Korda Chrome
He was born Sandor Kellner on September the 16th, 1893, near Turkeve, Hungary, Korda originally a jobbing journalist and ultimately editor of a film magazine, would see his directorial debut in 1914. His two younger siblings, Vincent and Zoltan, would later partner with him as director and art director respectively.
Korda's turbulent quarter of a century in Britain tended to eclipse his previous seventeen years as a director first in Hungary and subsequently in Austria, Berlin, Paris and Hollywood. And although both he and Michael Curtiz were forerunners who dominated the early Hungarian film industry between 1917 and 1919, Korda was virtually unheard of outside of his home country in that juncture of time.
When the communist regime of Bela Kun would crash and burn in 1919. Korda fled Hungary. He emigrated with his wife, the actress Maria Corda, and off to Vienna they would go, where he would direct a quartet of films. The first was a faithful adaptation of Mark Twain's 1881 novel The Prince and the Pauper, which was successfully released in America. The paeans came a plenty, for the evocative recreation of British pageantry and would convince Korda that foreign directors could effectively handle national topics outside the realm of their own experiences (Director Schlesinger would take a note of his book some fifty years later with Midnight Cowboy). In Berlin from the years 1922-1926, with films like Das Unbekannte Morgen (The Unknown Tomorrow, 1923) he would accommodate his own predilection for breezy romantic subjects, adopting the Expressionist preoccupations with destiny and with mysticism, subjects that were then quite fashionable in German cinema. A determinant spirit, eager to make films that would attract Hollywood, Korda would direct the lavish Eine Dubarry von Heute ( A Modern Dubarry), in 1926. It would earn him an official contract with First National in Hollywood which he took up early in 1927.
During his four years in Hollywood (1927-30), however, Korda was typecast as a director of female stars or of films set primarily in Hungary. The only notable film made there, The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927), was an impressively photographed re-telling of the Greek legend, re-molded into a marital comedy, with the characters given contemporary speech and mores. This humanizing approach to history though anticipated by Ernst Lubitsch's German costume pictures, would serve as the template for Korda's future films.
Korda would return to Europe in 1930, At Paramount's French subsidiary at Johnville he would churn 1931's Marius, the first in a trilogy of film adaptations straight out of Marcel Pagnol's plays about Marseilles life.
In the autumn of 1931, Alexander Korda came to Britain to direct 'quota' films for Paramount's British subsidiary, but within a month he decided to establish his own company, London Film Productions. The company's sixth production, The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), achieved Korda's goal of successful competition in world markets. It would make an impressive turn out via the American box-office and earned ten times its cost in it's first international run. Historical costume dramas were considered passe at the time, but Korda would humanize a well-known historical subject, and yet transform it into a sex romp which owed much to the vitality of Charles Laughton's performance.
For the next seven years, Korda aspired to elaborate on the film's success, first with other 'private life' thematic films ( The Rise of Catherine the Great and The Private Life of Don Juan both in 1934 and both box-office disasters) and then with a series of over thirty prestige films for which Korda would mix and match ethnicity and talents he had collected to achieve an international production. Although none of his follow-up films, could parallel Henry's profitability (as they all were exorbitant to produce, they could hardly recoup proportionally as much), even a selective list shows how much the British film industry owed to this brilliant emigre; The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Things to Come and Rembrandt (both 1936), Fire Over England and Knight Without Armour (both 1937), The Drum (1938), The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).
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All these films showcased the Korda stamp in varying degrees, according to the amount of control he exerted as head of production. This stamp is best defined by a brief analysis of his strengths and of his weaknesses as a filmmaker. Although associated with all of the one hundred films, in which London Films produced between 1932 and 1936, he directed only eight of those. The subjects he opted, tended to fall into two categories; the satirical, bourgeois comedies; Wedding Rehearsal (1933), The Girl from Maxim's (1933) and An Ideal Husband (1947), and the 'private life' films - The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Private Life of Don Juan, Rembrandt and Lady Hamilton (1941).
