Pauline Kael (June 19, 1919 –September 3, 2001)
was an American
film critic who wrote
for
The New Yorker magazine
from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career she was published by
City Lights,
McCall's and
The New Republic.
Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated, and
sharply focused" movie reviews. She approached movies emotionally,
with a strongly
colloquial writing style.
She is often regarded as the most influential American film critic
of her day.
She left a lasting impression on many major critics, including
Armond White and
Roger Ebert, who has said that Kael "had a more
positive influence on the climate for film in America than any
other single person over the last three decades."
Biography
Early life and career
Kael was
born on a chicken farm in Petaluma
, California
, to Isaac Paul Kael and Judith Friedman Kael,
Jewish immigrants from Poland
.
Her
parents lost their farm when Kael was eight and her family moved to
San Francisco,
California
. She matriculated at the University of
California, Berkeley
in 1936; she studied philosophy, literature and the
arts but dropped out in 1940 before completing her degree.
Nevertheless, Kael intended to go on to law
school but fell in with a group of artists and moved to New York City
with the poet Robert
Horan.
Three years later, Kael returned to San Francisco and "led a
bohemian life," marrying and divorcing
three times, writing plays, and working in experimental film. In
1948, Kael and filmmaker
James
Broughton had a daughter, Gina, whom Kael would raise alone.
Gina had a serious illness through much of her childhood, and to
support her, Kael worked a series of menial jobs, such as cook and
seamstress, along with stints as an ad-copy writer. In 1953, the
editor of
City Lights magazine overheard Kael arguing
about movies in a coffeeshop with a friend and asked her to review
Charlie Chaplin's
Limelight. Kael memorably dubbed the
movie "slimelight," and began publishing film criticism regularly
in magazines.
Even these early reviews were notable for their informality and
lack of pretension; Kael later explained, "I worked to loosen my
style—to get away from the term-paper pomposity that we learn at
college. I wanted the sentences to breathe, to have the sound of a
human voice." Kael disparaged the supposed critic's ideal of
objectivity, referring to
it as "saphead objectivity," and incorporated aspects of
autobiography into her criticism. In a review
of
Vittorio De Sica's 1946
neorealist Shoeshine (Sciuscià) that has been
ranked among her most memorable, Kael described seeing the
film
Kael broadcast many of her early reviews on the alternative public
radio station
KPFA in Berkeley, and gained
further local-celebrity status as
Berkeley Cinema Guild manager from
1955 to 1960. As manager of a two-screen theater, Kael programmed
the films that were shown "unapologetically repeat[ing] her
favorites until they also became audience favorites." She also
wrote "pungent" capsule reviews of the movies, which her patrons
began collecting.
Going mass market
Kael continued to juggle writing with other work until she received
an offer to publish a book of her criticism. Published in 1965 as
I Lost It at the
Movies, the collection sold 150,000 paperback copies and
was a surprise bestseller. Coinciding with a job at the
high-circulation women's magazine
McCall's, Kael (as
Newsweek put it in a 1966 profile) "went
mass."
During the same year, she wrote a blistering review of the
phenomenally popular
The
Sound of Music in
McCall's. After mentioning that
some of the press had dubbed it "The Sound of Money," Kael called
the film's message a "sugarcoated lie that people seem to want to
eat." Although, according to legend, this review led to her being
fired from
McCall's (
The New York Times printed
as much in Kael's obituary), both Kael and the magazine's editor,
Robert Stein, denied this. According to Stein, "I [fired her]
months later after she kept panning every commercial movie from
Lawrence of
Arabia and
Dr.
Zhivago to
The
Pawnbroker and
A
Hard Day's Night."
Her dismissal from
McCall's led to a stint from 1966 to
1967 at
The New Republic,
whose editors continually altered Kael's writing without
permission. A few days after quitting the
Republic "in
despair," Kael was asked by
William
Shawn to join
The New Yorker staff as one of its two
film critics (she alternated every six months with
Penelope Gilliatt until 1979, after which
she became sole film critic.) Her first review in the
New
Yorker raved about
Bonnie and Clyde. According to
critic
David Thomson,
"she was right about a film that had bewildered many other
critics."
Initially, many considered her colloquial, brash writing style an
odd fit with the sophisticated and genteel
New Yorker.
