AFI presents Carol Reed

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An American Film Insti- tute Silver Theatre ret- rospective called the "Carol Reed Centennial" begins today with a one-week revival of "The Third Man," his most famous movie, and concludes shortly after the new year. Though well-timed and welcome, the tribute is not as generous as the subject merits.

Born in London on Dec. 30, 1906, Sir Carol Reed was the first movie director to be knighted -- in 1952. He directed 30 theatrical features between 1935 and 1972. He twice won Academy Awards: for co-direction (with Garson Kanin) of the World War II compilation documentary "The True Glory," the official record of Allied engagements from D-Day to V-E Day; and for best direction of "Oliver!," the Academy Award-winning musical of 1968. That was his last hurrah as a revered professional. Two final projects from the early 1970s remain mercifully obscure. He died in 1976.

Eight of his movies are being revived during the AFI Silver series. Six of these were released in England from 1940-49, so the survey is largely a reflection of the Reed career in its most decisive decade. "The 1940s and Carol Reed" will be adequately illustrated during the retrospective; other phases will not. It seems a bit jittery to leapfrog credits from the late 1930s, when he completed nine features in five years and established a secure reputation as a talented and reliable asset to the British film industry, always strapped for capital and apprehensive that promising directors would be seduced by Hollywood.

The most talented and desirable director, apart from Mr. Reed, during the 1930s was, of course, Alfred Hitchcock, whose directing career began during the silent period. Mr. Hitchcock's distinctive flair with mystery melodrama was apparent before Mr. Reed made his directing debut, with an apparently lost romantic comedy of 1935 titled "It Happened in Paris."

Hollywood did make off with Mr. Hitchcock at the end of the decade, when he agreed to film Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" for David O. Selznick. It seems a pity that Mr. Reed never got around to filming one of her books, since he and the author shared a youthful romance in the early 1930s, when he was supervising the busy theatrical empire of mystery writer Edgar Wallace and she was completing her first book.

Mr. Reed was not the first titled personage in the family. His father was Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917), one of the most celebrated actor-managers of the English theater in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. ("Tree" was his add-on, announcing his intention to rise to the top of the acting profession.) A younger half-brother was Max Beerbohm, the inimitable humorist and dramatic critic. The surname "Reed" was a droll invention by Mr. Reed's mother, May Pinney, who bore six children to Tree while living with him out of wedlock. As she explained the brainstorm years later, "I was but a broken Reed at the foot of the mighty Tree." Undeniably charismatic and resourceful, the mighty patriarch maintained another "legitimate" marriage and household while residing with his Reed brood.

Mr. Reed's mother inherited a comfortable annuity after Sir Herbert's death. And despite the social stigma that clung to illegitimacy, Carol Reed grew up among a many-splendored and extended family of theater folk. Upon deciding that he wanted to try an acting career, he did not lack for contacts or encouragement. He shifted from performing to directing after becoming part of the Wallace apparatus, which had so many productions opening and touring during the late 1920s that someone young and proficient was needed to keep all the shows up to the mark and on the road.

Edgar Wallace's sudden death in Hollywood in 1932 -- while working on the screenplay of "King Kong" -- obliged his right-hand man to seek fresh prospects, close at hand in the movie industry. Mr. Reed proved himself as an assistant to producer-director Basil Dean, then quickly established a track record of success and versatility after taking non-stop directing assignments in the last half of the 1930s.

By the end of the decade Mr. Reed also had a grave and powerful prestige hit to his credit, "The Stars Look Down," the movie version of A.J. Cronin's novel about a coal miner's son, played by Michael Redgrave. It began production in 1939 and opened in February of the next year. The chronology of the AFI Silver retrospective begins with this durably eloquent and stirring social melodrama, which leaves little sentimental consolation for an audience but probably harmonized with a national mood of resignation and sacrifice appropriate to the onset of World War II.

The war remained a serious preoccupation for the director for the next several years. Even projects set in the past, such as the endearing "Kipps" and lavish "The Young Mr. Pitt," were designed to enhance national morale or propaganda. In retrospect, it's difficult to believe that a sober outlook governed "Night Train to Munich," an anti-Nazi chase thriller with Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood and Paul Henreid that was shot during the "phony war" interlude but released during the Dunkirk crisis.