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In the thirty years between nineteen ninety and twenty twenty, seven hundred and eighty three films were made in Australia and David Stratton has seen every single one of them. Before retiring late last year. David spent nearly six decades reviewing movies, including an on air partnership with fellow critic Margaret Pomerantz that made them one of the most beloved double acts.
In the country.
To me, it was a winner, David, well, I'm afraid it wasn't for me.
Margaret. I really didn't get onto the wavelength of this film at all. I thought it was patronizing towards its characters. I didn't find it funny.
On today's episode, David joins me from his home in the Blue Mountains to discuss his new book, He's Enduring Friendship with Margaret, his thoughts on some of his most infamous, maybe even notorious reviews, including one that landed him in hot water with Julie Andrews, and the one film he thought was so bad he walked out of the cinema. David Stratton, Welcome to the Stellar Podcast.
It's a pleasure to be here.
It's almost been a year since you retired. How is retirement treating you?
Not too bad? I haven't been very well. One of the reasons I retired was that I lost much of my eyesight. So for a film critic, losing your eyesight is a pretty glum thing. I'm still coping. I can still watch movies, although they're a bit fuzzy these days. That I can still watch television. I can still read kindle, but I have to be very careful when I walk because in case I trip over things on which I'm
avoiding doing. My other problem was that I fractured my spine, and so I had to learn how to walk again. Really so, but I've managed to do that pretty much, so I'm going well. My wife was looking after me wonderfully. Well, I couldn't do it without her. I've dedicated the book to her, and yeah, I'm look, I'm fine, really, David.
I imagine over the course of your career, you have constantly been asked by punters what's your favorite film. It's a very obvious question for a film critic, and you've often cited Singing in the Rain as your all time favorite. Does that still stand today, especially since you clearly have seen a lot of films that you hadn't previously seen since you presumably last answered that question.
No, I still love Singing in the Rain, and it's always loved musicals growing up, because you were. When you grew up in the late forties and early fifties, there was a new musical film almost every week, and most of the popular songs of the time were from movies. But the best of the musicals for me was Singing in the Rain. And again, I had a wonderful day with Jim Kelly. He invited me to his home in Beverly Hills and I was doing some radio for two GB in Sydney at the time, and I recorded a
long interview with him, which was a wonderful experience. Was again he was a lovely, lovely man.
So many people, of course remember you so fondly from your time on Australian screens, where your partnership with Margaret Pomeranz was one of the most famous double acts in Australian television. You are broadcast on the ABC from two thousand and four on the final episode on twenty fourteen. Of course, he'd been presenting together on SBS the Movie Show since nineteen eighty six. Again, this is not a question that you have not been asked countless times before,
but nothing if not predictable. What was it do you think, David about that double ac that struck such a chord and I imagine still does continue to this day.
Look, I honestly don't know the answer to that question. It came as a surprise to us. I think. I don't want to speak for Margaret, but I don't think we expected anything like that. And the fact that some of the SBS movie shows are still screening today on SBS during the day just stupefies me sometimes. Look, we we came from different, a different background. I had always I was a film nerd, I guess you would say.
And I'd always been since I was a kid. I'd gone to every single film that I could, no matter what it was, I just wanted to see everything. Margaret was much more like a regular film goer. She had always gone to see the film she thought sounded interesting and wanted to see. I don't think she'd ever seen a horror film, for example, but suddenly she had to see those. So I had some sort of historical background
of cinema and Margaret didn't. The combination of those two approaches seemed to work quite well, and people seem to like the banter between us.
Have the two of you kept in touch very much, so.
We talk probably once a week on the phone. Margaret's been to visit me in the Blue Mountains a couple of times. I can't get out about much anymore. But no, no, we're in very close touch and it's always a pleasure to chat to Margaret. We get on very well.
David.
I'd love to ask you specifically about some of the things that talked about in your new book, Australia at the Movies. You have broken it down into categories. One I'd like to talk to you about, I suppose is Australian comedy. For a country that really prides itself on our sense of humor, not as many classic comedies as we would expect.
