Pauline Kael, RIP.

http://zeroforconduct.com/2008/01/10/kiss-kiss-bang-bang.aspx

unfortunately, she lives on thru her many acolytes

Mixed feelings about her. Feisty, combative reviews which skewered the mediocre and the overblown with unswerving intellect. But the way she fucked over Welles reputation as regards to Citizen Kane and effectively sabotaged what little chance he had of returning to Hollywood in the seventies was pretty unforgivable.

She adored Welles!

Is there evidence for that claim? I thought his career was essentially over regardless, reliant as he was on the graces of Bogdanovich, Jaglom, and the patronizing attention paid by what he called "the Bankable Boys" (Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, Nicholson, etc).

The book is spurious scholarship and gives Mankiewicz too much credit, but I love how she cuts through the crap of 35 years of OMIGOD MASTERPIECE. I agree with most of those cavils too -- insofar as they're Welles too ("dollar-book Freud," etc)

anyway, Kael: I think she's one of the best prose writers of the last 50 years, and you don't need to share her opinions.

it sounds amazingly unlikely that he could have had a revival in the 70s. i think she was probably a little otm re mankiewicz, and anyway it's not like one critic's view of his contribution constitutes a 'fucking over' after all the arselicking.

and given all the information we know now thanks to the countless biographies published since the mid seventies, Welles contributed to his own self-immolation.

I still like reading her, but Manny Farber gives me more pleasure these days (and I probably disagree with him more than I do Kael, too).

o ya it was pauline kael who sabotaged orson welles and not his own damn self. riiiiiiight.

or what alfred said.

I've no problem with scared cows being debunked, sometimes more than necessary, but perhaps it's me but may be worthwhile sticking to the facts when doing so. Kael never responded to Bogdanovich's repudiation of her expose, perhaps she thought it beneath her, more likely she couldn't back up her claims.

This probably wouldn't matter but Welles had an exaggerated reputation as untrustworthy, unreliable and profligate which he battled with throughout the 60's and 70's, struggling to get projects off the ground and persuade nervous backers. In an industry where perception matters, Kael's discrediting of his contribution to Kane couldn't have helped in his attempts to rehabilitate himself. Welles was certainly less than perfect and probably didn't help himself in that period, but more than most he was a victim of his reputation.

scared=sacred

dude, i think his problems there began circa 1942.

Bogdanovich's repudiation of her expose

I'd read that the response was written by Welles posing as Bogdanovich...is that true?

don't need to be a save-a-welles to dislike kael

According to Bogdanovich, the Esquire piece 'The Kane Mutiny', the original draft, research and interviews were done by Bogdanovich and Welles revised and rewrote it.

haha, "save the welles"

That article is pretty funny.

No other critic has ever been so proudly subordinate to her own perverse attractions.

what a kinky, disrespectful bitch!

The hot-pants Queen Victoria of American film criticism!

Stories still circulate about Kael the wolverine bitch and her coterie of male critic cubs, nicknamed the 'Paulettes' by the excluded, disrupting screenings of films she didn’t like and rallying New York Film Critics Circle votes by intimidation or threat

I wish!

What’s more troublesome is Kael’s frivolity!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41M92S3SVRL._AA280_.jpg

I always find it funny how critics like Atkinson and Sarris wrote aggressive, accusatory tracts about what a shameless, cruel hussy she was AS SOON SHE DIED. Did they think doing it during her 10+ years of retirement would be unseemly?

they were scared cows

lols

Does anybody actually know any stories about these Paulettes and their gestapo tactics?

james wolcott wrote about the paulettes (as an ex-member) around the time of her death but i can't find a link

i read that, but he left out the part about crushing opposition.

his stance was really more about how he was really friends with pauline and loved her but there's all these other saps who just did what they thought she'd like, the saps.

yeah, i remember the sense i got was that she could get them all to follow her take on a given film because they were too wimpy to oppose her.

movie critics engaging in a herd mentality isn't particularly shocking. if anything, getting other critics to complain that they're all following you specifically is, if anything, impressive.

the double "if anything" was not intentional

also Stephanie Zacharek is the only writer I've read that actively seemed to be influenced by Kael. Mainly because she's so damn subordinate to her perverse attractions, the minx.

I can't think of anyone else who really seemed to share a similar value system in a clear way. But then if Paulettes were just liking what she liked, they probably couldn't convey the logic as to why.

"critics engaging in a herd mentality isn't particularly shocking"

lol Xgau

"seemed to share a similar value system"

well this is the weird thing about them -- there was no 'system' to her, which doesn't mean she was bad, but i don't know how you get behind it. it's possible there's some deeper logic to her stuff i'm not seeing, but my suspicion is she was attractive to them partly just because she was a famous and (in a way) glamorous figure, in that movie people had actually heard of her.

Does anybody actually know any stories about these Paulettes and their gestapo tactics?

