Karel Reisz was born on July 21, 1926 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. He was a director and producer, known for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Sweet Dreams (1985). He was married to Betsy Blair and Julia Coppard. He died on November 25, 2002 in London, England.
[on Fred Astaire] Astaire is the motherless man-about-town, all sophistication quite debonair, yet with a lope in his walk rather than a swagger, for -- despite his receding hair -- he is essentially boyish, youthful, innocent.
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(On being asked how he managed to get the script to "Morgan" green-lighted for production): Well, I was the head of the distribution company, so it really wasn't that difficult.
After the war worked as a film journalist for the publication "Sight and Sound". He then became Program Selection Officer for the British Film Institute. In the 1950's, he was one of the founders of the Free Cinema movement. His subsequent feature films have often tended to focus on working class angst and class structure in general, with social outcasts at their centre. During his later years, Reisz worked increasingly in theatre direction.
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Fought as a pilot with the Czech squadron in the RAF during World War II.
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He wrote his famous book, "The Technique Of Film Editing", before becoming involved in professional film-making. It was reviewed - not entirely favorably - in the magazine "Sight And Sound" by an actual film editor, Seth Holt. When Reisz made his first feature film, "Saturday Night And Sunday Morning", in 1960, he hired Holt as his editor, and, after their first day of working together, told him, "I didn't know what I was talking about, did I?".
$13 Million
