Film Critics and British Film Culture

Robert Shail is Professor of Film and Director of Research at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of The Children’s Film Foundation (2016), Tony Richardson (2012), Stanley Baker (2008) and British Directors (2007). He is also the editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including Crank It Up – Jason Statham (2019), Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film (2019) and Seventies British Cinema (2008). Sheldon Hall is an Emeritus Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. A former film journalist, he has contributed to numerous books and journals on British and American cinema. He is the author of Armchair Cinema: A History of Feature Films on British Television, 1929-1981 (EUP, 2024) and Zulu: With Some Guts Behind It (2005/2014), co-author of Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (2010), and co-editor of Widescreen Worldwide (2010).

This lively, wide-ranging collection focuses on an important dimension of British film culture – the role of the film critic – that has been neglected, mined unthinkingly or marginalised in previous accounts. Encompassing film annuals and broadcast media as well as newspaper columnists, these well-researched accounts – breathing life in by-line names such as C.A. Lejeune or Dilys Powell – provide fascinating historical detail to illuminate the broader historical contexts in which they were produced and circulated. Giving the lie to assertions that there is no such thing as British film culture, this collection will make essential reading for anyone interested in its changing nature and significance.

• List of FiguresNotes on Contributors1. Introduction by Sheldon Hall and Robert ShailPart I. Contexts2. The Histogram and the List: The Director in British Film CriticismPeter Hutchings3. ‘The Director of the Film is the man who chiefly matters’: How British Critics Invented the Auteur TheoryJames Chapman4. The Mid-century Critic as Cultural Celebrity and Cinephile Role ModelMelanie Selfe5. The Critics, the Commentariat and the ConsensusJulian PetleyPart II. Critics6. F. Maurice Speed and the Vanishing AudienceJonathan Rigby7. The Making of C.A. Lejeune, Film CriticPamela Hutchinson8. The Critic Entranced: Dilys Powell and the Voice of Film CriticismLaura Mayne9. Raymond Durgnat and Films and FilmingHenry K. Miller10. The British Film Critic in Action: An Insider’s ReflectionsDavid McGillivrayPart III. Publications11. Pulling Pictures to Pieces: Fans and Film Criticism in Picturegoer (1918–1940)Lies Lanckman12. ‘So much more than TV times’: Film Coverage in Radio Times and TVTimesSheldon Hall13. The Monthly Film Bulletin vs. Leslie Halliwell: Critical Discourses of the 1970s and 1980sRobert Shail14. The Critic-Turned-Filmmaker and the Time Out Film SectionIeuan Franklin15. Jack Babuscio, Gay News and the Development of a Gay Film CriticismAndrew MoorIndex