Carol Reed / Peter William Evans.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Evans, Peter William.

Series:

British film makers

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reed, Carol, 1906-1976--Criticism and interpretation.

Reed, Carol.

Reed, Carol, 1906-1976.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

ix, 198 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2005.

Summary:

Remembered largely for his trio of 1940s masterpieces (Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man), Carol Reed is a film-maker whose work as a whole is long overdue for reconsideration. This volume ranges over his entire career, and combines observation on general trends and patterns with detailed analysis of key films, some well known, and others that deserve to be better known. The book avoids a simplistic auteurist approach, and places the films in their autobiographical, socio-political and cultural contexts, but in ways that invariably relate these to the analysis of Reed's art. The critical approach refers to a variety of models, including psychoanalysis, gender and performance theory, and the analysis of form. Archival material is also relied on to clarify Reed's relations with his creative team, financial backers and others, as well as to draw conclusions, through comparisons of various screenplay drafts, about the priorities concerning the released version of any given film.

Reed's 1930s films are read in the context of changing attitudes to gender: films like Bank Holiday and A Girl Must Live seem refreshingly modern in their attitudes towards the relations between the sexes, and the prominence given to their female protagonists, played by Margaret Lockwood. The 1940s films, made against the background of war, reveal in masterpieces like Night Train to Munich or The Way Ahead the tensions and complexities of nationalism and identity. These characteristics are even more in evidence in later films like Outcast of the Islands, Trapeze and Oliver!, all of which touch on subjects that, through brilliant handling of form, make Reed one of the truly outstanding directors of the British cinema.

Contents:

2 Early days: girls in the news 8

Bank Holiday (1938)

A Girl Must Live (1939)

Climbing High (1938)

3 The 1940s: love and death 30

The Stars Look Down (1940)

Night Train to Munich (1940)

Kipps (1941)

The Way Ahead (1944)

Odd Man Out (1947)

4 Hearts of the matter: the Graham Greene films 80

The Fallen Idol (1948)

The Third Man (1949)

Our Man in Havana (1959)

5 The 1950s and characters in-between 118

Outcast of the Islands (1952)

The Man Between (1953)

A Kid for Two Farthings (1955)

6 An Englishman abroad 136

The Key (1958)

The Running Man (1963)

The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)

Trapeze (1956)

7 The last hurrah 160

Oliver! (1968).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [186]-193) and index.

Includes filmography: pages [172]-185.

ISBN:

0719063663

0719063671

OCLC:

57576020