The most outstanding quality that his productions would have in common was their visual polish, which was more than somewhat contributed by cameraman Georges Perinal and to Korda's brother Vincent, who was London Films head of art direction. Both these men would create impressive films that would rival anything Hollywood could convey, both in grandeur of scope and sumptuousness of detail. Noted actors were chosen for the lead parts, while Korda would cast the supporting roles from his menagerie of young contract starlets. The films he helmed, and those he produced, primarily share a nostalgic view of Britain and proudly champion it's past glories.
However his main talents were entrepreneurial rather than directorial. As a film impresario he boasted both a fertile imagination, peppered with a journalist's understanding of promotion and publicity. His specialty was his signature method of manipulation of finances and financiers, and that would be the secret to his success for the better part of the Thirties.
The business of making internationally marketable films was a costly one, and London Films did require immense financial investment. This came from two sources, America's United Artists Company (Korda would become a full partner with these chaps in 1935) and the City of London's Prudential Assurance Company. The United Artists tie-up, was a blessing as UA owned no cinema chains itself and could guarantee foolproof American distribution for Korda's films. Substantial investments by the Prudential became Korda's mainstay in the Thirties and led to the building of Denham Studios. Denham would open their doors in 1936, and the time was the premier in cutting-edge studios in the whole of Europe, yet it was far too big for a single producer and by the time it was completely operational, the investment boom in the film industry, brought on by the success of The Private Life of Henry VIII, had given way to a slump. Korda inevitably lost control of Denham to the financiers (in the name of one J. Arthur Rank). This would force Korda to become a tenant producer in the studio he had built just a few years prior.
Having gone to Hollywood in 1940, to oversee the completion of The Thief of Bagdad, Korda stayed abroad, and would direct Lady Hamilton, in which Admiral Lord Nelson's efforts against the French would become an open metaphor for Britain's contemporaneous battle with the Germans. This film would force a subpoena, from isolationist American senators who charged him with making the American branch of his company a center for pro-British propaganda Although, scathing criticism would ensue, and from many a disgruntled Brit, for Korda's abandoning post and setting shop in Hollywood. Korda did in fact make several trans-Atlantic crossings during the war, and it now seems evident that he was acting as a courier for Winston Churchill. In 1942, he was knighted by King George VI, an historical event as Korda would be the first film artist to be dubbed.
In the summer of 1943, the now Sir Alexander Korda would return to roost in London, but would expend two flustering years in the attempt to set up the merged MGM- British/London Film Productions company, from which he ultimately resigned in late 1945. Having completed just one paltry production, Perfect Strangers (1945). Throughout 1946, he was engaged in the project of rebuilding London Films as a separate organization. Korda soon would become weary from directing and a career change beckoned, hence an executive producer was born - he was afterall inherently an administrator a businessman. After 1947, his name would cease to appear on the film credits altogether, and with his name non grata, so would come to an end - the old familiar Korda style and stamp. He did have a major triumph during his last years, in that he helped draw in scores of British independent filmmakers to his company and allowed them liberties, in which they could work without any interference Directors like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. David Lean, Carol Reed, Anthony Asquith, Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. and even Laurence Olivier, would make some of their best films while working under the aegis of Korda's umbrella group.
To ascertain adequate distributing for these films, Korda gained authority and control of British Lion in 1946, and reformed and refitted Shepperton Studios which eventually became London Film's production base. During the 1948 financial crisis in the film industry, Korda's Britsh Lion secured the first government loan to the film business through the newly formed National Film Finance Corporation. And by 1954, the NFFC loan, a whopping three million pounds plus, had still not been repaied, and with the appointment of an official receiver of British Lion, the second Korda film empire would collapse. Even after this devastating debacle, Korda was able to maneuver new financial alliances which facilitated him in the continuation of film producing until his death in the year 1956.
Korda was nearly as famous for the films he did not complete, as the ones that he did - indeed, he received the honor of having an entire television documentary devoted to footage from a film, I Claudius (directed by Josef von Sternberg), which was forsaken, all but after a month's shooting. He was infinitely more successful as a producer than as a director, and his rightful reputation for extravagance could not have been more deserved. Yet he demonstrated to the world entire, 'that in spectacle and lavishness of production, the British industry could legitimately hope to match the bat that America could produce.'
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