Although the Russian-born Jewish filmmaker Anatole Litvak excelled in several genres including crime films and romantic dramas, he is best remembered as a director of bravura female performances including those of Bette Davis in All This, and Heaven Too (1940), Joan Fontaine in This Above All (1942), Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit (1948), Vivien Leigh in The Deep Blue Sea (1955) and Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia (1956) and Goodbye Again (1961). Litvak was Oscar®-nominated as Best Director for The Snake Pit, and guided Bergman to a Best Actress Oscar® for Anastasia. In addition to directing, Litvak served as producer and writer on many of his films.

Born in Kiev in 1902, Michael Anatole Litvak became an actor while still in his teens and entered the Soviet film industry in 1923 as a set director and assistant director. He made his debut as a film director with Tatiana (1925) and departed that same year for Germany, where he edited the G.W. Pabst classic The Joyless Street (1925) and served as director or assistant director on several other German productions. He fled the Nazis in the mid-1930s to England and France, where he directed the international success Mayerling (1936).

In 1937 Litvak settled in Hollywood, where he began with the romantic drama The Woman I Love (1937), starring Paul Muni and Litvak's first wife, Miriam Hopkins. But he made his name with a series of polished crime dramas featuring beautifully directed star turns: The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) and Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), both with Edward G. Robinson; and Castle on the Hudson (1940) and Out of the Fog (1941), both with John Garfield. During World War II Litvak worked on several Army documentaries and other war films.

Litvak's post-war films were even more powerful. In addition to establishing himself as a top director of female stars, he made The Long Night (1947), a film noir crime drama starring Henry Fonda; Decision Before Dawn (1951), a gripping drama set during the collapse of Germany at the end of World War II; and Act of Love (1953), a bittersweet romance starring Kirk Douglas and set in the Paris of WWII and its aftermath. By the mid-1950s Litvak was again making his films in Europe; a highlight of his later career is The Night of the Generals (1967), a political and psychological thriller set in Warsaw and Hamburg, with Peter O'Toole heading an international all-star cast. Litvak's final feature before his death in France in 1974 was the elegant thriller The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970).

After Litvak and Miriam Hopkins divorced in 1939 he married Sophie Steur, a fashion designer who worked on some of his films.

by Roger Fristoe