Alan Lawson:00.00
The copyright of this recording is vested in the ACTT History Project, Karel Reisz, film director.
Interviewer Norman Swallow, recorded 17 April 1991 SIDE 1,
Norman Swallow:0.23
Where and when were you born?
Karel Reisz: 0.25
I was born in 1926, in a small town in Czechoslovakia called Ostrava, which is a Sheffield of Czechoslovakia, a mining and industrial town, to a middle class Jewish family. My father was lawyer, and lived there until 1938, until the Occupation. A very uneventful childhood until the Occupation.
Norman Swallow:1.02
Then you came to England.
Karel Reisz:1.03
I came to England. What had happened was, my parents had sent my older brother Paul to a school, to a Quaker school in Reading, Leighton Park School, simply to be educated in England. And when the Occupation started my brother spoke to the school and asked whether they would take me on. I was 12 ½ then as a refugee. Because the British government was admitting children on condition there was a guarantor. And they did that. And I came to England in the beginning of June 1939 with a children's transporter, a Quaker children’s transport. And went straight to the school. And was at that boarding school, the Quaker boarding school, Leighton Park for 4 ½years.
Norman Swallow:2.12
Did your parents come over?
Karel Reisz:2.14
No, my parents didn't survive the war.
Alan Lawson:2.23
When you left school, what did you do after that?
Karel Reisz: 2.28
Just before my 17th birthday I volunteered for the Czech air force and at that time the Czech government was getting its subsidy from the British government depending on how many people they had in uniform, so they would take you if you were 12. Anyway I went on what was then called an RAF Short Course to Cambridge. 6 months short course where they taught you aeronautics and meteorology and that kind of thing. And then I went into the Czech Branch of the RAF
Norman Swallow:
Czech squadron?
Karel Reisz:3.08
In fact there was not a separate training squadron, I was trained in an international, we had Dutch and we had Turks. The Turks came in right at the end of the war and in fact there were some Turks being trained with me before theTurks were in the war. And I got my wings 3 weeks before the end of the war so itwas very neatly timed. I never saw combat. And I went back to Prague which I hadn't known because I had come from a provincial city, I was repatriated with theCzech forces. And we all immediately deserted, because everybody had been away from home for six years.
Karel Reisz:4.06
Two weeks later they gave an amnesty and we all returned to barracks. And my parents, I knew by then, I went to Poland to search for my parents but I discovered they had in fact not survived. And I had really nobody left there atall, because my brother decided to stay in England. So I deserted and went toPilsen which was then occupied by the American forces. Prague was Russian but the Western part of Czechoslovakia was American.
I was still in my RAF uniform with Czechoslovakia on my shoulder and I hitch-hikedto Munich on a Dakota and I spend a night in a camp, an American airforce camp. And it was the first time I had peanut butter and honey.I remember that It was on the table in the px
Norman Swallow: 5.14
You still like it ?
Karel Reisz: 5.16
Yes I do And at the px we saw “Along Came Jones”, it's a minor film with Loretta Young and Gary Cooper I think. And the next day I got another plane to England. And two days later I was at Emanuel College, Cambridge, and I said to my tutor, “I'm back”. And he said, “Well you’d better come and start straight away, because nobodymuch is demobilised yet but next year it is going to be hell, so we'd better get you in now. And I spent two or three years at Cambridge and got my degree.
Norman Swallow:5.57
Studying chemistry?
Karel Reisz: Yes.
Norman Swallow: Why ?
Karel Reisz:6.02
I don't know why. Yes, I do know why. My guardian, the man who had been myguardian during the war, a man I very greatly admired, was a chemist and so it was assumed in the family that the children would do as Papa did. And I had a scholarship. And it was the question of doing chemistry and going, or not going to university.
And at university I was very active in the Socialist Club and very active playing rugger, and very active not working. And I joined the film society and my filmmania, oh not mania , my film obsession really started there. I came down in 1948. Like everybody else, I couldn't get a job in the film industry. I became a supplyteacher and taught at secondary modern schools and grammar schools for about three years.