I think comedy is the most difficult genre to do well, because comedy means different things to different people. What I think is funny, you may not think is funny. I love Lauren Hardy and the Marx blothers, and you may not. You know, that's the difference. So I think it's hard to do well, or hard to get across to a wide audience. When I first saw The Castle, it didn't impress me terribly much. The humor wasn't on my wavelength. I've seen it since and I've appreciated it much much more.
But it's really hard to do I think. And there have been some very disappointing comedies and have been some wonderful comedies, So I think that's the reason.
What about romantic comedies, David. That is obviously a genre that is traditionally much maligned, and it sort of went away for a little bit from Hollywood, and it's having a little bit of a resurgence lately, I think, especially to streaming possibly, But again Australia, we haven't produced an awful lot of rom coms. I remember when there was a Claudia Carvin Hugh Jackman one in the late nineties. It felt like the first time in a long time
that we tackled that. What do you think about romantic comedy as a genre and do you think that's been a bit of a missed opportunity for Australian filmmakers.
Yes, maybe, Again, I don't think it's You've got to get absolutely the right actors to do rom com well. And Claudia Carwan is peerless in that respect. She could have done a lot more. She's a wonderful comedian and a wonderful actor. And Hugh Jackman, of course, is also very good. That early film The Big Steal with Claudia and Ben Mendelssohn is a very very nice rom com, sort of teenage rom com. But yeah, it's not easy
to do. We haven't we haven't always just found just the right tone for the romantic comedies that have been the kind of romantic comedies that have been so successful in Hollywood.
Another film that you revisit in this era, of course, is Lantana, which was a big hit with audiences and also critically acclaimed film.
I wanted to ask.
You, David a little bit about your thoughts on class in Australian cinema, because from my observation, there's quite a lot of working class films. We've got quite an affiliation towards quite gritty. Obviously a soft spot in this country for the crime genre, whether it's on television or in film.
I remember thinking at the time that Lantana had, you know, a little bit of shades of American beauty and some of those other class suburban films in that it was about middle class Australians, and of course.
A lot most Australians actually.
Are middle class. What do you think about the notion of class and what role, if any, that might have played in modern Australian cinema.
We're supposed to be a classless society, aren't we. It's not really true, but I agree with you the characters in Lantana, which is one of the great Australian films, I think we're mostly from middle class.
So many films are revisited in your book. My deputy editor Nicholas Vonseca counted, and I believe he thought there were seven hundred and eighty three films that were referenced in the book. David. A lot of people would be surprised to hear that that between this thirty year period in Australia there have been that many locally made films. What do you think about that?
Yeah, Look, I think the first thing to say is that a lot of the films in the book never saw the light of a cinema screen or even screaming. So in order to write the book, I wanted to be as comprehensive as I possibly could and cover every Australian feature film, not documentaries, not short films, but feature films that had been made between nineteen ninety and twenty twenty. And to do that I had seen most of them, but there were quite a few that I hadn't seen
because they were never screamed. So I had to contact the filmmakers, track them down, which was not always easy, and get them to send me a link to their films so that I could see it and write about it. So that's probably why there were so many, because there were a lot that were never never scene.
Would I be putting you on the spot if I asked you to recommend one Australian film for somebody to watch.
Look, I think there are a handful of really great Australian films. High on the list would be Samson and Delilah by Warwick Thornton, which is about two indigenous kids living in the outback near Alla Springs, and it's a love story in which no words have spoken. It's a wonderful, wonderful film. I also love Charlie's Country, which is after Hears film, which was the last film with David Golferlo and it's really almost biographical about David golfs towards the
end of his life. It's another wonderful film. And then there'll be films like Muriel's Wedding, which I think is just terrific Adventures of Priscilla. I like Enormously Animal Kingdom, a terrific thriller, Lion. Do you remember Lion?
Yeah, Yeah, that was a lovely film twenty seventeen. I think, yes, that.
