Raymond Durgnat (1 September 1932 – 19 May 2002) was a distinctive and highly influential British film critic, who was born in London of Swiss parents. During his life he wrote for virtually every major English language film publication. With the filmmaker Don Levy he was one of the first post-graduate students of film in Britain, studying under Thorold Dickinson at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1960. His views on the academicization of film study were always complicated.

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  • Raymond Durgnat (1 September 1932 – 19 May 2002) was a distinctive and highly influential British film critic, who was born in London of Swiss parents. During his life he wrote for virtually every major English language film publication. With the filmmaker Don Levy he was one of the first post-graduate students of film in Britain, studying under Thorold Dickinson at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1960. His views on the academicization of film study were always complicated. In the 1950s, he had written for Sight and Sound, but he later fell out with this British Film Institute publication after the exit of Gavin Lambert in 1957, often accusing it of elitism, puritanism and upper-middle-class snobbery, notably in his 1963 essay "Standing Up For Jesus", (which appeared in the short-lived magazine Motion, with which he was strongly involved) and in his 1965 piece "Auteurs and Dream Factories". He did, however, return to write for another BFI publication, the Monthly Film Bulletin, in the years leading up to its demise in 1991, and contributed to Sight and Sound again later in the 1990s. In the mid-'60s he was a major player in the nascent London Film-Makers' Co-op (LFMC), then based at Better Books off Charing Cross Road, a hub of the emerging British 'underground'. As the counter-culture turned left and, simultaneously, sought state funding for its activities, Durgnat looked to the past in major works on film style (Images of the Mind, 1968-9), Hitchcock and Renoir. In the late 1970s he taught film in California alongside Manny Farber, Jean-Pierre Gorin and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Returning to the UK at the close of the decade, he launched a series of withering assaults on the linguistics-based film theory that had come to dominate the young film academia over the previous decade. Durgnat's socio-political approach - strongly supportive of the working classes and, almost as a direct result of this, American popular culture, and dismissive of Left-wing intellectuals who he accused of actually being petit-bourgeois conservatives in disguise, and dismissive of overt politicisation of film criticism, refusing to bring his own Left-wing views overtly into his writings on film - can best be described as "radical populist". Durgnat's books include Films and Feelings (1967), A Mirror for England: British Movies from Austerity to Affluence (1970) and The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock (1974). He also wrote books on Luis Buñuel, Jean Renoir, Georges Franju, and King Vidor. A book on Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho was published posthumously. He wrote for Films and Filming, Movie, Time Out, Oz and Film Comment among many other publications, and often lectured on cinema at various academic institutions, notably as visiting professor at the University of East London towards the end of his life.
  • Raymond Durgnat (ur. 1 września 1932 w Londynie, zm. 19 maja 2002) – brytyjski krytyk filmowy. Jego rodzice pochodzili ze Szwajcarii. Pisał dla niemal wszystkich publikacji filmowych które ukazywały się w Wielkiej Brytanii za jego życia. Razem z filmowcem Donem Levym był jednym z pierwszych absolwentów filmoznawstwa w Wielkiej Brytanii po wojnie; uczył się u Thorolda Dickinsona w Slade School of Fine Art do 1960 roku. W latach 50. pisał dla Sight and Sound, ale później poróżnił się z redakcją, oskarżając ją o elitaryzm, purytanizm i snobizm wyższej klasy średniej, między innymi w słynnym eseju z 1963 roku Standing Up For Jesus w efemerycznym magazynie Motion i artykule Auteurs and Dream Factories z 1965 roku. W przyszłości miał jednak pisać dla innej publikacji British Film Institute, Monthly Film Bulletin, w latach bezpośrednio poprzedzających jej zamknięcie w 1991 roku. W połowie lat 60. był jedną z głównych postaci w nowo powstałym London Film-Makers' Co-operative (LFMC), później opartym na Better Books off Charing Cross Road, wokół którego tworzyło się brytyjskie artystyczne 'podziemie'. Jego uczniami w owym czasie byli bracia Quay. W późnych lata latach 70. uczył filmoznawstwa w Kalifornii razem z Manny Farber, Jeanem-Pierre'em Gorinem i Jonathanem Rosenbaumem. Pod koniec dekady powrócił do Wielkiej Brytanii, gdzie zapoczątkował serię miażdżących ataków na oparte na lingwistyce teorie filmowe, które zdominowały filmowe środowisko akademickie w poprzedniej dekadzie. Poglądy socjologiczno-polityczne Durgnata cechowała sympatia dla klasy pracującej, amerykańskiej kultury popularnej i wyraźna niechęć do lewicowych intelektualistów których oskarżał o zakamuflowany drobnoburżuazyjny konserwatyzm i upolitycznienie krytyki filmowej; sam nie pozwalał sobie na eksponowanie własnych, lewicowych poglądów w swojej twórczości.
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  • Raymond Durgnat (1 September 1932 – 19 May 2002) was a distinctive and highly influential British film critic, who was born in London of Swiss parents. During his life he wrote for virtually every major English language film publication. With the filmmaker Don Levy he was one of the first post-graduate students of film in Britain, studying under Thorold Dickinson at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1960. His views on the academicization of film study were always complicated.
  • Raymond Durgnat (ur. 1 września 1932 w Londynie, zm. 19 maja 2002) – brytyjski krytyk filmowy. Jego rodzice pochodzili ze Szwajcarii. Pisał dla niemal wszystkich publikacji filmowych które ukazywały się w Wielkiej Brytanii za jego życia. Razem z filmowcem Donem Levym był jednym z pierwszych absolwentów filmoznawstwa w Wielkiej Brytanii po wojnie; uczył się u Thorolda Dickinsona w Slade School of Fine Art do 1960 roku. W latach 50.
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  • Raymond Durgnat
  • Raymond Durgnat
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