Carol Reed, upon graduation from school was interested in theatre and made a career as an actor from the mid 1920s, and later as a stage manager. He moved into film as a dialogue director to filmmaker Basil Dean and became a director himself in 1935, specialising in modestly budgeted dramas.He joined the British Armys documentary film unit during World War II, making training films. However, it was with the end of hostilities that Reed came into his own as a director with the dark psychological drama Odd Man Out 1946, about the last hours of a dying IRA gunman. The Fallen Idol 1948, a story of a boy desperately trying to hide the guilt of his friend, a butler suspected of killing his wife, followed soon after. The Third Man 1949 made Reeds career internationally, its tale of corruption and decay in postwar Vienna. Unfortunately, the retrenchment of the British film industry that began at the outset of the 1950s seemed to cost Reed several opportunities, and his next widelyseen works were such highprofile, largescale films as Trapeze 1956 and the disastrous blockbuster Mutiny On the Bounty 1962. He made a commercial recovery with the musical Oliver. 1968, but suitable projects were hard to find, and Reeds later films lack any of the tautness, style, and care of his 1940s work.

Website: http://www.britmovie.co.uk/directors/c_reed/