Was very good. And there's a little film again that nobody has seen called a Lion Returns, which was made at the height of the Islamic State dramas in the Middle East and it was set in a Muslim community in a Sydney suburb and it was about one of the members of the family who has just returned from Syria where he may have been involved with Islamic State. And it's a very tense film. It's a very impressive film in every way, but again very few people saw it.
One of the films that you touch upon in the course of this book, of course, is Rompa Stomper, which is notable for many reasons. That film, for a start, it was a launching pad for little known actor for some of our listeners might have heard of by the name of Russell Crowe. But of course, David, you also quite infamously didn't like the film, and in fact wouldn't rate it at the time.
I know that people see it as a racist film.
I profoundly disagree. Unlike Margaret, I was troubled by rom Pa Stompa's extreme violence and promotion of racial supremacy. But the filmmaking was excellent, so I couldn't give it a poor rating. Yet I had to convey my concerns. Somehow, I can't score it at all.
I'm afraid.
So I'd like to ask you about a few different things about that. First of all, I suppose the feedback that you get when you take a position on a film like that that then really becomes a story in and of itself. And then I'd like to ask you also about any of the moments that really stand out for you when you and Margaret with that on screen dynamic did have a very newsworthy difference of opinion.
Well with Ronvstomper. It wasn't that I trying to sort of step back a bit. As a film. It wasn't at all bad and Russell Crowe was extraordinary in it, I thought. So. It wasn't that I didn't like the film.
I just didn't like what it was saying, or rather what it wasn't saying, because it was a film that where the protagonists were Neo Nazis, skinheads, vicious, violent ones, and it seemed to me and I still believe it, that it could have stirred up violence in it was the Vietnamese community in those days today be the Islamic
community probably, and I think anything like that. There was no sense at all that that to me anyway, that the Russell Crowe character Handa was doing was not was not doing what he believed was right and and and it was it was. I just found that side of it repulsive. Now I made a big mistake. I acknowledge now I made a big mistake by not giving it a score on the movies. No, it was the movie
show in those days. I I felt wrongly as it turned out, but I felt that I just didn't want to because I thought the film had some qualities, so I couldn't give it two stars or something like that. But at the same time, I couldn't four stars because I just felt it was a dangerous film. I guess I would say, I think that's what I felt at the time, a dangerous one. So I decided not to
give it a score at all. That, of course, was used very skillfully by the distributor of the film to publicize and as a result, more people probably went to see the film. I did have some contact with people afterwards. You thank me for my stand on it. Of course, I also had contact from people who who hated my standard it. But anyway, there we are, and.
Up next, what happened when Julie Andrews complained about one of David's reviews and David's thought on cancel culture and censorship.
You've mentioned, obviously some of the most famous actors in the world that you have met throughout the course of your career, and you really have interviewed some of the most prolific and successful filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, creators of the last forty fifty sixty years, when you do review something that is negative or has constructive feedback that may not be received in the constructive spirit in which it was intended.
Have there been any awkward moments or memorable moments that stand out for you where you were receiving that feedback in person about a review?
That was not so much reviewing films with Margaret, but I was also for twenty years reviewing films for the American newspaper Variety, and Variety is of paper that is read by everybody in the film industry. And there was one occasion when for some reason, they had a preview of a new film by Blake Edwards, a director I liked very much. I loved the Pink Panther films and so on. But this was called a fine mess, and
it was a mess. And they had a preview in Sydney, which I went to before they had a preview in America. And just as a matter of course, I just I send a note to my editor at Variety and said I've seen a fine mess. If you want a review, I can do it. And they came back and said, oh, yes, please do it. So I wrote this not very well, very negative review of I mean, it really was a terrible film. And I heard afterwards that Julie Andrews rang Variety to complain and asked, who was this David Stratton
in Sydney who saw this film? Because Blake was not happy. So that was with the most prominent piece of nay saying apparently he was reading it over breakfast and he choked on his cereal or something. I don't know, but it's interesting because my colleague Paul Burns, who used to write for the Sidney Morning Herald when he retired, he said that one thing a film critic cannot be is friendly with a filmmaker. And I found that not to be true. I think you can be friendly with a filmmaker.
