Overview

For decades, cinema audiences have turned to the film reviews featured in national and local newspapers, listened to commentators via radio, television and, latterly, the internet, and read fan magazines to learn about the latest releases. These critics helped shape the responses of generations of film fans, creating success and failure, as well as controversy. This wide-ranging collection brings together some of the leading academics on British film history to consider the role of these commentators. It covers the work of influential critics like Dilys Powell and Raymond Durgnat and key magazines such as Time Out, Monthly Film Bulletin and Radio Times. Contributors include leading scholars such as James Chapman, Pamela Hutchinson and Julian Petley, along with the screenwriter and filmmaker David McGillivray and others who have worked as film journalists themselves. For film students or cinema enthusiasts anywhere, this volume provides an insightful analysis of the British film critic.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert Shail (Professor of Film and Director of Research, Leeds Beckett University) ,  Sheldon Hall (Independent scholar and freelance writer)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399510509

ISBN 10:   1399510509
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   31 August 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures Notes on Contributors 1. Introduction by Sheldon Hall and Robert Shail Part I. Contexts 2. The Histogram and the List: The Director in British Film Criticism Peter Hutchings 3. ‘The Director of the Film is the man who chiefly matters’: How British Critics Invented the Auteur Theory James Chapman 4. The Mid-century Critic as Cultural Celebrity and Cinephile Role Model Melanie Selfe 5. The Critics, the Commentariat and the Consensus Julian Petley Part II. Critics 6. F. Maurice Speed and the Vanishing Audience Jonathan Rigby 7. The Making of C.A. Lejeune, Film Critic Pamela Hutchinson 8. The Critic Entranced: Dilys Powell and the Voice of Film Criticism Laura Mayne 9. Raymond Durgnat and Films and Filming Henry K. Miller 10. The British Film Critic in Action: An Insider’s Reflections David McGillivray Part III. Publications 11. Pulling Pictures to Pieces: Fans and Film Criticism in Picturegoer (1918–1940) Lies Lanckman 12. ‘So much more than TV times’: Film Coverage in Radio Times and TVTimes Sheldon Hall 13. The Monthly Film Bulletin vs. Leslie Halliwell: Critical Discourses of the 1970s and 1980s Robert Shail 14. The Critic-Turned-Filmmaker and the Time Out Film Section Ieuan Franklin 15. Jack Babuscio, Gay News and the Development of a Gay Film Criticism Andrew Moor Index

Reviews

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.-- ""Andrew Spicer, Professor of Cultural Production, University of the West of England Bristol""

Author Information

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).

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