French's 30 years.

It was just a few weeks ago that BAM and others were celebrating J Hoberman's 30 years at the Voice. Now Philip French gives us a preview of a package in Sunday's Observer Review celebrating his three full decades at the weekly.

Updated through 4/13.

French looks back on "reviews spanning 30 years... of movies that were in different ways landmark occasions for critics, audiences and the people who made them; they're not intended to be a top 10." For example, of The Deer Hunter, he writes, "A concerted campaign, that involved Jane Fonda in the States and the Soviet Union, sought to discredit the film as a racist defence of American imperialism, and for my review I was vilified in the New Statesman and the Village Voice. I regret not a word of it." You can download PDFs of the original reviews as they appeared in the Observer - and an accompanying podcast.

Update, 4/13: "What have I done these past 70 years, apart from sit through around 14,000 films and be paid for doing what I like?" Philip French's mini-memoir in today's Observer, spanning from 1937 to the present, is rich with anecdotes and personalities, festivals and universities, books and magazines, and of course, movies. I'll pluck out just one: "It was a magical experience, when I was teaching at the University of Texas in 1972, to have an expansive lunch with [Fritz] Lang, then retired and cruising the university circuit, and he was as imperious as I expected. He'd seen Hitchcock's The 39 Steps on TV the night before. 'So they call this a classic?' he rasped. When I flinched, he added: 'Don't repeat that.'"

He's also listed his top tens for each of the past five decades; and Ally Carnwath and Matt Bolton gather tributes from the likes of AS Byatt, Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears and more.

This week French looks back on the career of James Mason and reviews Shine a Light, [Rec], The Last Mistress, The Devil Came on Horseback, 21, Leatherheads, Steve Buscemi's Lonesome Jim, Strange Wilderness, Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet - and, yes, The 39 Steps.

Posted by dwhudson at April 11, 2008 11:37 AM