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Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu (23 April 1904, London, England – 5 November 1984, London) was a Jewish filmmaker, screenwriter, producer and film critic. He has received some credit for the development of a vibrant intellectual film culture in Britain during the interwar years. With Sidney Bernstein he established the London Film Society in 1925, the first film club devoted to showing art films and independent films. Montagu became the first film critic of The Observer and the New Statesman. He did the post-production work on Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger in 1926 and was hired to Gaumont-British in the 1930s, working as a producer on a number of the Hitchcock thrillers.

In 1930 he accompanied his friend Sergei Eisenstein to New York and Hollywood; later in the decade Montagu made a number of compilation films, including Defence of Madrid (1936) and Peace and Plenty (1939) about the Spanish Civil War. He directed also the documentary Wings Over Everest (1934) with Geoffrey Barkas. As a political figure and a member of the Communist Party, much of his work at the time was on low budget, independent political films. After the war Montagu worked as a film critic and reviewer.

He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize (1959).

External links

• . Reference Guide to British and Irish Film Directors
• Film & TV credits

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