Happy Birthday, Carol Reed! Born today 1906, this English producer and film director was noted for his technical mastery of the suspense-thriller genre. He was also the first British film director to be knighted.
Born in Putney, London, England, United Kingdom, Reed was the out-of-wedlock son of English actor-producer and theatre manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (the leading actor of his day).
One decade later, Reed's father passed away when his son was ten years old, leaving his mother to raise him with help from a small bequest.
Reed was later educated at a boarding university in Canterbury, just slightly ahead of his fellow student and future English film director Michael Powell.
Post-graduation, Reed embarked on an acting career while still in his late teens, although his mother had little confidence in his ability to earn a living in that field, and encouraged him to try farming.
Reed later made his stage debut at age seventeen as a member of English actress Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike's theater company.
At twenty, joined English writer Edgar Wallace's company. During this period, Reed became Wallace's personal assistant in 1927.
Eventually taken on by English actor, writer, film producer/film director and theatrical producer/director Basil Dean, Reed worked for his Associated Talking Pictures. This was successively for ATP as a dialogue director, second-unit director and then assistant director.
One of Reed's films in the later role working under Dean was the 1934 British black and white historical drama/romance film 'Java Head'.
Aside from Dean the other co-director was British film director, screenwriter, film editor, film producer, and Britain's first university professor of film Thorold Dickinson ['Hill 24 Doesn't Answer').
Reed's earliest films as director were "quota quickies", which were mostly low-cost, low-quality, quickly-accomplished films commissioned by American distributors active in the United Kingdom or by British cinema owners purely to satisfy the quota requirements.
Even the English novelist Henry Graham Greene (better known by his pen name Graham Greene), then reviewing films for the weekly British magazine The Spectator, commented that Reed "has more sense of the cinema than most veteran British directors".
During the war years, the scripts of several of Reed's films in this period were written by British writer, film director and producer Frank Launder and English film director, producer and writer Sidney Gilliat.
The screenwriters and director worked for British film producer Edward Black, of whom released through the British subsidiary of 20th Century Fox.
From 1942, Reed served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps: he was eventually granted the rank of Captain and placed with the film unit, and then with the Directorate of Army Psychiatry.
After the war, Reed made his three most highly regarded films, beginning with the first film of which he is best known for producing and directing. This was the 1947 British black and white noir/thriller film 'Odd Man Out'.
Based off of British author F.L. Green's 1946 drama mystery thriller fiction novel of the same name, the film follows wounded fugitive Johnny McQueen's (James Mason) dark odyssey through the streets of Belfast.
Following a `fundraising' robbery which goes horribly wrong, the badly injured, abandoned, and increasingly delirious IRA leader wanders the city in search of an escape route from the British authorities while Kathleen Sullivan (Kathleen Ryan), the woman he loves, searches for him among the shadows.
The following year, 'Odd Man Out' was the recipient of the first BAFTA Award for Best British Film. This occurred at the 1st British Academy Film Awards in late May.
Roman Polanski ('Repulsion', 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Chinatown', 'The Pianist') has repeatedly cited 'Odd Man Out' as his favorite film.
Afterwards, Reed was then signed on with British film producer director and screenwriter Alexander Korda, to whom would become the producer of some of Reed's most admired films and who later introduced Reed the director to Greene.
The next two of Reed's films were made from screenplays by Greene. The first included the 1948 British black and white drama/thriller film 'The Fallen Idol' (also known as 'The Lost Illusion'). Greene was one of the co-writers of the film.
Based off of Greene's short story The Basement Room, 'The Fallen Idol' was the author's favorite film of his work - even though it radically altered the original.
The following year, 'The Fallen Idol' won the second BAFTA Award for Best British Film. This occurred at the 2nd British Academy Film Awards in late May. It was also nominated for Best Film from any Source. However, the film did not win.
Later that same year, Reed co-produced and directed the second film of which he is best known. This was the landmark 1949 British black and white noir/mystery film 'The Third Man'. It was the second of the two of Reed's films that were made from screenplays by Green.
Set in postwar Vienna, Austria, the film follows Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find him dead.
Martins then develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Maj. Calloway (Trevor Howard) and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli).
Thanks to the inimitable direction by Reed and brilliant performances by Cotten, Welles and Valli, 'The Third Man' only grows in stature as the years pass.
