Born on January 21, 1898 in Kraków (then in Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Poland) into a Jewish family, Maté graduated from the University of Budapest.
He worked as assistant cameraman in Hungary and later throughout Europe, sometimes with colleague Karl Freund.
Maté worked on several of Dreyer’s films, including The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932).
He worked as cinematographer on Hollywood films from the mid-1930s, including Dodsworth (1936), the Laurel and Hardy feature Our Relations (1936) and King Vidor’s Stella Dallas (1937).
Oscar Nominations: Five Consecutive
He was nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar in five consecutive years, for Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), Alexander Korda’s That Hamilton Woman (1941), Sam Wood’s The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Zoltan Korda’s Sahara (1943), and Charles Vidor’s Cover Girl (1944).
In 1947, he turned to directing films; his credits include the film noir D.O.A. (1949), No Sad Songs for Me (1950), When Worlds Collide (1951), and the epic The 300 Spartans (1962).
A year after completing his last film, a low budget, limited-release comedy shot in Greece and scored by Manos Hatzidakis, Maté suffered a heart attack and died on October, 27 1964, at the age of 66.
