Jenő Janovics: Michel Curtiz’s first screenwriter

Abstract

Jenő Janovics was Transylvania’s pioneer in film and one of the first screenwriter–producers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He discovered talents like Michael Curtiz and Sir Alexander Korda. He wrote 31 film scripts, of which only one has survived: A tolonc (The Exile) and the silent film made from it, is the only remaining testimony of Curtiz’s and Janovics’s collaboration. In 2022, we commemorate the 60-year anniversary of the death of the former and 150 years from the birth of the latter. While all the known articles so far focus on Janovics’s legacy as a producer or a director, this article attempts to draw a portrait of Janovics the screenwriter, demonstrating his screenwriting qualities and his joint creative process with Curtiz in the case of A tolonc.