Carol Reed

Sir Carol Reed (30 December 1906 – 25 April 1976) was an English film director and producer. Considered one of the foremost British filmmakers of the post-World War II era, he achieved prominence in the late 1940s for his film noirthrillersOdd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949). Odd Man Out was the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The Fallen Idol won the second BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of the 20th century.

Reed's subsequent work crossed a variety of genres, including the Cold War satire Our Man in Havana (1959), the Michelangelo biopic The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and the musical Oliver! (1968). The latter film earned Reed the Academy Award for Best Director, with two previous nominations for The Fallen Idol and The Third Man.

In 1952, he became only the second British film director to be knighted for his craft. According to Screenonline, "for that brief time in the late 1940s Carol Reed was perhaps what some earlier critics had claimed him to be: the greatest director in the world."