Cyril Montague Pennington-Richards was born in London. He began his
film career producing religious films for
J. Arthur Rank's Religious Film Society.
He entered the "mainstream" film industry as a cinematographer with
Ireland's Border Line (1938),
a low-budget vehicle for Irish comic actor
Jimmy O'Dea. During World War II Richards
was attached to the renowned documentary unit The Crown Film Unit, and
was the cinematographer on
Humphrey Jennings famous
Fires Were Started (1943).
After the war ended he continued as a cinematographer, working on many
films directed by his former colleagues in the CFU, such as
Brian Desmond Hurst's
Theirs Is the Glory (1946),
Jack Lee's
The Wooden Horse (1950) and
Pat Jackson's
Weiße Korridore (1951).
He was the cinematographer on Hurst's
Charles Dickens - Eine Weihnachtsgeschichte (1951), considered by many to be
the definitive version of the famous
Charles Dickens novel. He worked
with noted American director
Edward Dmytryk, who was making films in
England due to his being blacklisted during the notorious McCarthy "Red
Scare" era in the US. Richards made his directorial debut with the
comedy The Oracle (1953), and made his
reputation with a series of modest, somewhat whimsical comedies over
the next 20+ years. He made his final film, the modestly budgeted
adventure Sky Pirates (1980), in
1977, after which he retired.
