Karel Reisz

REISZ, KAREL (1926–2002), British film director. Born in Ostrava, Czechoslavakia, Reisz came to Britain on a Kinder-transport in 1938; his family perished in the Holocaust. Reisz served in the Royal Air Force and studied natural sciences at Cambridge. Initially a film critic, from 1959 Reisz became an influential film director, responsible for many hard-hitting and realistic dramas and comedies such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Night Must Fall (1964), Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966), and, later, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). He was often compared to such contemporary dramatists as Harold *Pinter and Samuel Beckett.

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