An Interview with Karel Reisz

Abstract

Karel Reisz began his career as a documentary filmmaker (Momma Don’t Allow, 1956, with Tony Richardson) and producer (Every Day Except Christmas, 1957; We Are the Lambeth Boys, 1959), directing films vital to the British movement known as “Free Cinema.” It was a socially committed cinema focusing on the problems of the working class. The practictioners of “Free Cinema” believed that film should not merely record reality, but should, in equal measure, exploit the aesthetic capacities of the medium. Poetic expression and social obligation could be fused into a dynamic tool for change. These concerns are evident in Reisz’ first fiction film—Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), part of the “British New Wave” or “angry young man” films that flourished in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Filmed on location in England’s north country, it dealt with a factory worker (Albert Finney) rebelling against the oppressive limitations of his environment. Although Reisz has gone on to make films with far-ranging subjects, his work remains rooted in the philosophy that characterized his early career. Each of his films provides a sympathetic documentation of a social milieu, framed by an expressive mise-en-scene. Like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, his films are about figures whose social, artistic, or ethical values situate them in an oppositional relationship to their surroundings, leading to a kind of romantic anarchism.