Or. It starred Anthony Perkins who was reunited with Litvak in Five Miles to Midnight (1962) with both films shot in Paris.

He directed Jean Gabin in his screen debut and directed Elia Kazan in his earliest acting role, City for Conquest.

He directed Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster in Sorry, Wrong Number, a role which film historian James Robert Parish states is Stanwyck's "greatest screen triumph.".

By an order from Winston Churchill, all the films in the Why We Fight series were to be shown in all public theaters throughout Britain.

He left Russia for Berlin, Germany in 1925.

He was promoted to full colonel by the end of the war for his volunteer wartime efforts.

Litvak co-produced and alone directed The Battle of Russia in 1943. After the film was released, he was sent to Russia on a special mission, in which he held a private screening for the Russian General Staff. The theme of the film was to show the heroic manner that the Russian people fought against the Nazis. U.S. ambassador to Russia W. Averell Harriman asked Litvak to narrate the English-language film in Russian during the screening. Litvak was decorated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin for his work on this film. It was shown in theaters throughout Russia.

He began his theatrical training at age 13 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire.

His solo-directed, The Battle of Russia (1943), won numerous awards and was nominated for an Oscar.

Ending the war as a full colonel, Litvak received special awards from the governments of France, Britain, and the United States for his work. The French government awarded him the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre. The British government awarded him with a gold medal, ribbon, and citation as an honorary officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Litvak directed using a "variety of surrealistic and expressionistic devices," notes Film Noir magazine. "Litvak isn't afraid to use close-ups either. And his players not only stand up to this relentless probing but offer some of the greatest performances of their lives.".

Litvak began work in film at Leningrad's Nordkino Studios, where he was assistant director for nine silent films in the 1920s.

Litvak was notable for directing little-known foreign actors to early fame and is believed to have contributed to several actors winning Academy Awards. In 1936 he directed Mayerling, a film which made French actors Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux international stars.

As a teenager, he worked at a theater and took acting lessons at the state drama school. Then he began to work in film at Leningrad's Nordkino Studios, where he was assistant director for nine silent films in the 1920s.

Litvak was nominated in 1948 for a Best Director Oscar for The Snake Pit (1948), starring Olivia de Havilland. The film was nominated for Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Musical Score. To prepare de Havilland for her role as a mental patient, she and Litvak spent months observing actual patients at mental hospitals.

Mayerling (1936), which starred French actors Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux, is credited with establishing Litvak's international reputation as a producer and director. American writer Lincoln Kirstein claimed the film became "a kind of standard for the romantic film in a historical setting." In describing Litvak's cinematography style in the film, critic Jack Edmund Nolan writes that it is "replete with the camera trackings, pans, and swoops, techniques which later became the trademark of Max Ophuls.".

Anatole Litvak filmed The Night of the Generals (1967) in France, Germany, and Poland; a movie about three Nazi Generals suspected of murder, starring Peter O'Toole and Donald Pleasence. Litvak said about the film's subdued tones: "We tried staying away from color as much as we could; color can be bad, particularly with the war; it takes away from reality in the most horrible way.".

Because of Litvak's ability to speak Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, English, German, and French, he supervised the filming of the D-Day Normandy landings. He also filmed aerial warfare with the U.S. Eighth Air Force.

Anatole Litvak was an American filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in various countries and languages.

Litvak's first film as director was the musical Dolly Gets Ahead (1930) with Dolly Haas. He followed it with two Lilian Harvey films, No More Love (1931) and Calais-Dover (1931).