Happy Birthday, Karel Reisz! Born today in 1926, this Czech-born British writer, producer and director was active in post–World War II Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s.
Reisz was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia of Jewish extraction. His father was a lawyer.
He was also a refugee; one of the one of the six hundred and sixty-nine rescued by British banker and humanitarian Sir Nicolas Winton.
Reisz came to England in 1938, speaking almost no English, but eradicated his foreign accent as quickly as possible
After attending Leighton Park School, Reisz joined the Royal Air Force toward the end of the war; his parents died at Auschwitz.
Following his war service, Reisz read Natural Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and began to write for film journals. This included the British monthly film magazine Sight and Sound.
In 1947, Reisz later co-founded the short-lived but influential British film journal Sequence.
This was with British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic Lindsay Anderson ('if....') and British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer Gavin Lambert.
Though Anderson was a leading-light of the Free Cinema movement, he later disdained the 'movement' tag. The term referred to an absence of propagandized intent or deliberate box office appeal.
Other notable figures of Free Cinema included English filmmaker Tony Richardson (Academy Award-winning Best Picture 'Tom Jones') and Italian film director, novelist, photographer and painter Lorenza Mazzetti.
However, in terms of themes if not in style, Reisz was the most consistent of the young directors most closely associated with the British New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Reisz directed his first feature film with the 1960 British black and white Kitchen sink romance/drama film 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning'.
Set in a Nottingham factory, Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) works in a mindless haze, but his weekends are even more muddled due to his love affairs and his alcohol problem.
One of the women Arthurs is involved with, Brenda (Rachel Roberts), is married to his coworker, but pregnant with Arthur's child.
Meanwhile, Arthur is also pursuing Doreen (Shirley Anne Field). Soon enough, he is found out by Brenda, who wants money or an abortion, and Arthur finds himself at a crossroads.
The film was an adaptation of English writer Alan Sillitoe, one of the so-called "angry young men" of the 1950s. He also wrote the film's screenplay adaptation. Richardson served as co-producer.
Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film, and television plays.
Their protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society.
In 1999, the British Film Institute named 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' the 14th greatest British film of all time on their Top 100 British films list.
Though his output was disappointingly small and some of his films performed poorly at the box-office, Reisz regularly commanded critical respect and esteem as a film-maker, critic, and educator. His later work as a stage director of uncommon insight also brought him applause.
Though Reisz made "only eleven features in his four–decade career," noted New York Times American journalist Rick Lyman about the filmmaker, "they were noted for their polish, ambition, and psychological acuity."
According to his personal life, Reisz had married twice. He had three sons by his first wife Julie Coppard, whom he later divorced.
His most notable spouse was his second wife. This was American actress of film and stage, long based in London Betsy Blair.
Blair was first married to Gene Kelly (m. 1941; div. 1957), but married Reisz in 1963. They had remained married until his passing in Camden, London, England, United Kingdom on November 25, 2002. Reisz was 76.
Reisz had been active from 1956–2000.
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