Carol Reed

Known for: The Third Man (1949), Odd Man Out (1947)

Carol Reed directed Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949) in rapid succession, establishing himself as the most formally accomplished British filmmaker of the postwar era. The Third Man — shot in rubble-strewn postwar Vienna with a tilted-angle style that made the city's moral corruption legible in the film's very geometry — is among the most discussed films of the 1940s. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Oliver! (1968), a decision considered by critics a misjudgment given his earlier work.