Kael remembered "getting a letter from an eminent
New
Yorker writer suggesting that I was trampling through the
pages of the magazine with cowboy boots covered with dung." During
her tenure at the
New Yorker, however, she took advantage
of a forum that permitted her to write at length and with
presumably minimal editorial interference, and Kael achieved her
greatest prominence; by 1968,
Time magazine was referring to her as
"one of the country's top movie critics." Kael noted that during
this period her reviews were so interesting because the movies were
so compelling.
New Yorker tenure
In 1970, Kael received a
George Polk
Award for her work as a critic at the
New Yorker. She
continued to publish hardbound collections of her writings, many
with (deliberately) suggestive titles such as
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,
When the Lights Go
Down, and
Taking It All
In. Her fourth book,
Deeper into Movies (1973), was the
first non-fiction book about movies to win a
National Book Award.
Kael also wrote philosophical essays on moviegoing, the modern
Hollywood film industry, and the lack of courage on the part of
audiences (as she perceived it) to explore lesser-known, more
challenging movies (she rarely used the word "film" to describe
movies because she felt the word was too elitist). Among her more
popular essays were a damning review of
Norman Mailer's semi-fictional
Marilyn: a
Biography (an account of
Marilyn
Monroe's life); an incisive look at
Cary
Grant's career, and an extensively-researched examination of
Citizen Kane, entitled
Raising Kane (later reprinted in
The Citizen Kane
Book). She argued that
Herman
J. Mankiewicz,
Citizen
Kane's co-screenwriter, deserved as much credit for the film
as
Orson Welles did, a thesis that
provoked controversy and hurt Welles to the point that he
considered suing Kael for
libel.
Kael battled the editors of the
New Yorker as much as her
own critics. She fought with William Shawn to review the 1972
pornographic film
Deep
Throat, though she eventually relented. According to Kael,
after reading her negative review of
Terrence Malick's 1973 movie
Badlands, Shawn said, "I guess you
didn't know that Terry is like a son to me." Kael responded, "Tough
shit, Bill," and her review was printed unchanged. Other than
sporadic confrontations with Shawn, Kael said she spent most of her
work time at home writing.
Upon the release of Kael's 1980 collection
When the Lights Go Down, her
New Yorker colleague
Renata
Adler published an 8,000-word review in
The New York Review of
Books that dismissed the book as "jarringly, piece by
piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless." Adler
argued that Kael's post-sixties work contained "nothing certainly
of intelligence or sensibility," and faulted her "quirks [and]
mannerisms," including Kael's repeated use of the "bullying"
imperative and rhetorical question. The piece, which stunned Kael
and quickly became infamous in literary circles, was described by
Time magazine as "the New York literary Mafia['s]
bloodiest case of assault and battery in years." Although Kael
refused to respond, Adler's review became known as "the most
sensational attempt on Kael's reputation"; twenty years later,
Salon.com (ironically) referred to Adler's
"worthless" denunciation of Kael as her "most famous single
sentence."
In 1979, Kael accepted an offer from
Warren Beatty to be a consultant to
Paramount Pictures, but in mid 1980 she
left the position after only a few months to return to writing
criticism.
Later years
In the early 1980s, Kael was diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease. As her illness
worsened, she became increasingly depressed about the state of
American movies, along with feeling that "I had nothing new to
say." In a March 11, 1991, announcement,
The New York
Times referred to as "earth-shattering," Kael announced her
retirement from reviewing movies regularly. At the time, Kael
explained that she would still write essays for
The New
Yorker, along with "some reflections and other pieces of
writing about movies." During the next ten years, however, she
published no new work besides an introduction to her 1994
compendium,
For Keeps. In
the introduction (which was reprinted in
The New Yorker),
Kael stated, in reference to her film criticism, "I'm frequently
asked why I don't write my memoirs. I think I have."
Though she published no new writing of her own, Kael was not averse
to giving interviews, in which she alternately praised and derided
newly-released films and television shows. In a 1998 interview with
Modern Maturity, she said
she sometimes regretted not being able to review, saying, "A few
years ago when I saw
Vanya on
42nd Street, I wanted to blow trumpets. Your trumpets are
gone once you’ve quit." She died at her home in Massachusetts in
2001, aged 82.
Opinions
Kael's opinions often ran contrary to consensus critical opinion.
Occasionally, she energetically championed movies that were
considered critical failures, such as
The Warriors and, memorably,
Last Tango in Paris.
