Pauline Kael

Hey, what do you know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDdfD8nHbok

Oh wow--makes me nostalgic for Yonge St. circa 1979.

That 3D effect never gets old

kael was actually not 'cranky' about hawks, she loved all the classic ones and even praised some of them (like 'bringing up baby,' which i think she compared to restoration comedy) rather extravagantly. i don't think i'm the one to mount a formalist defense of his movies but the original 'scarface' has some great long shots, and is beautifully stylized right down to the performances -- definitely a lot there to talk about. the rambling, discursive, seemingly half-improvised nature of a lot of his movies appeals to me, and gives them a very distinctive flavor that you don't find in any other movies of the period. ('to have and have not' has basically the same plot and setting as 'casablanca,' but their tone couldn't be more different.)

Is it because Jean Arthur is so annoying?

To hell w/ you

I'm lost. My only point is, I think Walsh is absolutely considered an auteur in the original sense--by Sarris, by the French, by all the first-generation auteurists. Every bit as much as Cukor.

― clemenza, Monday, December 20, 2010 3:27 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this was the starting point for 'circles and squares'. kael pointed out that all sarris had done was see a similarity between two mediocre (at best) walsh movies. i don't trust the first generation auteurists. they weren't good critics; they had a cloistered fanboy outlook on the world; and the movies they championed were frequently uninteresting unless you're tuned in to their obscurantist wavelength, which KJB is, i guess -- that or he's just challopping.

though historically important, during the silent period, walsh is hardly in the same rank, as an artist, as, well, david lean, to go for a random director they didn't talk about. or huston, who they hated. or elia kazan -- did they even talk about him?

perhaps if i saw all one hundred of his movies i'd disagree, but it's unlikely.

I detect similarities between Walsh, Lean, Huston and Kazan. I'm uninterested in all of them.

i like 1940s lean, some huston, some kazan... i think i've enjoyed some films directed by raoul walsh but there isn't the time to spend on him

glad you two could bond over the unimportance of Raoul Walsh; I will continue to neglect post-'50s horror shit.

I'm a big-tent guy. (In theory--in practice, I spend way too much time re-watching my favorite films to ever get to a lot of stuff I should watch.) I want them all in there: Hawks, Walsh, Preminger, Ray, etc., but also Lean, Zinneman, Kazan--especially Kazan--Huston, etc. Everything and everybody. Except costume dramas and Inland Empire--they get turned away at the door.

Eric, you sure are incurious about butch filmmakers for a guy who climbs rocks regularly.

(not a drug reference btw)

Kael was wrong about Capra and Sirk, but I don't think that was any reaction to auteurism, it was more her personality and what she perceived as sentimentality.

She liked several Capra movies though, and was at best tolerant of Sirk.

The only Capra I can think of that she liked was The Bitter Tea of General Yen--were there others? I know she recoiled from the big populist ones. She had that great line on Wonderful Life (paraphrase): "No one has Capra's gift for sentimentality--and you find anybody who does, kill him."

I had the general thrust of the line right, but the wrong film--it was Mr. Smith.

"No one else can balance the ups and downs of wistful sentiment and corny humour the way Capra does--but if anyone else should learn to, kill him."

The fate of the world depends upon clarifying this...Kael seemed to like Capra right up to and including Mr. Deeds (especially It Happened One Night); after that, not much at all. Don't know about You Can't Take It with You, though--no entry in 5001 Nights.

More Top Fives!

Hitch

1. Rear Window
2. Rebecca
3. Rope
4. Frenzy
5. Under Capricorn

Ray

1. Johnny Guitar
2. The Lusty Men
3. On Dangerous Ground
4. Rebel With A Cause
5. The Savage Innocents

Sirk

1. Imitation of Life
2. All That Heaven Allows
3. There's Always Tomorrow
4. Magnificent Obsession
5. Written on the Wind

Capra
1. The Bitter Tea of General Yen
and um maybe...
2. Dirigible?
Just don't get him.

Walsh I don't quite get either. Many of his films left little impression on me so his oeuvre is no longer a priority. But I dug:
A Distant Trumpet
Pursued
Me and My Gal
and I have a soft spot for the classic turkey The Horn Blows at Midnight

I don't even consider Walsh that important. He made a couple of good films.

3. Rope
4. Frenzy
5. Under Capricorn

Wow.

yeah i saw U/C under the best conditions, and it's a bust

couple nice camera moves

Poor Raoul Walsh. It's been ages since I saw They Drive By Night, but I remember it as being really good.'

