Ask most people to describe a stereotypical film critic, and they're likely to come up with a white, middle-aged, middle-class geek, perhaps scruffily chic, invariably wearing glasses. But one assumption nearly everyone will share is that their critic will be male. This is hardly surprising, given that the majority of today's film critics are in fact men.
It wasn't always so. Many of the first writers to treat film as something worth reviewing were women. Take, for instance, Lotte Eisner, Germany's first eminent film critic, who began writing reviews for the magazine Film-Kurier in 1927 and was later chief curator of the Cinématheque Française. In Britain there was CA Lejeune, the Observer's main film reviewer from 1925 to 1960, whose career overlapped with the other "Sunday lady," Dilys Powell, chief film critic at the Sunday Times from 1939 to 1976. Penelope Houston edited the British Film Institute's magazine Sight & Sound from 1956 all the way to 1990. In France, bohemian expats Bryher (aka Annie Winifred Ellerman) and her lover Hilda Doolittle, better known as HD, founded and wrote for the intellectual quarterly Close Up, published between 1927 and 1933. The early years of cinema were a time when women's opinions about film mattered.
Of course there were visionary men who took an interest too, notably the author Graham Greene, who reviewed film for the Spectator in the 1930s and 1940s and the novelist, poet and screenwriter James Agee, who wrote for Time magazine in the 1940s. But female voices, especially on the then all-important Sunday publications, had enormous influence on public opinion of film. Today, there are only three women writing regular film reviews for quality national newspapers in Britain, and only one of them is a chief critic (Jenny McCartney at the Sunday Telegraph). Film magazines are equally over-populated with male bylines. So what can have happened in the years between the 1930s and today to tip the balance so firmly in the favour of men?
Significantly, society's perception of cinema has changed. In the 1920s film was, on the whole, considered to be a medium of mass entertainment, and the majority of the art world scoffed at the idea that it could be classed as a true art form. Subsequently, film criticism was not perceived to have the same artistic merit that, say, theatre criticism or visual arts criticism did, and it was thought to be a "nice little job" for a woman writer. But once the artistic potential of film started to become clear, its status increased, as did interest from male writers.
But far from unfairly favouring male reviewers, most of today's editors agree there are simply fewer female candidates to choose from. Have women lost interest in film? CA Lejeune certainly did. Or, more specifically, she had no interest in the new genres beginning to emerge in the 1960s. She is said to have resigned from her position at the Observer because she was so disgusted with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, condemning it as "beastly." Needless to say, not all female film sensibilities were—or are—as easily offendable as Lejeune's, but it could be argued that there are more men who revel in so-called "exploitative" cinema than there are women. And the increasing popularity over the years of genres such as horror, gangster and more recent "frat-pack" movies, which tend to attract male audiences, has left the film market considerably more polarised than it used to be.
From the 1920s to the 1940s, most films were fairly gender-neutral, but as film companies have become wiser to the benefits of targeting specific sections of the population, the difference between the way a male-targeted, male-led action thriller is marketed compared to, say, a romantic chick-flick has broadened. Hollywood tells boys and girls that there are certain types of film that they should and shouldn't like. And chick-flicks are not commonly deemed the most inspirational of films; often considered to be vapid, guilty pleasures even by those who enjoy them.
Then there is the geeky exclusivity that surrounds film. While girls typically tend to spend more of their time socialising with friends, boys—especially during their reticent teenage years—often become obsessive about a certain pursuit, be it playing the electric guitar, collecting records or watching hundreds of cult films. The notion of "collecting" knowledge on a subject that is considered to be cool by your peers, and becoming admired as an authority on it, seems to be particularly appealing to boys. And this, to some extent, continues into adulthood. In fact, it is often evident in the different ways in which some male and female film critics write. Men tend to be more opinionated in their criticism, forming what Film Critics' Circle chairman David Gritten calls a "bullying, 'my-opinion-is-bigger-than-yours' club."
Perhaps this explains the difference between film criticism in Britain and the US, where there are still some very influential female reviewers, like the New York Times's Manohla Dargis, Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly and Cynthia Lucia, co-editor of well-respected Cineaste magazine. They even have their own Women Film Critics' Circle. Without wishing to resort to stereotype, could it be that the tendency for Americans of both sexes to be more vocal with their opinions than Brits draws more American women into the otherwise masculine world of film criticism? Or could it be thanks to the lasting legacy of Pauline Kael, described in her New York Times obituary as "the most influential film critic of her time"? She was certainly one of the most outspoken. During her reign as chief film critic at the New Yorker from 1968 to 1979 she often dished out such scathing reviews of otherwise well-received films that she developed a following of young male critics, jokingly dubbed "the Paulettes."
Whatever the reasons for the current male-heavy trend in British film criticism, the fact that there are far fewer women striving to become critics in this country can't be a coincidence. But change is afoot: female enrolment in film studies courses is on the rise, and it's possible that a new generation of female reviewers will come to the fore. Hearing a wider range of critical voices would be nothing but beneficial to film and film-lovers, and women's voices certainly deserve to be heard.
Discuss this article here
