Philip Neville French (28 August 1933 – 27 October 2015) was an English film critic and radio producer. French began his career in journalism in the late 1950s, before eventually becoming a BBC Radio producer, and later a film critic. He began writing for The Observer in 1963 and retired as film critic in 2013, but continued to write until his death.
French was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in December 2012. Upon his death on 27 October 2015, French was referred to by his Observer successor Mark Kermode as "an inspiration to an entire generation of film critics".
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Biography
French was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England in 1933. The son of an insurance salesman, he moved frequently throughout his childhood, and was educated at the direct grant Bristol Grammar School then at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Law. He undertook post-graduate study in journalism at Indiana University Bloomington, on a scholarship.
French entered journalism as a reporter at the Bristol Evening Post in 1957. He was theatre critic of the New Statesman between 1967 and 1968 and deputy film critic to David Robinson at The Times for some years. French was the film critic of The Observer from 1978, but had begun writing for the paper in 1963. He also wrote for Sight and Sound. French's books include The Movie Moguls: An Informal History of the Hollywood Tycoons (1969) and Westerns, which reappeared in a revised version in 2005. He also wrote the book Cult Movies (1999) together with Karl French, one of his sons.