Pauline Kael

“As Gina often pointed out, Pauline liked to be surrounded by people whose feelings about the arts and politics were close to her own. She often told friends that she found it difficult to form a close bond with someone who disagreed with her about more than three movies.”

and thus her friends began obsessively to keep ledgers

The paradox was that someone who had such quick access to her emotional responses could be so clueless about her effect on others

One of the funniest anecdotes in the book is where Nixon confirms to Peter Bogdanovich (as Kael speculated he would in her review) that he liked The Last Picture Show. I don't have the book with me, but it's something like, "Black and white? Texas? I did like that!"

Apparently he shocked Boggo and Cybil Shepherd by speaking knowledgeably about the movie for a few minutes. Then he turned to Shepherd. "Who were you?"

"I was the one who took her clothes off, Mr. President."

Awkward pause. "You have a brilliant career ahead of you" (or something)

yes that was Bog's account. "I remember you very well Miss Shepherd" lol Dick

Too bad Bogdanovich didn't stick more closely to the novel:

"Who were you?"
"I was the one who had sex with the blind heifer, Mr. President."
"You have a brilliant career ahead of you, son."

The best review of the Kellow bio I've read.

She never denied that some directors – Griffith, Renoir, De Sica, Satyajit Ray, Godard – were masters, and she never genuflected before a movie just because she’d loved the director’s previous work. She adored Altman’s work but she hated every movie he turned out between Nashville in 1975 and Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean in 1982. She adored Peckinpah’s work but not Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid or The Getaway, De Palma’s but not Obsession, Scarface or The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Generalizations simply don’t work on Kael, because one of her great qualities as a critic was that she weighed every movie on its own merits and could see it in all its aspects – a virtue that links her to James Agee, the signal movie critic of the forties, whom she much admired. So when Kellow argues that she thought moviemakers did their best work when they were young and energetic, you think, Well, except for John Huston, Kon Ichikawa and Luis Buñuel, and how about De Sica’s return to greatness with The Garden of the Finzi-Continis? And when he puts forward the theory that she had a Magellan complex, that she found it easier to get behind filmmakers she’d discovered, you think, Well, except for Renoir and Preston Sturges and the German Expressionists. She was notoriously – and too many, not just publicists, exasperatingly – unpredictable because she didn’t believe the movies themselves could be predicted. So while she was unkind to David Lean’s epics, she loved several of his early, smaller pictures (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Hobson’s Choice) and she shocked everyone by giving his last, A Passage to India, a rave.

Two that I'd add to the list of major surprises would be Herbert Ross's Pennies from Heaven and Alan Parker's Shoot the Moon--she crucified Midnight Express. I do imagine her rave (somewhat measured, as I remember it) for A Passage to India was at least partially tied in with memories of how the New York critics had treated Lean at a 1970 dinner--they pounced on him in unison over Ryan's Daughter--and Lean's subsequent absence for the next decade-and-a-half, supposedly because he was so hurt by the experience. Also (and I think the passage you've excerpted is excellent, and basically agree with everything the writer says), if the implication is that Sarris loved every film by his favourite directors, I don't think that's true; if you go through the appendix of of The American Cinema, you'll see lots of fluctuation in where he ranks individual films by his favourites in the year-by-year lists. He's more consistent than Kael, no argument, but I wonder if that isn't partly a function of the fact that Sarris's auteur favourites mostly directed in the studio era, where (Welles an obvious exception) assembly-line consistency was part of the environment, while so many of Kael's favourites directed in a era where spectacular belly-flops were the norm. Films like Quintet just didn't happen--weren't allowed to happen--as often in the '30s and '40s, and the wild swings of Kael's '70s writings reflected that reality.

Here's Kellow himself interviewed by CBS News:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7386191n

Worth noting: the review is written by Steve Vineberg, a good friend of Kael's and someone she helped a lot in his career. Which doesn't invalidate what he says, and he does make that clear.

From the Kellow CBS interview (laughing about how Kael would react to The Tree of Life): "I think her head would fall off and roll down the aisle."

someone on my facebook posted this, and i was intrigued by their description of it, and then i read it and thought that it was a mess and that the problem with online criticism might just be a problem of editing.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=4059

oh and it mentions kael.