(Soon
after that film's release, Kael won the 1973 Harvard Lampoon
Bosley Award, named after Bosley Crowther. She was described by
the Award's judges as "Pauline Kael, whose hysterical encomium
loosed Bertolucci's
Last Tango in Paris on an
all-too-trusting world.") She was not especially cruel to some
films that had been roasted by many critics, such as the 1972
Man of La Mancha,
in which she praised
Sophia Loren's
performance. She also condemned films that elsewhere attracted
admiration, such as
It's a
Wonderful Life,
West
Side Story, and
Shoah. The originality of her opinions, as
well as the forceful way in which she expressed them, won her
ardent supporters as well as angry critics.
Notable movie reviews by Kael included a venomous criticism of
West Side Story that drew harsh replies from the movie's
supporters; ecstatic reviews of
Z
and
MASH that resulted in
enormous boosts to those films' popularity; and enthusiastic
reviews of
Brian De Palma's early
films. Kael's scathing critique of
Ryan's Daughter (1970) allegedly
dissuaded director
David Lean from making
a film for fourteen years afterwards. Her 'preview' of
Robert Altman's 1975 movie
Nashville appeared several months
before the film was actually completed, in an (ultimately
unsuccessful) attempt to catapult the film to box office
glory.
Views on violence
Kael had a taste for anti-hero movies that violated taboos
involving sex and violence, and this reportedly alienated some of
her readers. She also had a strong dislike for films that she felt
were manipulative or appealed in superficial ways to conventional
attitudes and feelings.
She was an enthusiastic supporter of the violent action films of
Sam Peckinpah and early
Walter Hill, as evidenced in her
collection
5001 Nights at the Movies, which includes
positive reviews of Hill's
Hard Times (1975),
The Warriors (1979), and
Southern Comfort
(1981), as well as Peckinpah's entire body of work. Although she
initially dismissed
John Boorman's
Point Blank (1967) for
what she felt was its pointless brutality, she later acknowledged
it was "intermittently dazzling" with "more energy and invention
than Boorman seems to know what to do with...one comes out
exhilarated but bewildered."
Kael responded negatively, however, to some action films that she
felt pushed what she described as "right-wing" or "fascist"
agendas. While praising
Don Siegel's
Dirty Harry (1971) as "trim,
brutal, and exciting; it was directed in the sleekest style by the
veteran urban-action director...," she labeled it a "right-wing
fantasy [that is] a remarkably single-minded attack on liberal
values". She also called it "fascist medievalism". In an otherwise
extremely positive critique of Peckinpah's
Straw Dogs, Kael concluded that the
controversial director had made 'the first American film that is a
fascist work of art'.
In her negative review of
Stanley
Kubrick's
A Clockwork
Orange, Kael explained how she felt some directors who
used brutal imagery in their films were de-sensitizing audiences to
violence:
Accusations of homophobia
In preface to a 1983 interview with Kael for the
gay magazine
Mandate, Sam Staggs wrote that "she
has always carried on a love/hate affair with her gay
legions....like the bitchiest queen in gay mythology, she has a
sharp remark about everything." In the early 1980s, however,
largely in response to her review of the 1981 drama
Rich and Famous, Kael faced
notable accusations of
homophobia. First
remarked on by Stuart Byron in
The
Village Voice, according to gay writer Craig Seligman the
accusations eventually "took on a life of their own and did real
damage to her reputation."
In her review, Kael called the straight-themed
Rich and
Famous "more like a homosexual fantasy," saying that one
female character's affairs "are creepy, because they don't seem
like what a woman would get into." Byron, who "hit the ceiling"
after reading the review, was joined by
The Celluloid Closet author
Vito Russo, who argued that Kael equated
promiscuity with homosexuality, "as though straight women have
never been promiscuous or been given the permission to be
promiscuous."
In response to her review of
Rich and Famous, several
critics reappraised Kael's earlier reviews of gay-themed movies,
including a wisecrack Kael made about the
lesbian-themed
The Children's Hour: "I
always thought this was why lesbians needed sympathy — that there
isn't much they
can do." Craig Seligman has defended Kael,
saying that these remarks showed "enough ease with the topic to be
able to crack jokes — in a dark period when other
reviewers....'felt that if homosexuality were not a crime it would
spread.'" Kael herself rejected the accusations as "craziness,"
adding, "I don't see how anybody who took the trouble to check out
what I've actually written about movies with homosexual elements in
them could believe that stuff."