Reed had insisted on casting Welles as Harry Lime, although American film producer, screenwriter and film studio executive (and co-producer of the film) David O. Selznick had wanted English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer Noël Coward for the role.
For the United Kingdom version of 'The Third Man', Reed narrated. For the American version, it was Cotten who narrated.
Greene’s razor-sharp dialogue for 'The Third Man' was based on his own 1949 novella of the same name. It was written as a preliminary to his screenplay for the film.
With Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker's applied an expressionistic, dramatic use of light, shadow and canted framing. This allowed 'The Third Man' to be one of the most visually-stylish thrillers of all time, even almost seven decades later.
The evocative score was written by Viennese zither player and composer Anton Karas (of whom Reed discovered in a courtyard outside a small Viennese restaurant by chance).
The title music "The Third Man Theme" topped the international music charts in 1950, bringing the previously unknown Karas international fame.
The theme would also later inspire Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic Nino Rota's principal melody in Federico Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita' (1960).
While Greene wanted Martins and Schmidt to reconcile at the end of the film, after Lime, her lover, is killed by Martins, Reed insisted that Schmidt should ignore him and walk on.
"The whole point of the Valli character in that film is that she’d experienced a fatal love – and then comes along this silly American!"
Reed also once said: "A picture should end as it has to. I don’t think anything in life ends 'right'".
According to English film critic and historian Derek Malcolm, 'The Third Man' is the "best film noir ever made out of Britain".
The film won the Grand Prix at the 3rd Cannes Film Festival in September 1949, the predecessor of the Palme d'Or. The British Film Institute (BFI) later voted 'The Third Man' the greatest British film of the 20th century.
In 1953, Reed became only the second British film director to be knighted for his craft. The first was Sir Alexander Korda in 1942. He was a Hungarian-born British film producer and director and screenwriter.
In the early 1960s, Reed was contracted to direct the epic 1962 American Technicolor historical drama adventure film 'Mutiny on the Bounty' for MGM.
The film was to be a remake of British-born American film director, actor, scriptwriter, and producer Frank Lloyd's 1935 American Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer black and white drama film of the same name.
After Marlon Brando was cast as 1st Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, problems with the mock Bounty and the weather at the locations caused delays. Brando had insisted on creative control during shooting, and he and Reed argued incessantly.
Reed later left the production at its relatively early stage, and was instead replaced by Lewis Milestone ('All Quiet on the Western Front').
It is worth noting, however, that when Reed resigned as director of 'Mutiny', he claimed that it was as a result of disagreements with American producer Aaron Rosenberg--not, as is usually said, with Brando. Brando always claimed that he admired Reed greatly and had supported him in arguments.
Six years later, Reed directed the 1968 British Technicolor musical drama film 'Oliver!' It was based off of Charles Dickens' 1837 coming-of-age crime social fiction novel Oliver Twist.
One year later, 'Oliver!' was nominated for eight BAFTAs. This included Best Direction, Best Film, Best Actor (Ron Moody), Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles (Jack Wild), Best Sound Track, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design.
This occurred at the 22nd British Film Awards in February 1969. However, the film did not win.
Two months later, 'Oliver!' received six nominations but won six other Oscars instead. These were for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Musical, Best Production Design and Best Sound.
It also won an Academy Honorary Award for Canadian choreographer and dancer Onna White for her outstanding choreography achievement for the film. This occurred at the 41st Academy Awards in mid-April.
In his later years, Reed suffered increasingly from deafness, which made him less and less inclined to direct films.
He eventually passed at his home from a heart attack at 213 King's Road in Chelsea, London, England, United Kingdom on April 25, 1976. Reed was 69.
Reed had lived there since 1948. A blue plaque is placed on his former home in his honour.
His second wife and widow, English actress Penelope Dudley-Ward, was eventually laid to rest beside him following her death from a brain tumor in late January 1982. She was 67.
Steven Spielberg has named Reed as an influence. Powell had once said that Reed "could put a film together like a watchmaker puts together a watch".
It was Greene, however, who gave Reed perhaps the more important personal accolade:
"The only director I know with that particular warmth of human sympathy, the extraordinary feeling for the right face in the right part, the exactitude of cutting, and not least important the power of sympathizing with an author's worries and an ability to guide him."
Reed had been active from 1935–1972.