Can't wait to see this director's cut of Rebel with a Cause!

frenzy is the weird R-rated british one with titties right

i feel like white heat is better than anything preminger or sirk ever did but w/e

not that ive seen everything preminger or sirk ever did!

Kev, thou iconoclast, dissing In a Lonely Place.

I remember The Horn Blows at Midnight being kinda funny! At least if you love Benny.

God--how could I forget White Heat? I think I'd take that over even my favorite Hitchcock or Hawks film, and way before anything by Ray, Sirk, or Preminger.

xpost Yeah I've talked about In a Lonely Place somewhere here before - saw it early in cinephilia and loved it, saw it later and couldn't access what I first saw in it. Maybe in another ten years, it'll hit me again.

Fwiw as much as I love me some auteurism, I've bumped heads with other, perhaps more hardline auteurists for pumping, say, Joan Crawford as an auteurist or for questioning the director as the ultimate/only source for what winds up on screen/in speakers. There's been tons of terrific work taking other personnel as auteurs, e.g., Christina Lane, "Stepping Out From Behind The Grand Silhouette: Joan Harrison's Films of the 1940s" in Authorship and Film, eds. David Gerstner and Janet Staiger (in fact, that entire collection is good for poking holes in the auteur theory). It's not the ONLY lens through which I view the entirety of cinema.

Also, the auteur theory shares a great deal with genre theory so I don't see what the big deal is apart from the fact that genre theory makes some people cranky as well. You approach the oeuvres Ford or Hawks or whoever as if they were genres, figuring out how the oeuvre/genre works (just like those Ford and Hawks communities!), looking for themes and variations, discovering ways to complicate the categories, etc. And genre theory means you get to watch even more movies!

The Roaring Twenties > White Heat

I'm much more inclined to think of "Joan Crawford pictures" than I am arguing whether Curtiz or Walsh are directors who deserve credit for their movies' successes.

haha Joan Crawford as an auteur, that should be

Joan wrote a very systematic analysis of William K Howard films for Modern Screen

I like White Heat, but might actually prefer High Sierra.

Joan wrote a very systematic analysis of William K Howard films for Modern Screen

Actual lolz. Had to look up William K Howard too. Ahead of her time, that Joan.

For the record, Joan thought Johnny Guitar was one of the worst movies she ever did.

She did indeed, most likely because she hated Mercedes McCambridge who received spontaneous on set applause after one of her scenes which sent Crawford into a clothes-ripping rage.

Crawford also hated Rain because it was her first big flop. But it's her greatest performance.

You know who hates <i?Johnny Guitar[/i]? Bogdanovich. When he spoke in Toronto recently, he ridiculed it no fewer than three times in an hour. I like the film, but his digs were actually quite funny.

I don't care for the film either, and I've watched it four times.

Just found out about this:

http://www.amazon.com/Pauline-Kael-Life-Brian-Kellow/dp/0670023124/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309555150&sr=1-4

It comes out Oct. 27.

Struggling to see how it could be as entertaining as Sontag & Kael.

Also just saw LOA is releasing a Kael collection, and I guess I don't know how it could be that diff from For Keeps.

I liked Sontag & Kael a lot, but if the writer's good, I think this'll be great. It'll fill in lots that I don't know about her life pre-"Circles and Squares" (I know next to nothing), and, I would hope, would dive right into all the Kael/Sarris/Simon/Macdonald sniping through the '60s. I'm counting the days.

would prefer if Brian Fellows wrote a book on Kael

Dwight Garner's too brief reevaluation of Hooked, my second favorite Kael collection.

From the piece above: "wondering what she’d say if she were alive to weigh in on, say, Black Swan or The Social Network. (I suspect she’d have smacked both around, while finding things to enjoy about David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s work in the Facebook movie.)"

"What would Kael think?" follows me in and out of every movie theatre. I think the guy's right about The Social Network--my guess is she would have loved Timberlake most of all.

She would've said that Mara Rooney was like the new Roz Russell or something.

Todd McCarthy's review of the new bio (some dish about her early life via the book, and TMc's own).

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pauline-kael-a-life-dark-243280

The Library of American edition is redundant if you already own For Keeps.

Even to close friends, Pauline revealed little about her early family life. Many did not even know she was Jewish

find this hard to believe!

doesnt sound like there's much new info in that bio

The comment by one "Terry" has made me curious about Penelope Gilliatt's crit; she wrote the Sunday Bloody Sunday screenplay.