Sydney, Aug. 16, 2025
The following obit was sent to us by former Oz bureau chief Don Groves:
Vale Strat
Beloved Variety alumnus, film critic, writer and educator David Stratton died on August 14 in a hospital near his home in the Blue Mountains, aged 85.
Strat was well known to Australian viewers as the co-host with Margaret Pomeranz of movie review shows for pubcasters the ABC and SBS for more than three decades.
An ardent champion of Australian films and filmmakers, he was a prolific reviewer for Variety, a great friend of many muggs, and a regular fixture at the Cannes, Venice and other festivals.
As Variety’s Sydney bureau chief, I asked him to take over as our principal reviewer after I was tempted to give Crocodile Dundee a negative review – luckily I softened it, acknowledging Paul Hogan’s popularity in Oz, the US and the UK – as I trusted his judgment far more than mine.
In a statement, his family said: “David’s passion for film, commitment to Australian cinema and generous spirit touched countless lives. He was adored as a husband, father, grand- and great grandfather and admired friend. David’s family would like to express their heartfelt gratitude for the overwhelming support from friends, colleagues and the public recently and across his lifetime.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “With dry humour and sharp insight, David Stratton shared his love of film with our country. All of us who tuned in to At the Movies respected him for his deep knowledge and for the gentle and generous way he passed it on. We loved his wit and his sharp insight, and the deep love of cinema that underpinned it all.”
Born in England in 1939, Stratton was sent to the countryside as a boy to live with his grandmother while his father fought in WW II. It was there that he developed a love of cinema — with his grandmother taking him to the cinema. In his late teens, he founded a film society in his home town.
In 1963, he moved to Australia as a so-called “ten-pound Pom”, named for the scheme created by the Chifley government as part of Labour’s “populate or perish” drive.
In 1966 he was named director of the Sydney Film Festival — a job he landed in part due to his reputation for fighting film censorship — where he served until 1983.
From 1984 until 2004 he co-hosted The Movie Show alongside Pomeranz on SBS, using a similar format to the one popularised by US film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Their disagreements made for memorable segments — so much so that viewers would often declare themselves a “David person” or a “Margaret person”.
In 2004, the pair moved to the ABC where they hosted At the Movies with Margaret and David for a decade. “Margaret and I did that program for 28 years, we loved it, but towards the end I was getting a bit jaded,” he said at the time. “I don’t think you can keep doing this thing forever.”
Stratton was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2015, for “significant service to the film industry as a critic and reviewer and as a promoter and ambassador for Australian cinema”.
For 35 years he was a lecturer on world cinema at the University of Sydney, and for 33 years he wrote reviews for Rupert Murdoch’s The Weekend Australian.
He retired due to poor health in 2023. “I feel relaxed about it,” he told The Guardian. “I’ve done the best I could over a number of years, and I feel a sense of satisfaction from that.”
My wife Jenny and I were in frequent contact with Strat and his wife Susie. We had lunch in the Blue Mountains a few months ago and were planning to get together again in the next week or two.
Don Groves (Dogo)
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An obit for Strat (his “signature” for film reviews on the old pre-corporate Variety) was published by Andrew McGowan in the August 14 issue of the current Variety which adds a few further details. It mentions that Stratton had been a jury member at the Berlin, Montreal and Venice film festivals and that he had authored three books: I Peed on Fellini (2008), My Favourite Movies (2021) and Anthology of Reviews. It seems that David’s favorite film of all time was Singin’ in the Rain.
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On September 24, 2005 Variety organized a centennial celebration of its founding in 1905 by Sime Silverman in a gala dinner held in Sardi’s restaurant in New York. To mark the occasion a Souvenir Album was printed in Madrid and some 20 ex-muggs were invited to submit articles for the publication. One such was sent by David Stratton, which appeared in the Album, along with photos of himself, Don Groves and the late Blake Murdoch. The section written by David was headlined “Down Under. Memories of Variety”
The first three paragraphs of the section ran as follows:
“When I was appointed Director of the Sydney Film Festival at the end of 1965, my prime source of information about international cinema was Variety. I pored through the reviews every week, clipped and filed them. So it made sense that when I started to travel to search out films for the Festival, I made contact with the various Variety guys who, I soon discovered, were always generous with advice and information.
“Gene Moskowitz of the Paris bureau, was particularly welcoming and helpful, but I also owed a great deal to Hank Werba in Rome, Peter Besas in Madrid, Keith Keller in Copenhagen, Jack Kindred in Germany and Roger Watkins in London. It’s true to say that the warm support given to me by these generous men helped me immensely in my work.
“There was at the time a Variety stringer in Melbourne, but not one in Sydney. Accordingly, when early in 1971 I saw a preview of a new three-part film titled Three to Go, which showcased the talents of three new young directors (one of them Peter Weir) I decided to write an entirely unsolicited review of the film, in Variety style, and send it off to New York in the hope it would be published. I signed it Strat unaware that four letters were the maximum allowed for such signatures. To my great pleasure, the review was duly published, on April 7, 1971, over the ´Strat´ name. I awaited payment, not knowing that it was necessary to send an invoice for such things. Not only was I never paid for that first review, but I never heard a word from New York about it…”
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PS: In order to be paid for contributions, rather than an invoice, the procedure was to cut out the published article or review and mail it to the New York office on 46th Street where the accounting department, headed by Silvia Kaplan, upon receipt of the clipping, would send a dollar check to the writer in accordance with the length of the item published. In the1970’s the going pay scale ran about $12 a published inch! PB
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