“CityNews” editor IAN MEIKLE salutes the work of veteran film reviewer Dougal Macdonald as he retires from the paper…

AFTER 57 years sitting through the good, the bad and the ugly, and writing thousands upon thousands of movie reviews over more than half a century, Dougal Macdonald has reviewed his final reel. 

Macdonald might very well be Australia’s oldest, most-experienced film reviewer and “CityNews” couldn’t be prouder of him, but at 88, the Bungendore local has decided to keep his sharp-witted observations of the silver screen to himself and retire from reviewing after 57 years. 

“The first film I reviewed was in 1965 and here I am,” Macdonald told “CityNews” in a celebratory profile in October. 

“My mother took me to see ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ in the early 1940s and that’s where it started,” he says.

“The first film I reviewed had Gina Lollobrigida, Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson in a thriller called ‘Woman of Straw’.”

In that piece I said: “He is a masterful wordsmith and writes with the adjectival passion of a 30-year-old – he’s naughty and nuanced, and has this constant, cheeky campaign to devise a context that will beat me into allowing him to use, shall we say, colloquialisms that might make an editor blush. 

“And don’t get him going on why he’s not a critic…” 

Too late: Macdonald said: “A critic analyses, a reviewer describes. My life in reviewing has been sitting in a cinema then helping readers to make their go or no-go decisions about what to see.”

Veteran cinema identity Andrew Pike agrees. He was running the Electric Shadows cinema centre and “it was very clear to us that Dougal had a huge impact on our audiences”.

“Dougal became a friend and was always welcome at the cinema, though we never discussed business or tried to influence his opinions, nor did we receive any favours. We would still have to weather the storm when a negative or ambivalent review came out,” Pike said.

“One of the key factors in kick-starting my career in the industry was Dougal’s review of an obscure French comedy called ‘Celine and Julie Go Boating’ (1974), which ran for a daunting three and a quarter hours, without an interval. 

“At that time, Geoff Gardner and I occasionally hired The Playhouse theatre in Civic to show films there: an expensive and risky exercise. 

“We were very nervous about showing ‘Celine and Julie Go Boating’ and the advance sales were appalling. 

“Then Dougal’s glowing review appeared and we ran the rest of the season to full houses. I didn’t know Dougal at that stage, but felt enormous gratitude for the enthusiasm of his review. It was a pivotal moment in my career.

“Dougal always impressed me (and clearly our cinema audiences, too) with his frank, honest and very readable reviews. He was – and remains – a rare figure in the film reviewing fraternity.”

“CityNews” arts editor Helen Musa said: “I have worked with Dougal for a very long time, and have always admired his capacity to capture in words exactly what he thought of a film. There is an increasing tendency in reviewing to shy away from frank comments, but he never did that.

“Instead, clearly and eloquently, he said what he thought.”

Our pages are already a little emptier by his absence and I’m sure the paper, the website and the wider community will join me in thanking dear Dougal for his beautiful words. It’s been a privilege to publish them.