15 YEARS A CRITIC

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 79, 14 March 1936, Page 9

15 YEARS A CRITIC

“Surly Bird Gets the Worm” Under the inviting heading “C.A.L. is a C.A.T.,” Miss C. A. Lejeune, the London “Observer’s” film critic, looks back —she does tell us how many years, too—to an experience of the film indus try which has provided her with between 2000 and 3000 columns of copy. “I am afraid,” she says, “that I am getting old. This past year, to my horror, I found myself sending Christmas cards to film producers. True, the pro ducers were friends of mine, but when a critic evidences symptoms of goodwill towards everybody he is definitely on the downward path. “I used not to do things like that,” she adds. “I began iny critical career well, at the age of fifteen or thereabouts, by hitting tennis balls throm-l the windows of a Sunday School in Manchester, whore one Master R. Donat was performing.

“That seems to me a promising demonstration of truculence in embryo And I went on the saine way. I got a critic’s job at nineteen by proving to the editor, with statistics, just how far behind the times his organ was in not giving prominence to the new moving picture entertainment. True, he got his own back by telling me that it didn’t matter how badly I wrote, as my initials were unknown to decent people, and no one would read me, anyway. “For fifteen years the film industry and I have been on the most healthy sparring terms. The first trouble was that I was a woman, which meant that lady secretaries had to bo told off Io give jne special and private entertainment at stag parties. That distinction. Tam happy to say, has now worn off. In these enlightened days we are all stags together.

“The next vexation was that I was a highbrow. Or so they told me. They called me Mlle, de la Montage in my presence, and much worse things, I am sure, behind my back. Time, the great leveller, has also alleviated that distinction. To-day, I am just about Grade 8.001 in the hierarchy of film intellectuals. In those days the higher were fewer.

“It was a great fight while it lasted. There were fascinating encounters. There was the time when the Scottish exhibitors met to decide whether I was a restraint to trade, because I had suggested that film audiences should pick, not the nearest, but the best, entertain raent. There was the time when tho agent who tried to stop me printing anything about his client unwittingly gave me the one piece of news that madethat client a front-page story. There was the time when —but I won’t tell you that one. I might want to do it again.

Fifteen years as Public Enemy No. 1 is not, I think, a bad record. Most of them reform or die sooner than that. But I am beginning to recognise certain symptoms that alarm me. I still approach the new week’s supply of films like a high adventure, and as frequently as ever come away disappointed. But I am not as angry as I used to be when films disappoint me. I am beginning to find evidences of talent in odd places, and to be sorry when they are not recognised. I have found lots of people in the studios who are more intelligent and expert than I am. I am beginning to like people, and respect their viewpoints. That’s why I know I’m growing old. “Something must be done about it. For me to become a kind of Mother Christmas at this juncture is unthinkable, though it might make the 'lsis’ whoop for joy and would certainly provide Mr Agate with much copy. When I read a letter like the recent one in the ‘New York Times,’ which says that, ‘Cinema critics are not half as nasty as they should be,’ I am struck with senile remorse. I have made up my mind. I am going to be much nastier in 1936 than I have ever been before —much, much nastier. That is my New Year resolution and I mean to stick to it. After all, in the film industry it is the surly bird that gets the worm.’’