Norman Swallow:7.07
You mean several, not just one ?
Karel Reisz: I was a supply teacher
Norman Swallow: A stand-in?
Karel Reisz:7.13
That's right. And I taught physics and chemistry and maths. And then I started doing reviews for The Monthly Film Bulletin and things like that. And then as chance would have it I knew a lady who worked at the British Film Academy, a ladycalled Kumari Ralph, they it were looking for somebody, they were planning a series of books on film technique. And the idea was there should be a book aboutcamerawork, music and so on. And the dream was the books would be written by practitioners and that they would hire a kind of Boswell to do the work and I'd got the job of doing the editing one. Which was an extraordinary stroke of luck.
Norman Swallow:8.21
It was a great book if I may say so, 1953, published Focal Press.
Karel Reisz:
That's right. It may be earlier than 53. My committee was ThoroldDickinson, David Lean, Roy Boulting, Sid Cole and Jack Harris and Uncle Tom Cobleyand all. And of course the idea of writing a book by committee is completely absurd.
Norman Swallow:8.58
Like making a film by committee.
Karel Reisz:8.59
And they never, they were very nice but of course they never turned up and who can blame them. But it was a gift from heaven for me because it meant that I could, I was paid to look at films on the Moviola, and break them down anddescribe the editing process and I made the book a kind practical, quite unpretentious analysis of actual edited sequences. So I had a period of 18months or two years just literally studying film. And it was the most fortunate circumstance.
Norman Swallow:9.43
The book is still around, and it was updated with Gavin Millar.
Karel Reisz: 9.47
No, Gavin wasn't involved at all but 20 years later when the publisher wanted it brought up to date, Gavin was taken on. And he's written the last section on what had happened to editing since I'd written the book.
And the book’s still in print. The book’s great virtue is that it's the only book on the subject. So all the students all over the world have to - It is the only one around.
At that time I met Lindsey Anderson who had with the Gavin Lambert started a magazine called Sequence at Oxford. And they brought it down with them and I started reviewing for it.
Norman Swallow:10.41
It was,I think it began in 1947.
Karel Reisz:10.44
That sounds about right, I think it ended in 1951
Or 1952 Anyway we can look that up.
Norman Swallow:
I think I looked it up yesterday
Karel Reisz:10.58
Then I got a job and at the princely sum of £3 a week as assistant curator to the National Film Archive, National Library it was called then, to Ernest Lindgren. That was at the BFI. And I did that and for about six months or ayear and then the Telekinema which was the Festival of Britain cinema which had been used curiously enough by the husband of Kumari Ralph, my friend, Jack Ralph was in charge of it; and they'd used it mainly to demonstrate 3 D. Butit was there that was an auditorium which the British film Institute took over and turned into the National Film Theatre and I moved over and became the first programme director of the National Film Theatre. This was about the same time aswe were writing, working on Sequence. But Sequence was a purely voluntary labour of love
Norman Swallow:12.12
It is very important, Sequence. Could you tell us more about Sequence? Looking back on it,I’m biased because it influenced me a lot and a lot of people.
Karel Reisz:12.18
I think Sequence was very important.However I can claim practically no credit for that, because the kind of stance that Sequence took which I can talk about in a minute was really established by Lindsey Anderson and Gavin Lambert and to some extent by Penelope Houston, and a man called Peter Ericson. I wonder where Peter Ericson is, he's moved out of movies altogether. The importance of Sequence was that it was written by people who liked the American cinema, and in intelligent circles this was the time of CA Lejeune, where cultivated people only went to a French films, that kind of thing. And Sequence wrote about Preston Sturges andJohn Ford and Wellman and Wilder as well as about French and British films. I think Lindsay should talk about it really because it was Lindsay's baby and I came in on it quite late. I had a very good time and it was a very important part of my film education.
