Karel Reisz

Infobox Actor
name = Karel Reisz
birthdate = birth date|1926|7|21
location = Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
deathdate = death date and age|2002|11|25|1926|7|21
deathplace = London, England
spouse = Betsy Blair (1963–2002)
baftaawards = Best British Film
1960 "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning"

Karel Reisz (July 21, 1926 – November 25 2002) was one of the most important filmmakers in post–war Britain.

Reisz was a Jewishcite news | last =| first =| coauthors=| title =Variety Club - Jewish Chronicle colour supplement "350 years"| pages=28-29| publisher =The Jewish Chronicle| date =2006-12-15 | url =| accessdate =2006-12-24 ] refugee, one of the 669 rescued by Sir Nicholas Winton. After attending Leighton Park School, he joined the Royal Air Force towards the end of the war, after the death of his parents at Auschwitz. After the war, he studied Natural Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and began to write for film journals, including "Sight and Sound". He co-founded "Sequence" with Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert in 1947.

He was also a founder member of the Free Cinema documentary movement. His first short film, "Momma Don't Allow", co-directed with Tony Richardson, was included in the first Free Cinema programme shown at the National Film Theatre in February 1956. Three years later, his film "We Are the Lambeth Boys" [ [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=232669605535093695 We Are the Lambeth Boys at video.google.com] ] was a naturalistic depiction of the members of a South London boys' club, which was unusual in showing the leisure life of working-class teenagers as it was, with skiffle music and cigarettes, cricket, drawing and discussion groups. The film represented Britain at the Venice Film Festival. The BBC made two follow-up films about the same people and youth club, broadcast in 1985.

His first feature film "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" (1960) was based on a social realist novel by Alan Sillitoe, and used many of the same techniques as his earlier documentaries. In particular, scenes filmed at the Raleigh factory in Nottingham have the now familiar look of a documentary, and give the story a vivid sense of verisimilitude.

He produced "This Sporting Life" (1963), and directed "" (1966), "Isadora" (1968), "The Gambler" (1974), "Who'll Stop the Rain" (1978), "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981), "Sweet Dreams" (1985), and "Everybody Wins" (1990) among others, and was a patron of the British Film Institute.

In 1963 he married Betsy Blair, the former wife of American actor and singer Gene Kelly, and they remained married until Reisz's death in 2002.

Footnotes