What is Cannes without Alex?

WHEN I started making TV programmes about the cinema in the late Sixties Alex was the best critic in town and when he died he was still the best. There was a reason for this, not just the verve and originality of his prose, nor the arrow straight accuracy of opinions which, even when you disagreed with them, gave you a completely honest idea why you might enjoy something he had not.

The reason he was the best was that he knew more than anybody else. He had a canon of more than 20 books under his belt, very often biographies, so his research into the history of cinema was thorough and deep. His series on the British cinema with wry titles such as It's Only a Movie, Ingrid gave an insight without compare into our indigenous industry and would cast a cold eye on its regular "saviours" such as Goldcrest, Palace Pictures and Golam and Globus.

He even got himself elected a governor of the British Film Institute so that he could challenge their sometimes quest ionable a l locat ion of resources. Dickie Attenborough, the chairman, once told me that the closest he had ever come to exploding was after a Walker onslaught. I reported this to Alex. He was delighted.

He corresponded regularly with film ministers who changed as frequently as the weather and must have caused their civil servants hundreds of man-hours in ensuring the factual accuracy of their replies. Occasionally there must have been a hint of mischief in some of this. HE attended 49 Cannes Film Festivals, shaking his head with despair on his return at the ever growing paparazzi. But I know he would have been there for his half century next May.

The French greatly respected him. He was an author and a "Juriste", having been on the jury, and thus invited to official meals. But he preferred the press conferences, pricking the pomposity of petty metteurs en scene and excoriating anyone who was foolish enough to make a film about Ulster that did not accord with his point of view.

The Film Council provided Alex with countless column inches of well-researched spleen. Let's face it, most films, for one reason or another, turn out to be flops; there are just too many chances of slips between seed money and screening. But that's not the film critic's problem. Our job is to come between the publicity and the public. And if time and again the council put hundreds of thousands of pounds into projects that turned to dross, Mr Walker was the first to point this out. Soon other critics began to follow suit, undoubtedly the sincerest form of flattery.

The secret of Alex's survival was the way he made the sea change from critic as columnist to critic as reviewer. The Standard, in common with other papers, eventually required each film to be dealt with in a little box, adding insult to injury by wanting a star rating, thereby rendering the prose beneath supererogatory.

This spelt the end of the essay as criticism as practised by a Kenneth Tynan or Pauline Kael or Graham Greene. Alex bowed to the inevitable, but his output became more voracious as he penned an increasing number of "opinion pieces" which preserved the excellence of his essays.

I mentioned mischief. Alex used to visit relatives in Ulster. During the height of IRA terrorism, passengers at Heathrow were obliged to check-in even their briefcases and portable computers. The only exception was in the case of handbags. Alex turned up one day carrying a handbag.

The girl asked him to check it in. He pointed out that it was an exception to the rule. She said that that was only in the case of women who might by carrying essential toileteries.

Alex asked her to show him where that rule was written.

Soon a committee of check-in staff formed around him, demanding to know why he was carrying a handbag. His aunt, he said, had left it at his London flat and he was returning it. There was, of course, no such person but Alex, of course, won.

His strictures on smoking were well known. Not only did his answering machine inform you it was "the slow way to suicide" but so did a prominent notice on his door.

Some friends of mine went round for a drink at his Maida Vale flat and, failing to notice this, puffed away for a couple of hours. Alex said nothing.

He may have been a man who could rant with anger (usually at Ken Loach) but his manners were faultless. Even when that other Ken (Russell) hit him over the head with a rolled-up Standard on Late Night Line Up he responded with the superior truncheon of his tongue.

He was an austere man who lived alone and valued his privacy.

He dressed smartly for press screenings in his suit and tie and proudly sported his lgion d'honneur in his lapel. A creature of suave habit, he would sit six rows from the front on the righthand side and, if you were lucky, invite you to join him at The Ivy afterwards.

My fondest memory of him was at the Venice Film Festival in 1986. He suggested we take an afternoon off films to go and visit the British Pavilion at the Biennale which was devoted to Frank Auerbach.

He spoke with such insight and affection of the paintings I asked him how he had acquired such knowledge. It transpired he had been collecting the paintings themselves when he could afford them. IN the early hours of this morning, Victoria Mather, once film critic of the Telegraph, telephoned my wife, Mo, and told her Alex was critically ill. He may have lived alone but the two women were determined that he should not die alone. They went to the London Clinic.

Victoria mopped his brow and Mo held his arm until, quite suddenly, his pulse stopped.

Beside his bed was a book: How to Improve Your Memory.

Nothing could improve my memory of this kind, talented, unique man - Alex.

.Brian Sewell is away

Iain Johnstone was film critic of the Sunday Times, 1962-1994.

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