I was friendly with a lot of filmmakers, but you have to still be honest about their film. And it was you know, when you're writing a review or when you're televising a review, your first duties to the reader or the audience, not to the filmmaker, and so sometimes I had to. I mean, I'll give you one example. Paul Cox, the Melbourne based filmmaker, was a very very good friend of mine and I liked his early films enormously, and then later in his career he seemed to lose
it a bit and he had a new film. We reviewed it on the show. I gave it a pretty bad review, and I thought, well, I better g just Ringpaul and tell him warn him, and I did, and he said, oh, that's all right, you need to say it how you feel if you're a critic. And then the next day, after the show went to air, he rang me and said, you really didn't like it.
But I would like to ask in about the more general question about censorship in film. You've always been very passionate opponent of censorship, and of course, as you and I are speaking in twenty twenty four, part of the new era of censorship is this notion of well, what we call cancel culture, which I think is a bit of a simplistic term, but obviously does speak to the fact that we're living in a time we're really policing
opinions and the role of culture. But also this notion of criticizing a piece of work that was made five, fifteen, fifty five years ago through the prism of our current values.
Can I ask you how you feel about that?
I don't approve of it at all. I don't like this whole notion of cancel culture. I mean, for example, Roman Polanski may have done some bad things in his private life. I don't know, but Chinatown is a masterpiece and nothing will nothing will alter that. Woody Allen, who's been accused of things, never been charged, but now his films aren't shown in America at all, and that's to me,
I mean, I think that's wrong. If you want to start accusing people who've done bad things and getting their films banned, you would never look at a Charlie Chaplin film because Charlie Chaplin did some pretty bad things. Errol
Flinn did some pretty bad things. You know, you would you would not look at any of those film Those classic films are not condoning the actions of the filmmakers, But I'm just saying that the art that they created should not be confused with the character of the film maker or the artist.
What it has absolutely been a conversation, this struggle, I think, with separating the artist from their work. And another conversation that has been happening of course a lot, particularly in film in the last few years, is whether it is okay for like an able bodied actor to play a character with the disability, or whether it is okay for a heterosexual actor to play a queer character. And obviously this has been something there's been a lot of discussion about.
We've discussed it on this podcast with various people, where I think it's a real shame because apart from anything, I think we're shutting down our empathy, because we're sort of saying to people, you couldn't possibly have any empathy or capacity to imagine or inhabit the experience of anyone who isn't exactly on a parallel identity to your own.
But you're opinion on that, well, again, my opinion on that is that actors are actors. They're meant to act. And I think where I would disagree take issue would be when, in let's say a Passage to India, Alec Guinness played an Indian. There were plenty of Indian actors who could have played that part at that time. Prior to that, when there were performances of Othello, you could say maybe that we're not the black actors who could take that role. Now there are, so I think now
I would expect a black actor to play Othello. But I would never expect a gay actor to play a gay character, or that sort of thing is just taking it too far. What I do really object to strongly is what they call colorblind casting. And I'll give you
an example. There was a film last year I think it was, or maybe the year before, called See How They Run a British Film, and it was set around the performance of The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap, and there was supposed to be a murder of the theater where the play was taking place, and in one scene, the characters in the film visit the home of Agatha Christie. Now Agatha Christie was married to a famous archaeologist, white
archaeologist called Max Malloween. In the film, he was played by a black actor. Now I find that reprehensible. I don't care what the motives are for it. I find it completely wrong. And you know, you see films like Wicked Little Letters in which supposed to be said in nineteen twenty and the judge is played by a black actor. Wrong, they wouldn't be, and that is wrong. I think it's just as wrong to give a role to a black actor, just as token is.
There has been discussion that Gone with the Wind shouldn't be played anymore because it is the way that it
is depicting people of color. And of course that's not to say that Margaret Mitchell probably should be doing a better job of some of that if she was writing that in twenty twenty four, but it is obviously was a really our famous novel and an amazing film, I would argue, and personally, I think that's crazy to look back at that through our twenty first century, twenty twenty four lens and say that that film doesn't have a place anymore. What's your lens for this, David.
