[2] He was the son of actor-producer Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his mistress, Beatrice May Pinney, who later adopted the surname of Reed.

[5] Apart from acting in a few Wallace-derived films himself, Reed became involved in adapting his work for the screen during the day while he was a stage manager in the evenings.

[6] His films in the later role working under Dean were Autumn Crocus, Lorna Doone and Loyalties and (with Thorold Dickinson) Java Head.

"I thought I had picked up a lot about cutting and camera angles, but now, when I had to make all the decisions myself and was not just mentally approving or criticising what somebody else decided, I was pretty much lost.

"[5] Graham Greene, then reviewing films for The Spectator, was much more forgiving, commenting that Reed "has more sense of the cinema than most veteran British directors".

"[9] The scripts of several of Reed's films in this period were written by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, with the screenwriters and director working for producer Edward Black, who released through the British subsidiary of 20th Century Fox.

[10] The best known of these films are probably Night Train to Munich (1940), with Rex Harrison; Kipps (1941), again with Michael Redgrave; and The Young Mr. Pitt (1942), with Robert Donat in the title role, set during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Reed made his three most highly regarded films just after the war, beginning with Odd Man Out (1947), with James Mason in the lead.

The Third Man was co-produced by David O. Selznick and Korda, with the American actors Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten in two of the leading roles.

[2] It "makes no startling impact, such as we have learned to expect from its director, on either the mind or the heart", complained Virginia Graham in The Spectator.

[15] While the fable A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), Reed's first colour film, set in the East End of London, has been claimed as one of very few authentic cinematic depictions of an Anglo-Jewish community,[16] it suffers from the stereotyping of Jews[17] and is no more than a "whimsical curiosity" according to Michael Brooke.

Trapeze (1956) was Reed's first venture into the then relatively new CinemaScope wide screen process, and, although largely shot in Paris, was made for the US Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions company and was a success at the box-office.

[20] The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), made in the United States, was a box-office failure, and was the last film over which Reed also served as producer.

Reed died from a heart attack on 25 April 1976, aged 69, at his home at 213 King's Road, Chelsea, where he had lived since 1948.