Karel Reisz

Karel Reisz (21 July 1926 – 25 November 2002) was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.
Until today I did not know he directed Sweet Dreams and Isadora. What a surprise.

Cinema Obscura Isadora – (with a nice photo of Vanessa and James Fox)

What’s difficult to grasp is a major movie that seems to fall off the map. Case in point: Karel Reisz’s brilliant, messy Isadora Duncan biopic, “Isadora,” which provided star Vanessa Redgrave with her most emblematic, self-defining role.

Karel also directed The Gambler (youtube sample)- James Caan gave the performance of his lifetime.

Karel Reisz remembered

Karel Reisz must have been a border-crosser all his life. He was born in 1926, in the Czech mill town of Ostrava, an afternoon’s walk from the Polish border. At the age of 12, he was forced to leave, and in every sense he left for good: he was a child of the Kindertransport. He came to England, where he eventually served in the RAF, before studying natural sciences at Cambridge. He later became a teacher and a writer for film journals, one of which, Sequence, he co-founded with Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. Along with Anderson and Tony Richardson, Reisz aimed to bring a version of auteurism to British film, and they did as much with the documentary movement Free Cinema. In 1959, Reisz directed We Are the Lambeth Boys, and he made his first feature film a year later, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He went on to direct Night Must Fall, Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, Isadora, The Gambler, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Who’ll Stop the Rain?, Sweet Dreams and Everybody Wins. (read more from Karel R. Remembered)

Saturday Night Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe .

Karel was married to Betsy Blair who was Gene Kelly’s first wife.

1Morgan Morgan (image via)

Reisz’s next film, the off-beat comedy Morgan – a Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), was described by the critic John Simon as “the first underground movie made above ground”. (Obit)

  • Happy birthday to Bela Tarr and Norman Jewison.
    Tarr’s Damnation with Shostakovich soundtrack is here.