Karel Reisz

Film and theatre actor, director, and producer, born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). As a child he was sent to England in 1938 just before the Nazi invasion, and later studied at Cambridge. His film credits include Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1959), Night Must Fall (1963), Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), The Gambler (1974), and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). In later years he worked mainly as a theatre director. In 1999 he appeared in the film documentary Cinéma Vérité: Defining Moments, directed by Peter Wintonick.

Karel Reisz (born 1926, Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, died London, United Kingdom, 2002) who became one of the most important film-makers in post war Britain. His 1959 film We Are the Lambeth Boys was a naturalistic depiction of the members of a South London boys' club, which was unusual in showing the leisure life of working-class teenagers as it was, with skiffle music and cigarettes, cricket, drawing and discussion groups. The film represented Britain at the Venice Film Fesival.

His first feature film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) was based on a social realist novel by Alan Sillitoe, and used many of the same techniques as his earlier documentaries. In particular, scenes filmed at the Raleigh factory in Nottingham have the now familiar look of a documentary, and give the story a vivid sense of verisimilitude.

He produced This Sporting Life (1963), and directed Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966), Isadora (1968), The Gambler (1974), Who'll Stop the Rain (1978), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Sweet Dreams (1985), and Everybody Wins (1990) among others, and was a patron of the British Film Institute.