Pauline Kael

that's an invaluable resource. I was very sad when it went down.

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20091026174320/http://geocities.com/paulinekaelreviews/

thx, but there's a new non-Wayback site.

cant find it, but i turned this up

http://thisrecording.com/film/2008/8/18/in-which-wes-anderson-tries-to-game-pauline-kael.html

my reaction to rushmore was similar to hers when i first saw it

It was included as the intro to the published Rushmore script eight or nine years ago.

Yeah, but Edelstein mentions that she was mortified when it appeared in the New York Times too.

OOH. I didn't know about this squabble.

I'm sure I've made it more than clear how much I love Kael, but I think she was completely wrong about Rushmore (to the extent that I can piece together her reaction from interviews, which seemed to be one of puzzlement). Just in general, I found I agreed with her less and less often towards the end. The quality of her writing was still great, but I found in terms of what she liked, she veered way in the direction of junk; it was almost like she discounted films that had any pretense towards seriousness. Her critics would probably say that that was always a problem with her, but at her best during the '70s, I think gave everything a fair look. I didn't feel that was true her last couple of years and in the interviews she gave after retiring. Obviously, there are exceptions--just a general observation.

I disagree. While it's true she reviewed more junk, the eighties and early nineties also produced more and more of it. Also, those 1500-word essays on forgotten junk like Club Paradise and About Last Night feature some of her best writing ever; it's as if she accepted the terms of the debate and relaxed.

'70s >>> '80 for movies, but State of the Art and Hooked are my favorites of her collections.

A bunch of junk from the '80s has aged a little bit better than many of the serious movies from the same decade.

Fat keeps.

I dont think you can say someone's 'wrong' to be puzzled by a movie - i sure as shit didn't know what to make of it (rushmore) at the time.

wasn't she famously a champion of de sica (as opposed to sariss' "male weepies") and rosellini? i didn't get the impression she eschewed seriousness

She had her blind spots (Bresson, Ozu, Mizoguchi), but so does every critic.

De Sica is sort of trash compared to Rossellini.

Oh wait, she liked Rossellini too? Color me surprised.

i thought i recalled several admiring bresson reviews...l'argent & ... joan of arc maybe?

i love all those guys

i didn't get the impression she eschewed seriousness

Early on, no--that was the point I was making. Being puzzled by Rushmore is fine; I think she's wrong not to think "Wow, that's an amazing film," but puzzlement is totally valid. I'm not a big fan of the '80s, so our thoughts on Kael are undoubtedly tied in to how we feel about the decade to begin with. At times, I thought she was amazing; her Casualties of War review ranks with anything she ever wrote.

Oh no way. The only one with which she (barely) connected was ...Country Priest. She despised Mouchette, Lancelot, etc.

xpost

that casualties of war review pissed me off because it got me to see that p.o.s. movie which i never would've bothered with otherwise

This is still a fantastic listen.

http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2006/05/when-film-critics-gather.html

Especially because all three are so frequently ill-tempered and bitchy.

Plus, the eighties version of "seriousness" was often merely ponderous.

But maybe I should've known better anyway, knowing her history w/Depalma

xxpost (From the comments: "Kael sounds much as she did in other interviews I've heard, a sort of overly-didactic bedside nurse, explaining the symptoms of your disease with a dispassionate hauteur.")

I was about to say, "Many of those comments are typical."

Americans just hate smart people

(Plz to ignore my comment in that thread.)

thx, but there's a new non-Wayback site.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, December 17, 2010 4:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

http://web.archive.org/web/20061022083014/www.geocities.com/paulinekaelreviews/

?

Mouchette
France (1966): Drama
80 min, No rating, Black & White

Robert Bresson has made several films of such sobriety that while some people find them awesomely beautiful, other people find sitting through them like taking a whipping and watching every stroke coming. MOUCHETTE, from a Bernanos novel, is about a lonely, mistreated 14-year-old girl who commits suicide. Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet. In French.

that site just reprinted all the stuff in her 5001 nights at the movies book, right? Which is cool and all, but I don't think they transcribed her longer reviews.

god i'm enough of a fanboy that i shouldn't even look at this thread. any bet-hedge or tongue cluck about some movie she overrated or underrated just pisses me off unnecessarily.

yeah, those are all 5001 nights capsules. nice to have since i lost my copy, but...

I'm about to put on The Simpsons movie for my class, but in closing: no one inspires more commentary than Kael.

Richard Brody has a fairly vicious takedown of Kael on his NYer blog re: her Shoah review: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/12/shoah-at-25.html
I guess he's always had a problem with her, though now she can't answer back.

her shoah review was pretty brutal iirc

Is J. Hoberman's supposedly legendary response online anywhere?

I guess he's always had a problem with her, though now she can't answer back.

It's crazy how many people waited til she was dead to lash out. Like Sarris' whole "can't say I mourn her, she gay-baited me" thing.

Wonder what Molly Haskell thinks of that reaction.