Nixon "quote"
Kael is frequently quoted as having said, in the wake of
Richard Nixon's landslide victory in the
1972 presidential
election, that she "couldn't believe Nixon had won", since no
one she knew had voted for him. The quote is sometimes cited by
conservatives (such as
Bernard
Goldberg, in his book
Bias), as an example of
liberal bias in the mainstream media. There are
variations as to the exact wording, the speaker (it has variously
been attributed to other liberal female writers, including
Katharine Graham,
Susan Sontag, and
Joan
Didion), and the timing (in addition to Nixon's victory, it has
been claimed to have been uttered after
Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984.)
There is, in fact, no record of Kael making such a remark. The
story may have originated in a December 28, 1972
New York Times article on a lecture Kael
gave at the
Modern Language
Association, in which the newspaper quoted her as saying, "I
live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted
for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But
sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them."
Influence
Almost as soon as she began writing for
The New Yorker,
Kael carried a great deal of influence among fellow critics. In the
early seventies,
Cinerama distributors
"initiate[d] a policy of individual screenings for each critic
because her remarks [during the film] were affecting her fellow
critics." In the seventies and eighties, Kael cultivated
friendships with a group of young, mostly male critics, some of
whom emulated her distinctive writing style. Referred to derisively
as the "Paulettes," they came to dominate national film criticism
in the 1990s. Critics who have acknowledged Kael's influence
include, among many,
A. O. Scott of
The New York Times,
David Denby and
Anthony Lane of
The New Yorker,
David Edelstein of
New York Magazine,
Greil Marcus,
Elvis
Mitchell,
Michael Sragow, Armond
White, and Stephanie Zacharek of
Salon.com. It was repeatedly alleged that, after
her retirement, Kael's "most ardent devotees deliberate[d] with
each other [to] forge a common School of Pauline position" before
their reviews were written. When confronted with the rumor that she
ran "a conspiratorial network of young critics," Kael said she
believed that critics imitated her style rather than her actual
opinions, stating, "A number of critics take phrases and attitudes
from me, and those takings stick out—they’re not integral to the
writer’s temperament or approach."
When asked in 1998 if she thought her criticism had affected the
way films were made, Kael deflected the question, stating, "If I
say yes, I’m an egotist, and if I say no, I’ve wasted my life."
Several directors' careers were indisputably affected by her,
though, most notably
Taxi
Driver screenwriter
Paul
Schrader, who was accepted at
UCLA
Film School's graduate program on Kael's recommendation. Under
her mentoring, Schrader worked as a film critic before taking up
screenwriting and directing full-time. Also, film critic
Derek Malcolm claimed that, "If a director was
praised by Kael, he or she was generally allowed to work, since the
money-men knew there would be similar approbation across a wide
field of publications." Alternately, Kael was said to be able to
prevent filmmakers from working;
David
Lean claimed that her criticism of his work "kept him from
making a movie for 14 years."
Though he began directing movies after she retired,
Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by
Kael. He read her criticism voraciously growing up and said that
Kael was "as influential as any director was in helping me develop
my aesthetic."
Wes Anderson recounted
his efforts to screen his film
Rushmore for Kael in a 1999
The New
York Times article titled "My Private Screening With Pauline
Kael". He later wrote Kael that "your thoughts and writing about
the movies [have] been a very important source of inspiration for
me and my movies, and I hope you don't regret that."
In his 1988 film
Willow,
George Lucas named one of the villains
"General Kael," after the critic. Kael had often reviewed Lucas'
work without enthusiasm; in her own (negative) review of
Willow, she described the character as an "
hommage à moi."
Bibliography (partial)
Books
Selected reviews and essays
- "Trash, Art, and the Movies", essay published
in the Feb. 1969 issue of Harper's.
- "Raising Kane", book-length essay on the making of
Citizen Kane published in the
Feb. 20, 1971 and Feb. 27, 1971 issues of The New
Yorker.
- "Stanley Strangelove", review of A Clockwork Orange from a
January 1972 issue of The New Yorker.
- "The Man From Dream City", profile of Cary Grant from the August 14, 1975 issue of
The New Yorker.
- "Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers", essay published in the June 23, 1980
issue of The New Yorker.
- Reviews Mrs. Soffel, directed by
Gillian Armstrong and The Cotton Club, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
- Reviews A Passage to
India, directed by David Lean.
- Reviews Micki and Maude,
directed by Blake Edwards; Starman, directed by John Carpenter; The Flamingo Kid, directed by Garry Marshall.
Footnotes
References
- Brantley, Will, ed. (1996). Conversations with Pauline
Kael. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN
0-87805-899-0.
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