Carol Reed cemented his reputation as a great director with The Third Man (1949). Though arguably his greatest, it was certainly not his only film. In his nearly forty year career in motion pictures, Reed's body of work was incredibly eclectic, never pigeon-holing him into any one genre. He once said, "It's dull to stick to the same sort of subject and bad for one's work into the bargain. Repetition makes a director grow stale in his job, and lose his grip as an entertainer. I happen to love a dark street, with wet cobbles, and a small furtive figure under a lamp at the corner. Whenever I go on location, I instinctively look for something of that kind. Now that is bad; thoroughly bad for me, and tedious for the public. Variety is an essential exercise to a director. Every new film should be a new beginning, and nobody should ever be able to say with any certainty, 'Oh, that's a Carol Reed subject', or 'That's not a Carol Reed subject'. It's doing the particular job well - and every sort of job - that primarily interests me. I don't think the type of subject matters much."

Reed went to great lengths to make sure that the subject of his personal life didn't matter very much to the public. He once remarked, "I don't think people care what sort of kitchen curtains I have. I don't think they care about the technical people. Stars are the draw. They earn their publicity." But the real reason for his refusal to discuss subjects other than the technical aspects of his films when being interviewed was more complex. As Nicholas Wapshott wrote in his biography of Reed, "Throughout his life, Reed kept a secret which, when revealed, helps to explain much of the enigma which surrounded him. His reluctance to acknowledge the originality of his own mind stemmed, as did so much else, from having grown up the illegitimate child of one of the Victorian age's most ostentatious public figures, the great actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.. [who] enjoyed a string of mistresses and was the head of two families: one respectable household tended by his wife Maud, by whom he had three daughters; the other household presided over by his mistress May Reed, by whom he had Carol and five other children. Victorian hypocrisy and the threat of shameful revelation ensured that Tree's children by May Reed maintained a lifelong reticence about their private lives, their parents and their unusual childhood...[Carol Reed] did not write letters, nor did he keep a diary. Although he enjoyed considerable success, he kept well away from the limelight, sheltering behind a genuine shyness. He did little to disabuse those who suggested that he was no more than a bland technician whose personal affairs were not worth exploring; it was a disguise he was happy to hide behind."

Carol Reed was born in Putney, London, on December 30, 1906. Although the family connection was kept private, he grew up knowing his father, and often spent time backstage at Tree's London theater, His Majesty's. Several of the actors who had worked with Sir Herbert were later employed in small roles in Carol Reed's films. He spent a brief period as an actor himself before becoming a film director, but later admitted, "You know, I wasn't a good actor. I began as a spear carrier and then appeared through the countryside in repertory, but though I got decent parts and so on, I was never very good. Yet I'm glad I did it for seven years or so because it helped me subsequently in understanding the actor's problems."

Reed's directing career began in the 1920s on the stage and then in the 1930's when he was hired by Basil Dean, who had helped found the British film industry. He started out as assistant director on three films in 1933 and 1934 and then directed his first, with Robert Wyler, It Happened in Paris (1935), which was co-written by John Huston. During the 1930s and 1940s, Reed made several films a year, in all kinds of genres, among them the excellent Night Train to Munich (1940), starring Rex Harrison and Margaret Lockwood and The Stars Look Down (1940) with Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Not surprisingly, Hollywood studios made him offers which he turned down, preferring to remain in England. He said, "I have no desire to stay there [Hollywood], purely for one reason. When you have lived your life in one country and grown accustomed to the national traits and temperament, it is difficult to do justice to your skill elsewhere. I have never yet seen it succeed. In America, [Jean] Renoir, for instance, never made such brilliant pictures as he did in France. This applies equally to Rene Clair - to almost everyone save [Alfred] Hitchcock, who, of course, keeps to thrillers."

The late 1940s and 1950s were truly Reed's heyday, scoring hits with Odd Man Out (1947), which helped make James Mason a star; The Fallen Idol (1948) earned Reed his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director; and the following year, he was nominated for The Third Man. In the 1950s, he worked with Mason again in The Man Between (1953); and Alec Guinness in Our Man in Havana (1959), which is now considered by many to be a classic.

The 1960s proved to be less prolific for Reed. He was fired from the 1962 production of Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando, which had been fraught with problems mostly caused by the star, and ended up being an expensive failure. It seemed to shake his confidence, even though it is unlikely anyone could have controlled Brando at that point. Reed made only three films during the decade, The Running Man (1963) with Laurence Harvey and Lee Remick, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) with Rex Harrison and Charlton Heston, and Oliver! (1968) which won him the Best Director Oscar®. Included in the cast was Reed's nephew, Oliver Reed, who years before had gone to his uncle for advice on becoming an actor. Reed tried to dissuade his nephew but finally told him to go and watch films, good and bad. "If you think a film is bad, watch it over and over again until you are convinced that you know why it is bad. The same with good films, only when you are convinced that you know the reasons a film is good, try to emulate those finished performances." It must have worked, because Oliver Reed became very successful as an actor. Ironically, Carol Reed hadn't wanted to cast his nephew as Bill Sikes, but had to be talked into it by producer John Woolf. Oliver! won five Oscars®, Best Director for Reed, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Art Direction, and Best Musical Score; as well as a slew of nominations from the Director's Guild, The Golden Globes, and various film festivals.

It was to be Carol Reed's last great film. He would only make two more, Flap (1970) and Follow Me! (1972), which was also known as The Public Eye and was based on a play by Peter Shaffer. His health had been in decline for some time when he died on April 25, 1976 at the age of 69.

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

The Internet Movie Database

Carol Reed: A Biography, by Nicholas Wapshott

www.sensesofcinema.com