Don't miss Pamela Hutchinson's online presentation about Britain's Early Female Film Critics

I want to encourage everyone to be sure and check out Pamela Hutchinson's online talk, "C. A. Lejeune and and Britain’s Lady Film Critics." This San Francisco Film Preserve presentation is set to take place over Zoom on Friday, August 15 at 12 noon (Pacific time) or 7:00 pm UTC + 0. And what's more, it's free and open to the public. Interested individuals can register HERE.

For anyone interested in film history and early film criticism, this presentation is a must. Here is the event description: 

"In 1922, with a weekly column in the Manchester Guardian, C. A. Lejeune became one of Britain’s first lay film critics, and began to define what that could mean. Soon, she was the best of the bunch, and the funniest, too – but her opinions often became controversial. This talk will look at Lejeune’s passion for cinema and her remarkable career, which included three decades at The Observer, and becoming a fixture on BBC radio and TV. It will also introduce some of the many women who joined her in giving British film criticism a “womanly” voice from the 1920s to the 1950s. Chief among these is her fellow “Sunday Lady” Dilys Powell, her brilliant counterpart at the Sunday Times, who outlasted them all."

As Hutchinson notes on a recent blog on Silent London, Caroline Alice Lejeune (aka C. A. Lejeune, aka C.A.L.) and other early British film critics (including Iris Barry and Elsie Cohen) are a special interest. In fact, they are a topic which Hutchinson has been reading about, researching and writing about for a while. As Hutchinson states, "I find her writing to be witty and wise and gentle, and her story, of falling in and out of love with the cinema, to be absorbing and not a little moving. It is also fascinating to me how she first got her job as the first real film critic on the Manchester Guardian, and moved to the Observer for another three decades"

Hutchinson's talk is based, in part, I would guess, on "The Making of C.A. Lejeune, Film Critic," her contribution to a new book from Edinburgh University Press called Film Critics and British Film Culture: New Shots in the Dark, edited by Robert Shail and Sheldon Hall. I have yet to get a hold of a copy, but intend to -- the book is not due out until August 31. 

In my own research on Louise Brooks and her films, I have been struck by how many female film critics there were writing for American newspapers. New York City had more than a dozen newspapers in the 1920s, and the majority of its film critics were women. The same can be said of Chicago.

The story of C. A. Lejeune intersects with that of Louise Brooks. Under the by-line of C.A.L., she reviewed some of Brooks' early silents for the Manchester Guardian. I have found writes with the lady critic's by-line for Love Em and Leave Em, Just Another Blonde, Evening Clothes, Rolled Stockings, and perhaps others. (Unforunately, some reviews and write-ups were anonymous.) Regarding Love Em and Leave Em, Lejeune wrote “It has the advantage, beyond its generic qualities, of introducing picturegoers to Louise Brooks, a young Paramount ‘discovery’ who is certainly going to be a star one day.”

Notably, Lejeune even made mention of Brooks in her 1931 book, Cinema. In the section on director G.W. Pabst, Lejeune wrote  “ . . . no director on two continents has found so much personality in Louise Brooks.” Amen.

Pamela Hutchinson is a freelance film critic. She is the author of books including BFI Film Classics on The Red Shoes and Pandora's Box and her work has appeared in the Guardian, Empire and the Criterion Collection. She is a columnist for Sight and Sound and edits the Weekly Film Bulletin. Her curation projects include seasons on Marlene Dietrich and Asta Nielsen for BFI Southbank. She lives on the south coast of England and indulges her obsession with silent cinema at SilentLondon.co.uk.

Pamela Hutchinson and Thomas Gladysz

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