73rd San Sebastian Festival - 19/27 September 2025
73SSIFF - 19/27 September 2025
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Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
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Agenda
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Carol Reed
Films
Films
Carol Reed
92 min.
With a script by Frank Launder (one half of the prolific duo of writers and directors Launder & Gilliat), this is a witty musical, that also displays Reed's talent for comedy, about three attractive "gold diggers": - the ubiquitous M. Lockwood, Lilli Palmer & Renée Houston - who live together in a boarding house for young ladies while they try to find success in show business.
Carol Reed
96 min.
Reed emerges from his dark period with this fable about a child and a goat with just one horn who might be a unicorn, set in the Jewish quarter of London's East End. The change of subject and style shouldn't obscure the fact that Reed, who shoots here in colour for the first time, insists on his preference for observing the world through an innocent children's perspective.
Carol Reed
86 min.
Reeds first important work is a choral film that depicts how various groups of characters spend a weekend at the coast: a couple, two girlfriends, a large family... Reed's quasi-documentary vision is closer to Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) than to its more obvious reference point: Grand Hotel. Margaret Lockwood, Reed's muse in the 30's, plays the leading role in one of the stories.
Carol Reed
79 min.
During this period of his career Reed shoots films quickly and tries out all genres. This film, a romantic comedy with music that starts in the world of advertising and ends up in the Alps, is a vehicle allowing Jessie Matthews to show off. She was an actress in musical comedies known as "The Dancing Divinity" who was the most popular star in English cinema in the 30's.
Carol Reed
93 min.
A sentimental comedy based on a script by the dramatist Peter Shaffer adapted from his own play "The Public Eye". It describes the triangle formed by a refined English gentleman, his unhappy American wife (Mia Farrow) and a detective who has been given the job of watching her to see if she has a lover. As the latter is the entertaining flamboyant Topol (The fiddler on the roof), it is not hard to guess how things turn out at the end.
Carol Reed, Robert Wyler
68 min.
After a few years learning his craft as a director's assistant, Reed jointly shot this romantic drama with Robert Wyler. It describes the adventures of a millionaire's son, who goes to Paris to study art where he finds love.
Carol Reed
112 min.
An adaptation of H.G. Well's novel, who abandoned his futuristic fables here to sketch a satire of the British class system: Michael Redgrave (another Reed regular) is a humble shopkeeper who inherits a fortune and is exposed to the snobbery of Folkstone high society. Reed starts to play with the camera and gives a leading role to his first wife, Diana Wynyard.
Carol Reed
73 min.
An adaptation of a comic play by J.B. Priestley about a man who appears to be a bland gardening enthusiast, (Edmund Gwenn, the man from Calabuch), who turns out to be Scotland Yard's most wanted forger. Reed "aired" the play by depicting the somewhat sordid suburban atmosphere in Ferndale and it received this (premonitory) compliment from Greene: "When he gets a decent script he will be rather more than just an efficent director".
Carol Reed
76 min.
A 19th century adventure story, with thrilling combat scenes, told from a child's viewpoint. An assignment that Reed brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and which lead Graham Greene, who was a critic at that time, to write : "This new director has a greater sense of cinema than many veteran British filmmakers".
Carol Reed
95 min.
Reed began his golden decade with one of his great successes, a clever international spy thriller along the lines of The Lady Vanishes. Unlike Hitchcock, Reed directly points at the Nazi enemy (the war had just begun), and alternates comic scenes and railway suspense right up to the exciting chase at the end.
Carol Reed
115 min.
Reed begins his dark period and the renaissance of post-war English cinema with this tale of the final hours of an Irish "political renegade" (although it is not mentioned, we can deduce that he is an IRA member), which had the virtue of being popular in both Belfast and Dublin. An amazing fusion of realism, (Johnny's agony, -a memorable James Mason), and symbolism (the "symphony of human relationships" with the characters that it finds in a city transformed by an expressionist camera).
Carol Reed
146 min.
Back in London with an English subject, Reed's inspiration seemed to revive even though this was such an odd project as this musical version of Dickens's "Oliver Twist". The melodramatic story of a child brought up among thieves receives a cheerful treatment in Reed's hands, who shows off his plastic skills in the dance scenes and in the final chase. It was a huge box-office success and won the Oscar for best director and best film.
Carol Reed
111 min.
The third and final collaboration between Reed and Graham Greene, in a lighter and more satitical vein than in previous films, although there is still the theme of the main character mixed up in a plot that he is engulfed by. In this case it is a vacuum-cleaner salesman (a memorable Alec Guinness) who is forced to make up conspiracies to justify the salary that he is earning from the British secret service in Cuba.
Carol Reed
102 min.
An adaptation of a Conrad novel shot in Ceylon and one of the great films to be recovered in Reed's work. A captain (Richardson) sees how an unscrupulous man (Trevor Howard) betrays his trust. This develops in a colonial setting Reed's main theme: the man, whose innocence is disguided as military pride here, who faces a reality that gets the better of him.
Carol Reed
72 min.
A typical example of Reed's work for the famous producer Basil Dean, the director of Ealing studios. It is a comedy, once again starring Edmund Gwenn, about the fuss created when the captain of a Mersey freighter thinks he has won the football pools.
Carol Reed
78 min.
