Everything about Pauline Kael totally explained
Pauline Kael (
June 19,
1919 –
September 3,
2001) was an
American film critic who wrote for
The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. 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 and 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, two
Jewish immigrants from
Poland. Affected by the
Great Depression, her family lost their farm when Kael was eight and moved to
San Francisco, California. 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 on experimental films. Gina had a serious illness through much of her childhood, and to support her, Kael worked a series of menial jobs—cook, seamstress—along with stints as an ad-copy writer. In 1953, the editor of
City Lights magazine overheard Kael—in a coffeeshop-argument about movies with a friend—and asked her to review
Charlie Chaplin's
Limelight. Kael disparaged the supposed critic's ideal of
objectivity, referring to it as "saphead objectivity," and incorporated aspects of
autobiography into her criticism. Kael described seeing the film
. Though she published no new writing of her own, Kael wasn't 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."
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."
However, Kael did respond negatively 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 labelled it a "right-wing fantasy [thatis] a remarkably simple-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's 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:
Alleged 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's a sharp remark about everything." However, in the early eighties, 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." Craig Seligman has defended Kael, saying that her perceived "bigotry" was simply her showing "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."
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 [duringthe 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,
Michael Sragow, 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." 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."
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 the lead villain "General Kael," after the critic. Kael had often reviewed Lucas' work without enthusiasm; in her own (negative) review of
Willow, she stylishly described the character as an "
hommage a moi."
Bibliography
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.
"A Passage to India, Unloos'd Dreams", review of A Passage to India from the January 14, 1985 issue of The New Yorker.
Footnotes
Further Information
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