David James StrattonAM (born 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian, educator, television personality, and producer. His career as a film critic, writer, and educator in Australia spanned 57 years, until his retirement in December 2023. He co-presented film review shows on television with Margaret Pomeranz for 28 years, wrote film reviews for The Weekend Australian for 33 years, and lectured in film history for 35 years.
Early life and education
Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England, in 1939,[1] David James Stratton[2] was sent to Hampshire to see out the war years with his grandmother, an avid filmgoer, where he was taken to the local cinemas regularly and saw a diverse range of films. He attended Chafyn Grove School from 1948 to 1953 as a boarder,[1] but never finished secondary school.[3]
Stratton's career as a film critic, writer, and educator in Australia spanned 57 years. He co-presented film review shows with Margaret Pomeranz for 28 years,[3] and wrote film reviews for The Weekend Australian for 33 years,[6] from around 1990 until December 2023, when he announced his retirement.[3]
Stratton worked for SBS from 1980, acting as their film consultant and introducing the SBS Cinema Classics on Sunday evenings and Movie of the Week for 24 weeks a year.[8] From 30 October 1986[9] onwards Stratton co-hosted the long-running SBS TV program The Movie Show with Margaret Pomeranz, who was also the show's original producer. Stratton and Pomeranz (often referred to as "Margaret and David"[8][10]) left SBS in 2004.[3][4]
From 1 July 2004[9] they co-hosted the ABC film show, At the Movies with Margaret and David.[11] On 16 September 2014, Stratton and Pomeranz announced that they would be retiring at the end of the 2014 series. The ABC confirmed that the series would end, with the last episode broadcast on 9 December 2014.[12]
Stratton wrote for US film industry magazine Variety from 1984,[3] and has also written for TV Week. He lectured in film history at the University of Sydney's Centre for Continuing Education,[13] from around 1988 until December 2023, during which he covered around 840 films and showed 7,506 film clips. Many of his students re-enrolled year after year.[3]
In 2008 he released his autobiography called I Peed on Fellini, a reference to a drunken attempt to shake director Federico Fellini's hand while using a urinal.[1]
In film and other TV
The documentary film David Stratton: A Cinematic Life, written and directed by Sally Aitken, was released in 2017, and re-edited for television, featuring interviews with Stratton about his life and with actors, directors, producers representing Australian cinema since the 1960s.[14][15] A preliminary version of the film was first released at the 2016 Adelaide Film Festival as David Stratton's Stories of Australian Cinema, a "work in progress screening... a celebration of 110 years of Australian Cinema history and its creators".[16] The title was later screened as a three-part series on ABC Television.[17]
Stratton has been invited to sit on many international juries at film festivals.[3] Regarded as an expert on international cinema, particularly French cinema, he was president of FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) Juries in Cannes (twice) and Venice.[5] He was also a member of the jury at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival in 1982.[20]
He has also acted as programming consultant to the London and Los Angeles Film Festivals, and has contributed regularly to the International Film Guide, compiled and published in London.[4]
On 14 March 2015 Stratton appeared in front of a sold-out crowd in a meeting with David Lynch on the opening weekend of the exhibition David Lynch: Between Two Worlds, at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane, Queensland.[21] The one-hour conversation was Lynch's first and only public appearance in Australia.[22]
1 January 2001: Centenary Medal for "Service to Australian society and Australian film production"[25]
22 March 2001: Croix de Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Literature), the highest rank for this award, for his services to cinema, in particular French cinema[26]
Stratton has said that his favourite movie is the 1952 American musical Singin' in the Rain: "I grew up on musicals and this is the best musical ever made".[3]
Stratton and Pomeranz have played an important role in challenging the often heavy-handed decisions of the Australian Classification Board throughout their career.[35][36] One of Stratton's legacies is the part he played in bringing about the R18+ film classification.[11]
Publications
— (1980). The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival. Angus & Robertson. ISBN9780207141461.
— (1990). The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry. Pan Macmillan. ISBN9780732902506.
— (2008). I Peed on Fellini: Recollections of a Life in Film. Australia: William Heinemann / Random House. ISBN978-1-74166-619-9.
— (2018). 101 Marvellous Movies You May Have Missed. Allen & Unwin. ISBN9781760870096.