A crime thriller about an artist specializing in imitations who devotes his talents to murky interests. The critics compared it to Hitchcock's English thrillers and highlighted the successful use of natural coastal settings; Reed was beginning to excell at creating atmospheres, which was one of his specialities.
Carol Reed
139 min.
Another experience for Reed in a Hollywood that persisted in making solemn grandiose films at this time. Shot on 70 mm. this concentrates on the four agonizing years that Michelangelo took to paint the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and his continual quarelling with Pope Julius II. Rex Harrison brings a touch of irony to the role of the Pope. The choice of Charlton Heston for the leading role could have been due to the fact he seems to have been sculpted like one of the great artist's statues.
Carol Reed
95 min.
The first collaboration between Reed and Graham Greene, who adapts his story "The basement". In the closed setting of an embassy, a child (a wonderful Bobby Henrey) discovers the relative value that a lie has when he tries to cover up for his friend, the butler Baines (Ralph Richardson), who he thinks has committed a crime. A masterpiece that raises one of Reed's main themes: the innocent faced with a reality that is too much for him.
Carol Reed
78 min.
A melodramatic thriller with a script by Sidney Gilliat, it tells the story of an attractive nurse (Margaret Lockwood, in her last starring role for Reed), who fate plays a dirty trick on and is twice accused of murder. A trial drama that achieves tragic proportions in moving scenes such as the one in which Emlyn Williams gives evidence.
Carol Reed
128 min.
Carl Foreman produced and wrote the script for this film in Scope which allows Reed to go back to war although from an unusual angle: succesive captains of a tugboat inherit the key to a flat...and the company of the explosive Sophia Loren, (the film passes over her morality very cautiously). Spectacular action scenes, - outside the bedroom as well.
Carol Reed
106 min.
At the height of the revisionist western, Reed filmed this contribution to the Indian cause. In a tone mixing farse with drama it tells the story of how Flapping Eagle, (Anthony Quinn puts all his good nature into the role), tries to give his people their self-respect back. They live on a run-down reservation and he decides to start a public relations war to attract the white man's attention.
Carol Reed
101 min.
Reed moves from Vienna to Berlin, and from the post-war years to the cold war, in this film which has always been unfairly stigmatized because it recalls the unrepeatable The third man. Here, the innocent who arrives in a strange country is a woman (Claire Bloom) and the man making three a crowd is a splendid James Mason, with a memorable final death scene. Once again Reed's expressionist talent for recreating the menace of a city at night living in the shadow of fear shines through.
Carol Reed
42 min.
A medium-length film which represents Reed's first contribution to England's war effort, with the help of Peter Ustinov, Thorold Dickinson & other filmmakers attached to the Army Cinematograph Service. The plot, about the training of a squad of new recruits, aimed to raise civilian morale in the face of what was approaching.
Carol Reed
103 min.
A pilot fakes his death so that his wife can collect the insurance money and live the life of Riley in Spain. Suddenly a young employee from the insurance company turns up: the woman is attracted to him and the man feels she is after him but it is his own conscience that is really hounding him. A fable about guilt and redemption photographed in picturesque Spanish settings by Robert Krasker, (cameraman on several of Reed's masterpieces), with Fernando Rey in a supporting role.
Carol Reed
104 min.
The film that consolidated Reed's reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. It was a assignment from MGM who promoted this new A.J.Cronin adaptation after the success of The Citadel. It was the story of the power struggle between miners and bosses who clash over the nationalization of the mines, seen by a hero who is unable to alter the tragic course of events (Michael Redgrave). Reeds work evokes elements of Pabst (Kameradschaft / Coal) and Ford (How green was my valley).
Carol Reed
104 min.
Reed, Greene and the third man, Welles, who almost takes the credit away from them: a lesson, that Hitchcock would envy, about how the villain can steal the limelight in a film. Set between two funerals (for the same man), no one has ever filmed a better more realistic portrait of what a city in the post-war period was like (with Rossellini's permission). Reed's narrative pulse is held steady right up to the famous final shot. A monument that should be visited now and then like the ones in cities that we love.
Carol Reed, Garson Kanin
87 min.
Reed collaborated with the American writer-director Garson Kanin on this epic editing operation: they viewed three million metres of film shot by war reporters to provide a chronicle of the Nazi defeat on the Western front. "The best compilation film of the war", according to historian Jay Leyda. Oscar in 1946 for best documentary.
Carol Reed
115 min.
The impact made by The New Lot led to this remake in the form of a fictional full-length film, with David Niven's added star presence. We follow the adventures of an initially sceptical group of civilians until they come together as a fighting force and take part in the North African campaign. One of the best Second World War propaganda films.
Carol Reed
118 min.
A drama set during the Napoleonic wars that tells the story of the clash in parliament between politic opponents. However, watch out, Launder & Gilliat's script doesn't intend to be a historical reconstruction but a coded warning in which the figure of Napoleon needed to be replaced by the much closer threat posed by Hitler.
Carol Reed
106 min.
Reed's first American production and his first film to be shot in Cinemascope, a format that he uses with great skill to explore the plasticity of the circus, (he would never again shoot a film in square-screen format). Set in the Paris Winter Circus, it tells the story of the romantic triangle established between the acrobats Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster and their object of desire, Gina Lollobrigida at the peak of her career.
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