Britain

Abstract

Abstract ‘The Critic in Film History ‘, an article by the writer, film critic, and cultural commentator Alistair Cooke, was published in Charles Davy ‘s 1938 collection Footnotes to the Film. By the late 1930s, film in Britain was extensively integrated into intellectual and cultural life, and film criticism was to a significant extent an established form of writing. Nonetheless, Cooke argued that the film critic (by which he meant ‘not a writer on the theory of film, but a practising reviewer ‘)¹ continued to be confronted by difficulties particular to the nature of the medium.