 The first regular female film reviewer, C(aroline) A(lice) Lejeune began with the Manchester Guardian (1922-28), then joined the Observer, with whom she stayed for 32 years. She acquired a reputation for wit, but often this was at the service of a middle-class disdain for the popular art she was meant to be reviewing. Her taste was for the British 'quality' film, which meant generally the decorously literary or the understated realist. Hollywood was an easy target for her and she aimed at it relentlessly. Hindsight has been much kinder to the other 'Sunday lady', Dilys Powell; Lejeune simply never seemed to take the cinema seriously, as if it were not an art form to compare with others. Bibliography
Autobiography: Thank You for Having Me, 1964;
Anthony Lejeune (ed), The C.A. Lejeune Film Reader, 1991. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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FILM & TV CREDITS