Then I read an advertisement in,oh no, no, The British film Institute organised a committee called the British Film Institute Experimental Production Fund andTony Richardson and I submitted a script for a half-hour 16 mm documentary . And we got an advance of £300 and we made a film called “Momma Don't Allow” which was a film about -
Norman Swallow: 14.16
1955 according to my records.
Karel Reisz:
Is that it? Yes, if your record-
Norman Swallow:
Yes, I remember it well, of course.
Karel Reisz: 14.25
It was a quite unpretentious documentary about an evening in a North London jazz club and it made a bit of a splash. And it made a splash because at that time,realy mainly through Lindsay's energies, and I was at the National Film Theatre so I had some influence there, we put on a series of programmes with the catchphrase “Free Cinema”. Really we were just friends. I think I'll leave it Lindsay to describe what-
Norman Swallow:
What the philosophy was.
Karel Reisz:15.22
The philosophy was first of all the director should be in charge. And the films should have some kind of connection with reality outside the studio. And it is very hard to remember now how rigid and class-bound and studio stuck the British film industry was at that time. So that this group of films, and as films I don't want to deny_them in any way, but they caused a stir far beyond their quality. I suppose what held them together was, one of the things we said in the kind of statement, in the first programme was about the importance of the every day. And that ran counter very much to the traditions of British documentary. British documentary having started with Grierson as, “Drifters” was very much like a Free Cinema film in a sense. But the movement had very much changed into films witharguments, films of polemic, films of social reform, films that used thedocumentary material in the chain of an argument about housing or about whatever. And admirable thought they were, the films we were wanting to make were more based on Humphrey Jennings. Humphrey Jennings was the poet, the outsider in a way of the British documentary movement. And his great films, “Listen To Britain” and “Fires Were Started” were really the starting point of the Free Cinema thing. That is tosay films that aimed at a kind of poetic response to reality, not a polemicalone. And it so happened we had three films, one that Lindsay had made, a sharp satirical disenchanted film called and “0h Dreamland” about a fairground in Wakefield was it, somewhere in the North. Tony and I had made “Mamma Don't Allow”. Lorenza Mazzetti, an Italian student at the Slade had made a film called “Together” which was a film about the East End but really a story film about twodeaf mutes distantly kind of based on a Carson McCullers story and this film was an hour long and Lindsay was very active in helping her to finish it in the cutting room. So we put these three films together and put out the Free Cinema programme with the manifesto. And as I said the whole thing caused a very big splash.
Karel Reisz:18.46
Just about that time I read an advertisement, I don't know where, that the Ford Motor Company wanted a films officer and I applied and I got the job. And the job was somebody who would be in charge of their films about tractors and ball bearings and advertising films and so on. This was round about the time ITA started. I remember we had made a commercial, an absolutely dreadful commercial.
Norman Swallow:19.22
This was 1955 they started.
Karel Reisz:19.24
Yes That was during my time there. We had a commercial on the first night that ITA opened comparing Ford cars to perfectly chiseled jewels I remember, an extremely embarrassing commercial. My deal with the Ford Motor Company was that I would do those, be the films officer on condition that once a year they gave us money to make a sponsored film. Ford Motor Company sponsored, but not in any wayadvertising. A kind of free cinema documentary. And the first series first film in that series that we made was Lindsay's film “Every Day Except Christmas”, a film about Covent Garden Market which formed the basis of the second Free Cinema programme, I think. I've got it confused in my head now. Then the year after I made one myself called, “We Are The Lambeth Boys” which was a kind of expanded version of “Mamma Don't Allow”, an hour long documentary about a youth club inLambeth. And it was really extraordinary. I mean the hutzbar. I must have had togo to the Ford people and say I'll do these advertising films if you give me money for these completely, it's amazing when I think about it. In fact the Ford Motor Company did very well by these films because they got a lot of publicity and they got the reputation of being -
Norman Swallow:
They had a line at the end ?