Look, I agree, I think it's I think it's important to remember that any work of art, a film, a player book, any work of art reflects the time that it was made. So Gone with the Wind reflects the opinions and the thoughts of people in nineteen thirty nine, and that's eighty five years ago, so it's it's it's nonsense to you can say, Okay, that's interesting. That's the way they looked at it then, and how wrong were they?
They were really wrong, But that's the way they saw it then, and that I think is the way to approach it. I mean, even worse is the first great movie classic, The Birth of a Nation, which was made in nineteen fifteen and celebrates the ku Klux Ku Klux Klan and what was the president of the day? It was, I forget who was the president of the day, but screened it the White House and praise it to the skies.
Of course you wouldn't do that today, but you should still be able to see the film because it's a great pioneering film with a very bad approach to race relations.
And it can also be a bit of a mirror, can't it, and show us how far we've come?
David?
Has there ever been a film that you have watched and thought I cannot get through this, it's just yes.
Tell me Assassin's Creed maybe an Australian directric called Justin Kurzel. After about an hour, I didn't have to review it. I would never walk out of a film I had to review, but I wasn't reviewing it, and after about an hour I thought, I just cannot stand this. This is just awful, and I walked out.
Has it conver perly ever been a film that you did review? And we touch upon this a little bit with Rumpastompa, but something that you were quite harsh on, and then you've had cause to reflect since and think I was.
Too hard on that, but in quite a big.
Way, and think I wish maybe I could go over and reconsider my evaluation of that piece of work.
I think The Castle probably there were two things that I had problems with over The Castle. One was that it was the first film made by this television group, Rob Sitch and the others, and it was a very televisual film. I mean, cinema to me is not just acting and writing and directing, but it's also cinematography. There's a lot of elements that contribute to making a great film. And I thought The Castle was not very technically very I mean, it was all right, but it wasn't special
in any way. And then the other thing about it, I just didn't latch onto the sense of humor, and I admit that I found it condescending towards these battlers, and so I didn't review it very well. I've seen it since. I still think it's a very prosaically made film. The Dish is much much better, a big step forward, but I sort of got the humor more and in fact I laughed out loud when two or more as the lawyer in the courtroom talks about the vibe. I was laughing out loud.
One of the reviews when you and Margaret were working together, that really stuck in my mind. It's an American film I'm going to reference here was Team America World Police, made by the part creators. Came out in two thousand
and four. It was not long after the war in Iraq, and not sure if you remember the one I'm talking about, but it was animated and it had all these sort of celebrity character tours, so like Tim Robbins and people are actors of the day who'd spoken out against the war in Iraq, and the film was really parroting these
say oh there, you know, Matt Damon. There were lines like, oh, I'm qualified to tell people what to think because I read an article about it and it was I'm going to show my bias because I really agreed with you, because I actually think it was quite a conservative film.
It's something I've actually discussed on.
This podcast with other people about the way that it was really trying to silence celebrities from having a political stance. Whereas, funnily enough, in twenty twenty four, the reverses happened. Now celebrities get trolled if they don't speak out on every thing. So I think it shows interestingly, I think we've gone from one extreme to the other. So I did recently cite that film in a conversation here, but Margaret didn't agree, and she was saying to you, Oh, no, you didn't
get it. I don't know if you I really remember, because I was watching it. I like, I say, I know I'm biased, but I thought, no, David's completely right on this, and it's not that you didn't get it. It was actually, I would say, quite an astute point.
That's one that you know sticks out in my mind.
Can I ask you a little bit about any of those moments where there was civil disagreement between you and Margaret but you may have felt a bit misunderstood either one of you, or did that tension ever then spill from the on air dynamic off set for instance?
