David Stratton, the revered Australian film critic and beloved co-host of television programs The Movie Show and At The Movies with fellow critic Margaret Pomeranz, has died aged 85.
Born in the English town of Trowbridge in 1939, Stratton was sent to live with his grandmother in Hampshire during the second world war. An avid filmgoer, she took Stratton to the cinema almost every day, which changed his life. In the 2017 documentary David Stratton: A Cinematic Life, Stratton said he watched “at least one” film he hadn’t seen every day, and had seen more than 25,000 films in his life.
Stratton moved to Australia in 1963, and was soon involved with the local film industry, becoming director of the Sydney film festival from 1966 until 1983. The role sealed his decision to stay in Australia; he later spoke of feeling “very guilty” about the decision, as it meant ending his family’s tradition of passing down the family’s grocery story in England from father to son since the 1820s. He became an Australian citizen in the 1980s.
In 2014, it was revealed Stratton was under surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation while he was director of the Sydney film festival, due to a visit he made to the USSR in the late 1960s and his decision to show Soviet films.
From the 1970s onwards, Stratton wrote reviews for The Australian, and Variety magazine in the US. In 1980, he joined SBS as a film consultant, introducing movies shown on the channel for six months a year.
In that role he met TV producer Margaret Pomeranz; reflecting on their partnership in 2011, Pomeranz recalled wanting to make the strait-laced Stratton “take his tie off and grow a pony tail”. After they successfully pitched a weekly film review program to SBS, and several disappointing screen tests with female presenters, Stratton convinced Pomeranz to join him on camera. In 1986, they began presenting the long-running SBS program The Movie Show.
Their tastes were diverse, and often amusingly contrasted; Pomeranz’s open fondness for Hollywood action and mainstream blockbusters was stark against Stratton’s distaste for the same, often reserving his admiration for more obscure European cinema. In 1992, Pomeranz rated Romper Stomper five stars, while Stratton refused to give it a rating because he disliked it so. The film’s director, Geoffrey Wright, later threw a glass of wine in Stratton’s face.
Stratton and Pomeranz left SBS in 2004, and took the concept to the ABC, with the show renamed At the Movies. The much-loved show ended in 2014 after almost three decades; when it ended, actor Geoffrey Rush lauded the pair’s “sparkling bickering”.
After the success of At the Movies, Stratton appeared on several ABC shows as a snobbish parody of himself, including on The Chaser’s War on Everything, Review with Myles Barlow and Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure.
He was highly regarded around the world for his knowledge of international cinema, particularly the French New Wave – he was a fan of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy – and for his work championing Australian cinema abroad. He served as a member of the International Jury at the film festivals of Berlin (1982), Montreal (1982) and Venice (1994), and was the president of FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) juries in Cannes twice and once in Venice.
In 2001, Stratton was appointed the Croix de Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the French honour’s highest rank, for his services to French cinema. That same year, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Australian Film Institute, and a Centenary Medal for his “service to Australian society and Australian film production”. In 2015, he was made a member of the Order of Australia.
In the 2012 Sight & Sound critics’ poll, Stratton named his 10 favourite films as Charulata, Citizen Kane, The Conversation, Uzak (Distant), Distant Voices, Still Lives, Kings of the Road, Lola, The Searchers, Singin’ in the Rain, and The Travelling Players.
In 2008 he released an autobiography titled I Peed on Fellini, named for his drunken attempt to shake director Federico Fellini’s hand while at a urinal. In 2021, he published My Favourite Movies, a book that explored his relationship with 111 films.
In 2023 he retired from writing criticism and teaching, telling Guardian Australia of this retirement plans: “I’d like to watch one new movie every day that I haven’t seen before. And from time to time watch an old movie that I want to see again.”