Karel Reisz:21.11
Oh yes they did, they had the Ford Motor Company presents. Like Shell, really, except that Shell made scientific films and ethnographical films. And we made these, I suppose, social documentaries. And those films continued to cause a bit of a splash.
“We Are the Lambeth Boys” actually went out, and this was a great achievement, went out as a second feature in commercial cinemas and this was the time when documentaries were absolutely anathema to the commercial exhibitors.
Norman Swallow:22.03
Do you remember what it was packaged with ?
Karel Reisz:22.08
No I don't, I don't remember. It got a lot of publicity. The industry was stuck in a kind of Pinewood rut and it was absolutely ready for somebody to just prick the balloon of ABC and Rank. And these films were really the forerunners of the social films that followed, in fact made by the same people, or some of the same people.
Norman Swallow:22.47
This was the time I was working with Denis Mitchell, in close contact with you and Lindsay. The obvious question is did you ever think of moving into television. At that time, because we were doing the same kind of thing ?
Karel Reisz:23.02
You have to think of our history. Our history was we were film lunatics. Our godswere Carne and John Ford and Wyler and so on. We had our eyes on story films, soI think we were always wanting to go in that direction. Not simply by history
Norman Swallow:
That's what you'd been thinking about from the beginning ?
Karel Reisz:23.40
Yes. For instance, at that time Gavin Lambert and I wrote three feature film scripts, none of which ever got made, but our ambition was to make story films. We regarded the documentaries as stepping stones.
When we did meet you and Denis, really we had a feeling of kindred spirits. You were doing the same kind of thing for television. You were making the same kind offilms against the current of documentary, “Morning in the Streets” and those films were not what the traditions of British filmmaking had led one. So you were working in parallel with us really.
Norman Swallow: 24.31
And we weren't doing what television had done either.
Karel Reisz:23.34
Exactly. You stood vis a vis to television how we stood vis-a-vis Pinewood. That's absolutely right. Then a lot of things happened at once, the Royal Courtopened and John Osborne and Wesker and Pinter, and Wally Simpson happened. And in the books, that whole regional working class novel became in and it was all in the air. And that led directly to the early feature films that we made. I suppose the keyfilm that started it was “Room at the Top”, which actually wasn't part of our group at all. Jack Clayton was an associate producer and he'd made one film, he had made a film based on a short story, what was it called “The Bespoke Overcoat”, a Wolf Mankovitz story. And as a result was given money to make “Room at the Top”, the import of which was just a completely different class stance from thetraditional British film. Now I didn't know Jack then, nor did Lindsay, and he was not a friend at all. He was somebody whoworked traditionally through the film industry. And had been an associate producer on a lot of the John Huston films. There is no question that “Room at the Top” opened the door.
The second film in the group was a film adaptation of “Look Back in Anger”, Tony Richardson, who was then the co director of the Royal Court Theatre with George Devine who had read and directed and put on “Look Back in Anger” which again was a tremendous success de scandal, also it was a tremendously important event. He andJohn Osborne formed a company together called Woodfall Films in order to make “Look Back in Anger” into a movie. And they did it really, it was Warner Brothers' money I think. They met in America a fellow called Harry Saltzman who was not, who they thought was an important American producer. In fact Harry was a go getting, opportunistic, very energetic and charming fellow, and they formed a company and made it with movie stars. Because Claire Bloom and Burton were stars. And at that time Tony who was a tremendously gifted impresario, tremendously energetic and courageous impresario, fearless with money and very confident of his own taste said to me “if you've got anything come to me and we'll put it on foryou”. And I'd read this novel by Alan Sillitoe called “Saturday Night and SundayMorning”. And took it to them and I remember the novel was owned by Jo Janni who had bought it for Jack Lee to direct. And they couldn't raise the money, it was too, it is hard to think about it now but it was thought to be a) too scandalous and b)too unglam, it was not regarded as a subject worthy of film attention. And they were desperately disappointed they couldn't raise the money. So Tony andHarry Saltzman bought it from them. And let me direct it.
