Reisz, Karel

   b. 1926

   Film director

   Reisz belonged to the late 1950s social realist Free Cinema Movement, collaborating with Lindsay Anderson on the film journal Sequence and Tony Richardson on the shorts Momma Don’t Allow (1956) and We Are The Lambeth Boys (1959). Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) is a definitive example of the Free Cinema, capturing the 1960s zeitgeist of male working-class defiance. Like other British new wave directors, he worked in the USA directing film adaptations of Who’ll Stop The Rain (1978), The French Lieutenant’s Women (1981) and Everybody Wins (1990). Reisz translated his mastery of direction, dramatic pace and structure to the theatre during the 1990s with a series of critically acclaimed plays at the Almeida in London.

   Further reading

    Gaston, G. (1980) Karel Reisz, Boston: Thayne.

   SATINDER CHOHAN