I'll venture to say that Kael was a great writer but a lousy watcher.

wait, except dissent in an ancient print mag. never mind about the online part. maybe, good editing in general.

Kenny's 'response' to that Taylor article (amongst others)

(xp)
Didn't somebody already mention that upthread? Or maybe it was linked to by a blog that was linked to upthread.

I liked the quote from Kent Jones on Kenny's page.

It was folded into that Emerson essay I linked to above. The Kael revival has neatly fed into the larger film criticism memes of the year, it seems.

That Jones piece in Film Comment was really good.

did they? sorry. i just saw it today. i couldn't really read the whole thing.

x-post

the dissent thing is instructional for me because i make notes in my head and say: okay, don't ever do that. don't ever write something like this. don't say that. etc. etc.

I liked Taylor during his late nineties Salon tenure, but his Paulette tendencies were even then rather creepy. Like most mimickers he made me appreciate how singular the original was.

I like the word "mimicker." I want to use it, but don't want to get called out on my mimickeristic ways.

would Kael have liked The New World? maybe Colin Farrell would've gotten to her.

I can't imagine Kael liking any Malick film, although I don't think she would have hated The Tree of Life quite as much as Kellow suggests. Or let me put it this way--I think she would have recognized the same beauty in the childhood section that everyone else does, and that she would have acknowledged and resisted it. All the whispered, philosophical narration, that I think she would have hated. The dinosaurs, I'm guessing she'd have found them funny. I bet she would have reviewed it more favorably than J. Edgar.

I thought she said a couple of nice-ish things about Badlands...?

I wanted to check something from Kael's What's Up, Doc? review, and it seems that Geocities page is back in operation. Not sure when it returned, or how long it will stay. Useful, in that it saves a trip downstairs. (But not this time--the line I wanted isn't in the 5001 blurb.)

http://www.geocities.ws/paulinekaelreviews/index.html

It may be back, but it's still geocities.

Sorry, GeoCities has closed.
The GeoCities service is no longer available, but there's a lot more to explore on Yahoo!

Visit one of these popular Yahoo! sites:

geocities.ws

what line are you looking for clemenza, i could dig it up for you

Found it, thanks. It had to do with a Love Story joke in WUD?:

“It’s one thing for outsiders like me to call Love Story a boobish movie, but when O’Neal, who starred in it (and gave it all the conviction it had), turns around and dumps on it, and, implicitly, on the people who loved him in it, all he does is expose his own cheap, cute cynicism.”

she never said it (exactly):

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2012/10/The-Fraudulent-Factoid-That-Refuses-to-Die

Speaking of which (xpost), I love seeing this Sullivan headline on election eve:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/which-side-is-now-pauline-kael.html

I long argued it would get worse before it got better on the right. It did get worse. But if Obama wins, it just might get a little better.

speaking of cognitive dissonance

I liked Kael's last interview where she said liberals couldn't see how American Beauty pandered to them. I think she'd fill George Clooney with venom.

George is seething with venom already. I don't think she could make him any more venomous.

Are there still liberals who don't see how American Beauty pandered to them?

Just me--love it. But let's save it for some other time.

Sort of thought American Beauty was pandering to conservatives. Meh.

God that movie sucked.

Well Eric, you haven't psychoanalyzed that dick Alan Ball like I have.

I'm psychoanalyzing your use of the word "dick" tho.

Not a fan of that arty sitcom American Beauty, but Ball acquired a lot of good will for me with Six Feet Under. Just not enough for me to watch True Blood.

The movie is clearly trying to be "pro-gay" "pro-sensitive-teen-rebel" and "pro-alienated-suburban-saddo," how could it be pandering to anyone but liberals in 1999?

pro-sensitive itinerant plastic bags too

It seemed more like "pro-every scene ending with a laugh line," to me.

It also sees career women as disgusting, gays as repressed murderous psychos, and littering as the cornerstone to seeing "so much beauty in the world."