Norman Swallow:29.10
It is a very famous film if I dare say so.
Karel Reisz:29.16
Well yes.It's a very, very simple film. It's a little working class fable. But what really projected it into, what caught the imagination was Albert, Albert Finney, who was a leading man of a kind that the British cinema had actually never had. America had had let's say John Garfield, and France had Gabin. What I'm talking about is a confident working class hero, masculine and sceptical and absolutely not a drawing room hero. And it caught fire.
Norman Swallow:30.22
Because Albert Finney comes from the North himself
Karel Reisz:30.24
Yes he comes from Salford. But Albert was a trained actor, he was at RADA. He hada year at Birmingham Rep and played Macbeth, it wasn't as if one was discovering a primitive hick
And everybody knew. In fact I’ve got the order slightly wrong, I think, because “The Entertainer” which was the second of the John Osborne things, Albert appeared in a very small role. So that was before “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”. And“The Entertainer” was also tremendously with Olivier, and Joan Plowright and AlanBates and everybody knew Albert was going to be a very big deal
Norman Swallow:32.32
“Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”. I know you were involved in the same genre which you produced with Lindsay directed “This Sporting Life”, which I think was three years later. There may have been something else between the two. My memory tells me it was 1963 which was also about Northern working class which Lindsay directed and you produced. Who made it, which company ?
Karel Reisz:31.51
Then what happened was that everybody wanted to make these films, films withenergetic working class heroes, it became the flavour of the month. And in fact Lindsay's memory is very much clearer than mine about this kind of thing. But what happened is that Joe Losey bought “This Sporting Life” No, quite wrong Julian Wintle who was a producer at Beaconsfield, it was called Wintle and, there weretwo of them, Parkin, Parkin and Wintle bought the rights to “This Sporting Life” in competition against Tony Richardson and in competition against -
Norman Swallow: 33.00
David Storey. It was a Storey novel, another Yorkshire writer.
Karel Reisz:33.04
Correct. Saturday Night wasn't Yorkshire, it was set in Nottingham, the Midlands.
Norman Swallow: But north of Watford.
Karel Reisz:33.15
Exactly. And Stanley and Joe Losey wanted to make the film with Stanley Baker. And Wintle and Parkin didn't want to make the film with Stanley Baker, they had made a film with Stanley Baker and they admired him and so on but they thought it waswrong. Stanley Baker was Welsh, they didn't want to do it. So they came to blows, well rather there was a parting of the ways and Wintle asked me to direct it. And Ididn't actually want to direct it because I thought it was rather similar toSaturday Night and Sunday Morning, and in any case I knew Lindsay was really keen to direct.
Lindsay by then had done quite a lot of work in the theatre, for instance, at theRoyal Court and he'd put on a play called “Billy Liar” staring Albert. And I went to see Lindsay and I said “listen, if I say to them I'll produce it and you'll direct it, do you want it ?”. Lindsay said “yes”. So that's what we did.
I was in a rather blue funk at that time. I'd made this first film that had a much greater success than in a sense that it deserved because of its timing and its social stance. I was in a panic and I didn't know what to make, so the idea of producing for 6 months was a kind of relief to me really. So we made that picture. Which is completely different from the others. The impulse of the Stan Barstow films and the Alan Sillitoe films is certainly social but “Sporting Life” is a more Lawrencian, DH Lawrence, more about the temperament of the people rather than their social position.
