Carol Reed - Career As A Film Director

Career As A Film Director

He worked as an Assistant Director with Basil Dean on the films Autumn Crocus, Lorna Doone and Loyalties and with Thorold Dickinson on Java Head. His earliest films as director were 'quota quickies', but his career began to take off with The Stars Look Down (1939). He followed this with Night Train to Munich (1940) and Kipps (1941), Reed served in the British Army during the Second World War working under Thorold Dickinson in the film unit. A training film The New Lot (1943) was.remade as The Way Ahead (1944) recounting the experiences of five new recruits

Reed made his most highly regarded films just after the war: Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949), which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. The last two films were made from screenplays by Graham Greene.

Outcast of the Islands (1952), based on a novel by Joseph Conrad, is often thought to make the start of his creative decline. Our Man in Havana (1959) reunited him with the work of Graham Greene, while Trapeze (1956) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) were American films. Oliver (1968), made at Shepperton in Surrey, was financially backed by Columbia, and won the Academy Award for Best Director. "The movie may have been over-produced but it seemed everyone liked it that way", writes Thomas Hischak.

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