Synopses & Reviews
Czech-born refugee Karel Reisz (1926-2002) is widely regarded as one of the seminal figures in post-war British cinema. Along with Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson, Reisz was a founder member of the independent Free Cinema "movement" which attacked the parochial middle-class values of home-grown studio product with a vigorous commitment to everyday working-class subject matter and a poetically charged film style. This was immediately recognisable in the aesthetic of the international success of Reiszs first feature, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). As the import of Free Cinema rapidly dissipated during the "Swinging London" era, Reisz confronted the changing cultural mores of the 1960s and 1970s with a series of ambivalent films that critique the anarchic free spirit of the times, including Morgan (1966), Isadora (1968), The Gambler (1974) and Dog Soldiers (1978). Drawing on Reiszs early film criticism for Sequence and Sight and Sound, as well as interdisciplinary methodologies, this first career-length study explores Reiszs personal brand of character-based realism, offering the spectator a privileged insight into an artists developing response to subjective and historical dislocation. The book should thus prove invaluable to film scholars, cultural historians and the Reisz aficionado.
Review
"The best entry yet in the British Film Makers series, this is an astonishingly detailed work. A truly remarkable achievement, it brings Britain's post-war film industry vividly to life." --Howard Maxford, Film Review
Synopsis
Perhaps best known for his controversial 1981 adaptation of John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, Czech-born refugee Karel Reisz (1926-2002) is widely regarded as one of the seminal figures in post-war British cinema. Along with Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson, Reisz was a founder member of the independent Free Cinema 'movement' which attacked the parochial middle-class values of home-grown studio product with a vigorous commitment to everyday working-class subject matter and a poetically-charged film style, the aesthetic foundation for the international success of Reisz's first feature, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). As the import of Free Cinema rapidly dissipated during the 'Swinging London' era, Reisz confronted the changing cultural mores of the 1960s and 1970s with a series of ambivalent films that critique the anarchic free spirit of the times, including Morgan (1966), Isadora (1968), The Gambler (1974) and Dog Soldiers/Who'll Stop the Rain (1978), the latter a dark meditation on the corruption of the drug-based counter-culture following the Vietnam War. These films express Reisz's own deep crisis of political commitment as the ideological safety-net of the original New Left fell into disarray. Drawing on Reisz's early film criticism for Sequence and Sight and Sound, as well as interdisciplinary methodologies derived from post-structuralism and Cultural Studies, this first career-length study explores Reisz's personal brand of character-based realism, offering the spectator a privileged insight into an artist's developing response to subjective and historical dislocation. The book should thus prove invaluable to film scholars, cultural historians and the Reisz aficionado.
Synopsis
This first full-length critical analysis of the Czech-born, British director, Karel Reisz uses recent interdisciplinary methodologies to explore the crisis of political commitment and historical displacement in the context of the 1960s and '70s counter-culture.
About the Author
Colin Gardner is Professor of Critical Theory and Interdisciplinary Media at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Table of Contents
In praise of producers * The self-made man * The documentarist: Verity films * ‘I had something they wanted to buy: Feature film producer * ‘The apple of Mr Ranks mercatorial eye: Managing director of Gainsborough Pictures (1946-1949) * ‘One a month: The Gainsborough films * Precarious independence: The 1950s * Lion hunt and after * Conclusion * Appendix: Costs and box-office evenues of Boxs films distributed by Rank, where available * Filmography