IN DEFENSE OF CAROL REED

Carol Reed was "a passable journeyman who could sometimes push a story along." So sayeth Christopher Byron in The Sunday Times of London, referred to earlier.

Jan -- After Hitchcock left to work for Selznick, Carol Reed was the best director in England, and made some excellent movies before he went to war -- "Midshipman Easy," "Kipps," "Night Train to Munich" -- clever entertainment, very watchable and pleasing today. But in '46 he became a serious man. "Odd Man Out," with James Mason as a dying Irish revolutionary looking for salvation in a heartless nightmare city, is a great film. Then comes his first collaboration with Greene, "The Fallen Idol," another bleak tale of disillusion. Sure, he's spellbound by the dark allure of Welles in "The Third Man"; but no journeyman could have made those movies, or "Outcast of the Islands," or "The Man Between" (Mason again). In the '50s, Reed became a lost man himself, caught between big Hollywood assignments like "Trapeze" -- not a bad flick -- and spiritless hired-hand jobs. But even "Oliver!," Dickens travesty that it is, has marvelous moments, and a great Bill Sykes (played by his nephew Oliver Reed). So he can't be dismissed as a hack. My calling, after all, is to rescue and celebrate the neglected.

-- Mr. Cheer