Would be curious what anyone would think of their husband writing an obituary that starts:

The death of Pauline Kael (1919-2001) was announced on a local television-news program late on Labor Day night, as I was preparing for my first film class of the semester the next morning at Columbia. I can't say I was as saddened as I had been a few days earlier by the death of Jane Greer (1924-2001). Still, do not send for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee, and all that. Pauline was 82, and I am 72, and who knows when the Grim Reaper from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal will come for me?

Andrew Sarris's Scenes from a marriage

that's some flaccid writing

Limp wrists, limp writing, stiff corpse.

Recess...I saw Molly Haskell introduce A nos amours a few months ago. She signed a book for me afterwards, and I asked about her husband. I've always had mixed feelings about Sarris, but I felt bad when she said he'd recently had a bad fall, which is obviously not good at his age.

she wasn't really someone whose taste i would ever trust but she was a good writer.

yeah, that's pretty much how i feel. really enjoy reading her stuff, but i definitely don't take her opinions as gospel.

I assume you guys mean Kael, not Molly Haskell.

I bet yr posts will suffer when you're 72.

I asked about the capsules in the first place cuz I saw she said Mickey Rooney's perf was the most 'daring' thing in B'fast @Tiffany's.

Yup--she loved Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, just like (from all reports) she openly campaigned for Driving Miss Daisy over Do the Right Thing for the New York awards that year. When it came to race, either she was pure id or she loved to provoke; she was worlds away from the oncoming political-correctness freight train.

she was better pre-new yorker imo

I've heard "Score-sezzy" and "Score-say-zee," and am inclined toward the former in my head.

It sounded to me like Kael was saying "Scor-sezza." The Italian pronunciation is something like "Scor-say-zeh" or "Scor-seh-zeh" depending on how you transcribe the Italian vowels. Kael is schwa-ing down the last vowel but that's not less accurate than saying "zee."

Should be scor-chay-zeh the way everyone insists on spelling it

Frankly I wish the man himself would issue a statement to resolve this once and for all

Pauloon as in Buffoon? Kind word for Armond, considering for instance his moist "review" of a recent Van Morrison album, really mostly a parade of quotes, celebrating the anti-vaxx fount of all wisdom.
Anybody who keeps up with this thread should also check this book---from Publisher's Weekly:

AFTERGLOW: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael
Francis Davis, Pauline Kael, . . Da Capo, $18 (134pp) ISBN 978-0-306-81192-0
This slim but potent volume offers movie lovers an elegant good-bye from the acerbic, wildly opinionated National Book Award– winning film critic who reigned at the New Yorker from 1968 to 1991. The New York Times called her "probably the most influential film critic of her time." Kael's enthusiasm for films was contagious, as she praised or damned them with giddy vitality. Longtime friend Davis's three extended conversations find the octogenarian still an avid moviegoer. While this book doesn't offer extended reviews, fans will be delighted to hear Kael weigh in on movies released since she stopped writing a decade ago. She enjoyed the "sweet" Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest; the first half of Boogie Nights; High Fidelity ("it gets better as it goes along"); and Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars. She was also fond of TV's "terrific" Sex and the City and The Sopranos ("I loved the first season and watched it religiously"). She found Silence of the Lambs "a hideous and obvious piece of moviemaking"; Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut "ludicrous from the word go"; and American Beauty "heavy and turgid." She also blasts later-day Steven Spielberg (Always was "a shameful movie" and the casting was "terribly wrongheaded" in Schindler's List). Besides film quips, Kael defends her critical review of the Holocaust documentary Shoah, regrets being talked out of reviewing Deep Throat and discusses current filmmaking and her 20-year battle with Parkinson's disease. (Sept. 3)

FYI:The book's publication date coincides with the one-year anniversary of Kael's death at age 82.

Wait what’s up with him?

"Scor-seh-see"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbPp13icx1c

Pronouncing it is one thing, spelling it without checking is another.

xxpost He mentions it toward the end of this:
https://artsfuse.org/267051/the-17th-annual-francis-davis-jazz-poll-my-poll-without-me/

Partly my own bias, but felt she was a little nasty about Lauren Bacall--who was almost 60 at that point, only semi-active, and no doubt having a difficult time finding decent rolls.

PauluneKael, catty? I’m shocked. And stunned.

Can’t type either, especially when my keyboard is set to English.

Even when it is in fact set to English;)

yes it's "pauloon"

Every few years I'll go back and listen to the Kael+MacDonald+Simon symposium from 1963-ish, simply because (among other things) it's just a fun sparring match. It's a fascinating contrast to this mid-'80s audio in that Kael back in the earlier instance was more about raising her favorites up. In this newer clip, she's clearly become embittered and — for all she has to say about Ebert & Siskel — seems to think just tossing cherry bombs like "Lauren Bacall was a terrible actress" somehow moves any kind of needle anymore. The more I reflect, the sadder the newer clip feels.

I read Afterglow at the time. She's kind about Carol Reed.

the Kael+MacDonald+Simon symposium from 1963-ish

Do you know if that's available somewhere? I'd love to hear it.

Looks like maybe it is no longer available online. I'll rip and post when I get home later tonight

Wow, thanks!

no doubt having a difficult time finding decent rolls.

Picture Lauren Bacall regarding the selection at her local bakery with disgust.