I don't think so. I mean, I remember the film you were talking about, and yeah, I mean I think I can't remember Margaret's thoughts and I don't want to quote her, but yes, I felt it was a conservative film that was trying to make fun of people who were trying to do the right thing. I can't remember, I think, I mean, we just obviously we disagreed. Otherwise Margaret couldn't have come out with her famous line, oh David,
or whatever it was she used to say. But it never spilled over into into after the show was was was finished. We always we usually went out and had lunch after recording the show and had a glass or three of white So that the lost.
Art of civil disagreement something that I fear is becoming increasingly rare in our modern culture.
Well, I think it is. I think it is. It's distressing me, and I don't think the politicians are helping much. David.
I'll have to let you go, but before I do, can I just get your thoughts on cinema. You have obviously spent a lot of time in cinemas over the years, I imagine, not only because of the era of streaming, but that's obviously something that you would be doing less yourself, of course, watching more things from home. And then of course we are more broadly as a as a world,
not a global community. Of course, the pandemic really disrupted cinema, which had already been seen to be struggling a little bit. What are your thoughts about cinema as an art form. Do you think that people going to the movies will continue to exist as a way that we consume film, and if not, do you think that thanks to streaming, it's something that will still survive.
I have a feeling. I don't know for sure. I mean, it's hard to predict the future, but I have a feeling that there will still be cinemas showing big films. I hate to say it, but superhero films, which I don't like much, but that sort of thing, something like Oppenheim, that kind of big prestige film. I think the smaller films, and in Australia, the foreign language films, the French films, the Italian films, will probably no longer be shown in cinemas.
I think the future I hate to say it, but I think the future for the small cinemas is not great, and I think those small films will wind up on streaming and other whatever whatever other way. I mean. I think it's I think it's terrible when people watch films that demand to be seen on a sim the screen on their phone or something like that. I mean, that's not seeing the film at all, that's seeing a sort of pale shadow of it.
My final question for you, David, is about the lost art of the film critic. We're living in a time where people hop on to TikTok or fire off a review online, and a film can be over before it's even begun.
Do you think.
Ever about what your professional life in your career might have looked like if you had been emerging to begin your career in.
Modern day?
Pretty different, I'm sure. Yeah. Look, it's like I was looking at a cafe that I like very much here in the Blue Mountains and the very first so called review was terrible. Now, and that was top of the list of reviews like half a star or something, and complaining about this and that and the other, none of which I've ever experienced in this particular cape, And I thought, how damaging this must be if people are looking it up to see where to go for lunch in the mountains.
It's so wrong. And I guess the same sort of thing is happening with social media and movie reviewing, but there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, it's an understandable thing to want to post your comments on a film, even if they're uninformed comments. I mean, are you a better reviewer because you happen to know something about the history of cinema? I think so, but maybe it's not necessary.
Also, the capacity, I think to self reflect. That's been very evident in our conversation today, and you looking back and thinking, I think, I would you know, reconsider the opinion of that or have that civil disagreement with your on air spiring partner Again, I think these equalities that might be missing from our modern discourse.
Well possibly possibly, I don't know that I'm qualified to speak about that, but yeah, I think you've got You've got to be thoughtful, considerate in life, you know, let alone. I was never the kind of critic that wanted to attack a film or a filmmaker or an actor. You know,
I never wanted to do that. I know that making a film is a a You pour your life and soul, your heart and soul into making a film, and it can take months, if not years sometimes to make a film and complete it and then to have someone destroy it. I think you can criticize it without being vindictive or really really nasty. So I was never the kind of
critic that wanted to be really, really hostile. I wanted to be to say, look, you know this and this and this, but never to sort of demolish the whole thing. That was my aim. I don't know if I succeeded, but.
David, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak to you today. Thank you so much for your time.
It's been a great palue. Thank you.
David Stratton's new book, Australia at the Movies is available to purchase by the link in our show notes.
Thank you for joining us today.
If you've enjoyed this episode, maybe give us a review, be like David, don't be unkind, hopefully a five star review, and make sure you're following us because we'll be back with another exclusive guest on Stella's podcast next week