David Stratton’s colourful life: five stars for a revered figure in Australian film

As an author, Stratton chronicled Australian film from its renaissance in the 1970s to 2020 in the books, The Last New Wave, The Avocado Plantation and Australia at the Movies; wrote about his own colourful life in the memoir, I Peed On Fellini; and made cinematic recommendations in My Favourite Movies and 101 Marvellous Movies You Might Have Missed.

He programmed and presented films on SBS, lectured on film history for the University of Sydney’s continuing education program, and hosted the documentary series, David Stratton’s Stories Of Australian Cinema.

An internationally respected critic with encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema, Stratton served on juries at leading international film festivals including Cannes, Venice and Berlin, won Australian film’s Longford and Chauvel awards, was named by France a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, and was awarded honorary degrees by Sydney and Macquarie universities.

He may have accidentally peed on Italian director Federico Fellini in a bathroom accident at the Venice Film Festival in 1966, earning the terse response “stronzo!” which he later wrote was well-deserved, but Stratton was warmly admired by Australia’s leading filmmakers.

Director George Miller says Stratton was not only critical to him making the first Mad Max – he programmed a short film at the 1971 Sydney festival that was picked up for cinema release – but “his engagement with world cinema allowed us all to see films we could see nowhere else”.

Miller adds: “Even if he gave you a not-so-good review, you knew it was pretty accurate because he had such a love of cinema. It was so much in his blood. I remember meeting him at the Cannes Film Festival once, and I was astonished and how many films he’d seen. He spent most of his time in the dark, and he knew every frame of every film he ever saw.”

For Peter Weir, the festival became a film school. While Stratton tactfully rejected his first short film by saying it was “not suitable”, the budding young director was encouraged by his enthusiasm to see the next one.

“David brought back to Australia the very best in world cinema,” Weir says. “What a time it was! He put aspiring filmmakers in touch with what was happening in that great era of film.”

Gillian Armstrong describes Stratton “a cultural icon” whose encouragement of her as a young filmmaker, which included programming her early shorts, was “life-changing”. But he still reviewed her later films so honestly that she can remember the damning phrase he used about Starstruck.

“He had great ethics about the films that he liked and didn’t like, and I really respected that part of David,” Armstrong says. “He was someone who was so obsessed and positive about film and had incredible generosity towards helping young filmmakers but, at the same time, he would call a spade a spade.”

Phillip Noyce says he owes the chance to make his first feature film to Stratton programming the short feature, Backroads, at the 1977 festival after it had been “trashed” by the short film competition judges.

“To the first generation of the New Wave of Australian filmmakers back in the late ’60s through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, David Stratton was both our mentor, our teacher and the champion of Australian cinema,” Noyce says.

“David introduced us to the extraordinary emerging Eastern European and Russian cinema, earning himself an ASIO file for his enthusiasm, and fighting against the sometimes excessive federal and state censorship of that era.”

Born in 1939, Stratton had a middle-class upbringing in a family with a grocery business in southern England. But his early love for films gave him a different career path. As a boy, he would cycle more than 20 kilometres to a cinema then handwrite and file notes about every film he watched.

“My passion for the cinema had, in fact, become an obsession,” he wrote in I Peed On Fellini.

In 1963, Stratton immigrated to Australia as a so-called ten-pound Pom then, after a casual holiday job as an usher at Sydney Film Festival, was surprisingly “asked to basically run [it] in my mid-20s”.

He programmed the kind of cinema that had never been seen in Sydney and shared line-ups with Melbourne. This included provocative subtitled films made by visionary directors from Europe, including the Eastern Bloc, and Asia. He championed Australian films and argued against what he saw as the repressive censorship of foreign films in the ’60s and ’70s.

In the early days of The Movie Show – I wrote their film news segment for a time – I remember Stratton and Pomeranz had an easy chemistry on screen, but the best TV was often when they disagreed. While the production values increased when they moved to the ABC, the spirited debates continued.

“Five stars from me” became a catchcry, and a glowing review from “Margaret and David” guaranteed an audience for an arthouse film.

Even after leaving TV in 2014 and winding back his print reviewing, Stratton remained a great enthusiast for films. He continued his habit of watching a new film every day – often from the estimated 20,000 DVDs in his home collection. He and Susie watched films featuring the likes of Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark, Meryl Streep and Gregory Peck in the order in which they were made.

Continuing another long-time habit, Stratton would write and file a page of notes about every new film, including the basic credits, run time and year of production.

Asked his favourite Australian films of those watched to write his latest book, which covered just about every release from 1990 to 2020, Stratton listed no fewer than 58. Among them were such hits as Happy Feet, Mad Max: Fury Road, Lantana, Lion, The Babadook, Muriel’s Wedding, Two Hands and Samson & Delilah but also such little-seen gems as A Lion Returns, Blessed, The Jammed, Pawno and Slam.

Stratton was never shy expressing his view about disappointing films, though. In 1992, he famously refused to give a rating for the Australian film, Romper Stomper, because he believed its portrayal of neo-Nazis was dangerous, which led to director Geoffrey Wright charging up to him at the Venice Film Festival yelling, “stay away from my film, you f---er”, and throwing a glass of wine over him.

At an In Conversation session with Jane Campion at Sydney Film Festival two years ago – after she requested he host the event – Stratton set her back by saying how much he disliked her series, Top of the Lake. His most recent book on Australian cinema dismisses certain films – sometimes too harshly – as “a laughless lump”, “obnoxious” or “a chore”.

But Stratton was also prepared to reappraise a film. In 1997, he slammed the much-loved Australian comedy, The Castle, for being unfunny and “patronising towards its characters”, and gave it 1½ stars. By last year, it had become one of his 58 favourites and, in Australia At The Movies, he wrote that it had “stood the test of time” despite “the TV-style direction and photography”.

Stratton also stood the test of time. Sports teams often retire the jersey numbers of beloved players. The festival should reserve those two theatre seats for as long as it runs.

His family plans a private funeral, with details of a public memorial service to be announced.

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