Pauline Kael

Sorry to mention this on her centennial, but I just happened to be reading the 2nd edition (2016) of Movie Journal: the Rise of the New American Cinema 1959-1971, which is a collection of Jonas Mekas's film columns for the Village Voice, and it contains an unusually harsh takedown of Kael that goes on for several pages in the introduction, written by the book's editor, Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker. Sample:

Kael was no cultural conservative, but her criticism lacked substance. She dismissed the debate over culture under the guise of irreverence and wit. Kael mocked the kinds of concerns that could unite two so different critics as Mekas and Dwight MacDonald about the enrichment of culture. Film was purely about entertainment. By embracing this position, Kael could dismiss the entire discussion about the relation between film and culture as elitist.

There's much more like that.

Film was purely about entertainment.

She never avowed anything like this. It's not just a lie, it's an insult to liars.

I thought the Adler critique quoted in the S&S piece was also kind of hilariously reductive: “She has, in principle, four things she likes: frissons of horror; physical violence depicted in explicit detail; sex scenes, so long as they have an ingredient of cruelty and involve partners who know each other either casually or under perverse circumstances; and fantasies of invasion by, or subjugation of or by, apes, pods, teens, bodysnatchers, and extraterrestrials. Whether or not one shares these predilections – and whether they are in fact more than four, or only one – they do not really lend themselves to critical discussion.”

You can level the charge of "criticism lacking substance" just as much at Mekas, whose responses to films were among the most completely subjective that I can think of, and that's often what I loved about his writing ("a syllogism: Barbara Rubin has no shame. Angels have no shame. Therefore Barbara Rubin is an angel.").

As for Adler, puh-leeze. Probably one of the worst critics to ever write for a major outlet. My favorite is when her review of some B-movie just consisted of a couple of lines of kvetching about having to review such trash a few days after the RFK assassination. Greil Marcus takedown of her is priceless: "Throughout, [Adler's book] Pitch Dark made me think of a useful cultural test: upon acquaintance, how long can one who has gone to Harvard or Radcliffe refrain from mentioning the fact. I have met people who have lasted several years, though several hours is generally considered laudatory. Adler (Harvard, MA, 1960) does not make it past her third page."

I actually like many of Adler's political journalism, including essays on William and Rehnquist and Robert Bork that represent two of the best dissections of loathsome careers I've read, but she was NOT a film critic.

*William

yeah, Kael liked Bresson and Shoeshine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=fpV_bkcdNqk

A propos of nothing, that documentary What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018), which has been kicking around FOREVER, is a pile of shit, full of talking heads mouthing flagrant untruths, all offering shockingly little insight as to what defined Pauline Kael as a writer.

— 𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕲𝖊𝖙 𝕸𝖊, 𝕮𝖔𝖕𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘 (@NickPinkerton) January 21, 2020

No, it's not great.

I've stopped looking at Toronto film listings, so I missed three screenings of the documentary in January. Got another chance tonight--the last for a while I figured--so I made the four-hour return trip into the city to see it.

Thought it was just fine. There was enough autobiography, it touched on all the big controversies, you heard Kael's voice a lot, and it wasn't out-and-out hagiography--you did hear from Adler and George Roy Hill and Molly Haskell, among others. (Of course it was mostly laudatory--what else would you expect?) I'm not sure what the flagrant untruths referred to above were.

Some of the clips were misplaced, suggesting she liked films she didn't, and I'm not sure why they used The Exorcist to frame talk of her house in Massachusetts. The quotes from negative reviews didn't hold up that well out of context--especially with The Sound of Music, which in 2020 feels like fish in barrel. Could have done without Tarantino. But I really liked Edelstein and Marcus, and--having literally just read Allen Barra's piece in Talking About Pauline Kael--I found the audio from her last interview, with Barra's 10-year-old daughter, quite moving. In the same book, which I'm only about 50 pages into, I loved Ray Sawhill's piece, so I wish he'd been in the documentary somewhere.

I still believe--maybe even more so than when I suggested it somewhere in one of the Kael threads--that there's a great narrative film to be made with Meryl Streep as Kael. Just a series of key moments from her life--"Circles and Squares," Bonnie and Clyde, Paramount, Shoah, etc.--with some kind of linking frame maybe. Can You Ever Forgive Me? from a couple of years ago was pretty good, and Kael's story is surely a better one that what that film started with. Enough time has passed that there's a generation (or two) that doesn't know her, and Streep's involvement would guarantee it'd be seen. Whether she'd ever do it, who knows--she could have a field day, though.

Finally got around to seeing Shoah, which I found amazing. Then went back to read Kael's review and oh boy, that seems genuinely unhinged.

William Shawn didn't want to publish it--I don't know if she had to rewrite a lot, or just lobby hard. But I give her credit for going forward. I assume she didn't choose a holocaust film as a platform to just push other people's buttons; she reacted, and she put it out there.

