This major study ranges over British director Reed's entire career, combining observation of general trends and patterns with detailed analysis of twenty films, both acknowledged masterpieces and lesser-known works. Films examined include Bank Holiday, A Girl Must Live, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, Night Train to Munich, The Way Ahead, Outcast of the Islands, Trapeze and Oliver!.

"Carol Reed - director of thirty-four films, among them Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, Outcast of the Islands, Mutiny on the Bounty and, of course, the great postwar classic The Third Man." "He is fully revealed here as the complex, reticent, eccentric man of enormous gifts who understood actors and writers (he was both) and was a master of the art of telling stories, and making movies." "At the center of Reed's life was the fact of his birth: He was the illegitimate son of one of Edwardian England's great character actors, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who for fifty years dominated the London stage and whose flamboyant personality and love affairs were legend. Nicholas Wapshott shows how Reed's response to his heritage - the conflict between his shame and his pride - was reflected in the elusive, enigmatic figure he presented throughout his life." "Here is Reed as a boy with his father's theatrical colleagues (among them Bernard Shaw, W. S. Gilbert, Wilde, Whistler, Ellen Terry and James Barrie) . . . Reed landing his first job: an assistant to the bestselling thriller writer of his day, playwright and producer Edgar Wallace . . . Reed with his secret love, Daphne du Maurier (she later described the romance in her novel I'll Never Be Young Again) . . . Reed's marriages - first to the beloved star Diana Wynyard, then to Penelope Dudley Ward, the daughter of a mistress of Edward VIII." "We follow Reed as a young actor, assistant director and dialogue coach - and finally, a director making his first film, It Happened in Paris, from a script adapted by John Huston; Reed developing what would become the brilliant repertory company he worked with again and again: Tyrone Guthrie, Margaret Lockwood, Alastair Sim, Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams, Roger Livesey and Robert Donat, among others." "We see Reed's long writing collaboration with Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov, beginning when they were young men stationed together during the war. And his ten-year collaboration with Graham Greene, which resulted in Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol - and The Third Man (producer David O. Selznick opting first for Noel Coward to play Harry Lime, the part ultimately taken by Orson Welles)." "Then with the death of Alexander Korda, and with the British film industry in shambles, we follow Reed to America to direct such films as Trapeze and The Key. And on to Bora Bora to direct the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, which became the undoing of all involved." "An astute and richly alive portrait of the filmmaker and the man; a superb evocation of the British film world through half a century."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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. Evans avoids a simplistic auteurist approach, placing the films in their autobiographical, socio-political and cultural contexts and relating these to the analysis of Reed’s art. The critical approach combines psychoanalysis, gender theory, and the analysis of form. Archival research is also relied on to clarify Reed’s relations with his creative team, financial backers and others. Films examined include Bank Holiday, A Girl Must Live, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, Night Train to Munich, The Way Ahead, Outcast of the Islands, Trapeze and Oliver!.

This concise, authoritative volume analyses critically the work of 100 British directors, from the innovators of the silent period to contemporary auteurs.

Running Away Doesn't Always Remove the Problem “It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.” - Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands This second novel of Conrad details the undoing of Peter Willems, a disreputable, immoral man who, on the run from a scandal in Makassar, finds refuge in a hidden native village, only to betray his benefactors over lust for the tribal chief's daughter.