LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Carol Reed: Films
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Reed's first marriage (1943-47) was to the distinguished stage and screen actress Diana Wynyard. He then married another actress, Penelope Dudley Ward, in 1948 they stayed together for nearly thirty years until his death in 1976. He was the first British director ever knighted (this happened in 1952) for his services to the British film industry.
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The Third Man scored a huge international success, and in some quarters Reed was now being touted as the world's greatest living director (though never by Reed himself, a modest and self-effacing man). But from this highpoint his career went into abrupt decline. Outcast of the Islands (1952), adapted from a novel by Joseph Conrad, should in theory have provided ideal material, with its powerful sense of place and its theme of a proudly self-sufficient outsider who contrives his own doom. But the film is seriously weakened by its script, and neither plot nor characters ever come fully into focus. Poor scripting ... affected The Man Between (1953), a cold-war thriller set in Berlin with James Mason playing a charming Harry Lime-style crook; inevitably, it felt like a tired retread of The Third Man.
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It was immediately after the war that Reed ascended to the front rank of British filmmakers with 'Odd Man Out' (1947). This coincided with his becoming his own producer, and for the next four years, everything he touched as a director turned to gold. Odd Man Out was a beautifully complex psychological thriller that overcame its grim subject - the final hours of a mortally wounded IRA gunman on the run - to become a critical and box-office success on both sides of the Atlantic. Along with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, David Lean, and Launder and Gilliat, Reed was part of that generation of British filmmakers whose movies transformed the British film industry
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Carol Reed won the Cannes Film Grand Prix in 1949 for this 104 minute black and white film noir. The Third Man stunned audiences with its raw vision of the bombed out Vienna, its mysterious main character, Harry Lime, Lime's loyal lover, Anna (Alida Valli), his foolish American friend, Holly, the post-war powersharing by the allies, and the desperate chase in Vienna's cavernous sewers. Often criticized for its melodrama and cynicism, Graham Greene's story can be described as:
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The 1960s were a less satisfying time for Reed, as he was replaced on Mutiny on the Bounty by Lewis Milestone, and The Agony and the Ecstacy (1965) failed miserably at the box office. It was fortunate for him that the film's failure was attributed more to the personality of Charlton Heston, its star, who was more dominant in the finished work than Reed. In 1968, the director had his final triumph with the release of the musical Oliver!, based on the stage work by Lionel Bart. It was distinguished not only as one of the few blockbusters of its era to rake in a profit (the landscape was littered with failed musicals in those years, including Robert Wise's Star! and Richard Fleischer's Doctor Dolittle), but one of the very few screen adaptations of a stage work to eclipse the theatrical original. Its brace of Academy Awards included Best Picture and the Best Director Oscar for Reed.
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Carol Reed is one of the truly outstanding directors of British cinema, and one whose work is long overdue for reconsideration. This major study ranges over Reed’s entire career, combining observation of general trends and patterns with detailed analysis of twenty films, both acknowledged masterpieces and lesser-known works.
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