An interview from 2000 has appeared on Youtube. I haven't heard this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLKl4_gSpuk

Two friends and I have been doing some year-end Zoomcasts on films and TV shows we saw last year--there's about 12 minutes here on the Kael documentary (segueing into Mank) starting around 6:30.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AIV2yp3cdk

Surprised no one revived this thread in conjunction with I'm Thinking of Ending Things. What would Kael have thought about it, or about being quoted? Seems like something she'd tear apart, but I don't know. She did like Lynch a lot.

kaelheads!! i am trying to locate (and indeed confirm the existence of) the pithy phrase "trash keeps us sane": did pauline write this in so many words* and if she did, where exactly? (google is not helping and the kael-era new yorker is not so fully digitised that i could track it down internally) (if it was even in the new yorker)

*(yes she several times wrote it in more words and other ways)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9d5csMFAfE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZr5HpNm2TU

lol remembering tony parsons back when he was good (he was never good) pointing out the very evident sense of flopsweat-turned-relief when bry catches that tossed mic

ANYWAY back to my pauline k request

(and apologetic headbob to morbz's irritable shade for briefly going along with the threadjack)

I think what she said, not in so many words, was that "trash gives us an appetite for art." I think it was the last line in "Trash, Art and the Movies."

That's the closest ID I can make too. She may have made passing remarks dissing Stanley Kramer or something.

insofar as it's stuck in my memory at all (lol poorly) it's not from one of the big essays (which i already checked) but very much in passing in a subsequent review (late 70s? early 80s?) -- i've done a highspeed pass thru the books (in case a film title provides the synaptic linkage) but not yet located it

on one hand my memory may very well be inexact! but on the other my brain did glom onto this snappy version as a funny thing to say and i semi-trust it desite everything

https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/pauline-kael-trash-art-movies/

yes she definitely doesn't use this specific formulation in that essay -- i'm looking for where she (maybe) deploys a four-word summary of that 15000-word behemoth

The unfortunate problem now is that essay is so massive in her writings that it'll be tough to search out any other iterations of trash.

What is now an example of trash?

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 6, or something?

That sounds like it might be trash.

I haven't seen it though. Don't know if it would keep me sane or give me an appetite for art.

tbh i was asking in case anyone else remembered this same phrase and its location -- or just me (if indeed i do remember and didn't imagine it)

i will carry on searching but am using a hand-wavy workaround in the piece i'm writing

What is now an example of trash?

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 6, or something?

I thought of Zola.

There's this too, from "Are Movies Going to Pieces?"

People go to the movies for the various ways they express the experiences of our lives, and as a means of avoiding and postponing the pressures we feel. This latter function of art—generally referred to disparagingly as escapism—may also be considered as refreshment, and in terms of modern big city life and small town boredom, it may be a major factor in keeping us sane.

I haven't listened to any yet, but there are a few recordings with her on the Studs Terkel archive site:

https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/pauline-kael-discusses-her-book-kiss-kiss-bang-bang-and-her-career-part-1

Thank you! Turns out I can't get enough of vintage audio clips with her.

i'm looking for where she (maybe) deploys a four-word summary of that 15000-word behemoth

Her 5001 Nights at the Movies bk pares down countless old reviews into a 'guide' format (nb you would be insane to use it as a functional guide a la Maltin). I remember that there was a UK edition at the time of release (1982) and that it got some notice in Time Out etc - so maybe worth looking there, although I imagine it would be quite a task, skimming for a single phrase.

The write-ups in that book are pretty short and to-the-point, there's not a lot of room for her to opine about trash in the abstract; I doubt the quote would be in there.

TIL my Complete New Yorker dvd set no longer works, sorry Mark. Was looking forward to digging.

mine too :(

i vaguely wonder -- as i'm a subscriber -- if i can harass them into supplying some kind of upgrade reader since when i bought it i paid "for all time" (except actually i got it secondhand but they don't know that)

my god she's on fire here -- she talks in sentence after sentence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SUmUnLMWYQ

Hey look, a long interview/discussion from 1984

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGzfX0o5EK4

With Annette Insdorf? Would listen.

Wow! Ripping that audio and podcasting it up

Excellent audio.

Several shots taken at Siskel and Ebert, lol

Only about a half hour in but it’s clear this interview caught her in a moment of severe disenchantment with movies … even the swipes feel a little half hearted

And the laughter nervous

She kind of bet the rent on a certain perhaps ultimately naive view of how the sausage was made and then ultimately got disillusioned…by her buddy Warren Beatty?

Know she would rip me to shreds for the careless double ultimately, that’s for sure.

She gets a little more full-throated when asked to comment on the then-new generation of critics inspired by her (she hated them)

and she admired David Ansen of all people -- he's struck me as vanilla.

She seems to like certain of them but not ones who copy her voice.