Karel Reisz:35.51
It was a very dark film, a very uncomfortable film. A tragedy really and was verywell reviewed but the Rank Organisation were absolutely horrified when we delivered it. I remember there was a screening to which John Davis came, JohnDavis was then the Stalin of the Rank Organisation, and to our very good fortune brought his wife Dinah Sheridan to the screening, and it was a very cold hostile screening. But much to our good fortune, Dinah Sheridan was greatly moved by the film and when the lights came up she was seen to be in tears which sort of spiked John Davis' guns. And they sort of dutifully put it out without much energy orappetite and the film did ok but it was really a little bit too disenchanted, tooserious, too just plain tragic for the big audience.
Norman Swallow: Who wrote the script?
Karel Reisz:37.13
David Storey. Alan Sillitoe wrote the script of “Saturday Night and SundayMorning”. With Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, it was sort of blissful, youthful ignorance. He had never written a script and I had never made a film and Albert had never made a film. Well Albert had done a little thing. Rachel had never, we all dived in, jumped in feet first. “Sporting Life” was quite a bit more professional, I would say, it was a little bit more expensive. And it wascertainly technically much more in control. We had a cameraman called Denys Coop, it was very harsh black and white stylised photography,a little bit sort of in the manner of Visconti films or something like that.
“Saturday Night” which was photographed by Freddie Francis who held my hand and dutifully during the making of it ,was much more naturalistic. “Sporting Life” was much more heightened and steamy. By this time there were several films in this genre. And I'm not going to get the order of it quite right but there was “A KindOf Loving”, “The L-Shaped Room”, “The Angry Silence”. That dam which had held back that sort of working class energy of as potential material for films had well and truly been broken.
Norman Swallow: 38.55
And obviously it was the same people who had broken it in the theatre, as you said earlier, and literature and fiction. It was all part of the same social, creative pattern in the 60s
Alan Lawson:39.06
Can we just go back a little to “Saturday Night And Sunday Morning”? This is the first time really you had handled actors and actresses.
Karel Reisz:39.13
Yes it was, yes it was. One marvels at one's impertinence. But there are things you can do the first time when you don't know the problems. And you know I felt I knew that material. I'd taught at a secondary modern school for two years and I'd made these two films, documentaries, I didn't feel I was stepping into unknown territory. And Albert's particular sensibility was such an impetus He was extraordinarily charming and he had that kind of gift like a puppy. He’s unable todo an ungraceful thing. It all just came together, very fortunately.
Norman Swallow:
Human chemistry
Karel Reisz: Yes
Alan Lawson: 40.18
That's interesting, because I'm sure a lot of people would have had the most awful butterflies.
Karel Reisz:
I had that all right.
Norman Swallow:
And it didn't appear on the screen, the butterflies.
Karel Reisz:40.31
It was a very confident script, I have to say the film is very different from the novel. The novel is kind of Alan's, Alan Sillitoe's, cri de coeur about the time. And the central character is kind of, there but for the grace of God goes a revolutionary. The film was very much more sober than that. I think I saw thecharacter as trapped by his world as much as, not so much a rebel but a victim, or both. So the tone of the film was substantially different from the novel. “This Sporting Life” I think the tone of the film was very, worked in parallel with the novel, it was a more felicitous, I'm talking about this very much with hindsight, when you're doing it you don't know what the hell you're doing, you just do it. But with hindsight I think I would say that that is the case.
And then of course Tony made another Alan Sillitoe, “The Loneliness Of The Long-distance Runner” and then John Schlesinger made the film of “Billy Liar”. So that thing that had started with the little Free Cinema sobriquet or whatever you call it, had become the norm, and in a very, very small number of years.
Norman Swallow:42.19
John Schlesinger came in from television.
Karel Reisz:42.24
Yes that's right. He had done things for “Monitor” for Huw Weldon. One of the bigpushes the Free Cinema group got was in fact from two “Monitor” programmes. We went on and were interviewed by Dimbleby and that was like receiving the Royal warrant.
Norman Swallow:
Were they Monitors or Panoramas ? Dimbleby did Panorama.
Karel Reisz:42.51
You're right, it was Panorama. Quite right. Yes you’re right.
End of Side 1