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/interviews/owengleiberman/owengleiberman.html

not exactly gestapo tactics and owen is generally respectful of his former mentor but IMO she comes off as petty/imperious tyrant in his frank recollections

"critics engaging in a herd mentality isn't particularly shocking"

lol Xgau

lol "the xgauettes"

it wasn't a 'system,' she was rightfully disdainfull of people who tried to set up formulas and specific criteria, but there were clearly things that she was likely to appreciate, qualities in movies that she valued. A lot of these alleged "Paulettes" didn't seem to embrace the qualities in film she did with the same spirit.

The one complaint I do share with him is her fondness for the second person, which she seemed fondest of when her stance was actually at its least universal.

him being atkinson, I don't give a shit if Glieberman thought she was condescending to him.

also Stephanie Zacharek is the only writer I've read that actively seemed to be influenced by Kael

dude, Zacharek's hubby Charles Taylor, David Edelstein, early Denby. They imitated her sass if not her sensibility. Denby's self-flagellating essay in The New Yorker a few years ago is one of the saddest confessions of thwarted love I've ever read.

xxpost

yeah -- that royal "we" is always a tip-off that some deeply eccentric notion is about to be presented as a universal truth. denby does this all the time too, it's like a writers' tic.

an industry where perception matters, Kael's discrediting of his contribution to Kane couldn't have helped in his attempts to rehabilitate himself.

lol if you think anyone who remembered the battles with Hearst in 1941 was still running studios in the late seventies.

Denby's self-flagellating essay in The New Yorker a few years ago is one of the saddest confessions of thwarted love I've ever read.

I missed this! funny he's one of my least favorite reviewers ever and I love her.

Welles is one of my touchstones, but I know too much about him to make him a martyr. A lot of his problems he brought on his own damm self.

Besides, the notion that a film critic -- even one as powerful as Pauline Kael, who, by the way, PISSED OFF A LOT OF PEOPLE -- prevented Welles from getting jobs in the seventies is giving her waaaaaay too much credit.

funny he's one of my least favorite reviewers ever and I love her.

most of the guys alfred mentions do nothing for me. I guess their lack of sensibility makes me miss the "sass."

But then I've never understood that idea of liking Kael for her writing style but finding her opinions inscrutable. She rightfully noted that its kind of the worst compliment to get, as it means you actually failed at making yourself understood.

It's funny this thread was revived today. I was at the library yesterday, and I came across Hooked, her collection of mid eighties film reviews. She wrote 400-600 words on stuff like Uncommon Valor, Club Paradise, Black Widow, Year of the Dragon and Masquerade, year after year, and she always managed an interesting sentence, or found something interesting to say about an actor's gesture. Everyone remembers her Bertolucci and Altman swoons, but I'd argue that she was at her very best when she was reviewing hack films.

this Perfect Sound Forever interview with Marcus from 2005:

PSF: You mentioned David Denby; you've written a couple – I think it's fair to say – attacks on his writing, and I agree with them, but is it fair to see this as a fight over Pauline Kael's legacy?

GM: No. Pauline can speak for herself, dead or alive. She doesn't need me or any of her other friends to do it for her. I have to admit that I found David Denby's piece "My Life as a Paulette" absolutely disgusting and reprehensible and immoral. I could probably think of worse things to say if you give me a minute. But the real killer in that piece is, he talks about how he wrote some stuff, and maybe he gets a phone call or a note from Pauline encouraging him, and they become friends, and they go to movies together, and this is an experience that many, many people had with Pauline – her reaching out to younger writers.

PSF: Because she was generous.

GM: And because that was a way that she stayed young, she stayed aware of things she might otherwise not be aware of. She was interested in what other people had to say, and she was interested in what they knew that she didn't know. She was interested in the world that way; she wasn't just Doing Good.

In any case, the day comes, according to David Denby in this piece of his, when she says to him, "You know, you're really not a writer. You should do something else, maybe you should become a director, but you're really not a writer." And I don't know if she really said that, I have no reason to think that Denby is making it up. I have difficulty imagining her saying that, being that cruel, because that's a cruel thing to say: even if it's cruel-to-be-kind, it's still cruel. I have difficulty seeing her say that. But let's assume she did, I don't have any reason to think she didn't.

Well, she was right! He's not a writer. He has no sense of words. It is quite clear that this is a person who writes for prestige, for self-affirmation, out of some neurotic self-importance that has nothing to do with love of words or the compulsion to translate an experience from one language into another. That's clearly not there. His writing has never been alive – it's not even alive to itself. The reason I find it so difficult to imagine Pauline saying that is, you know, she's become friendly with somebody, and she realizes the guy's really not very good – well, so what! There are a lot of writers out there who aren't so good, they're not doing all that great damage to the public good – you really don't have to call them off. So I don't know.

I think it is quite odd that the New Yorker has run a number of pieces over the past couple of years that have seemed to be there to take down or erase the reputation of their most celebrated, or notorious, critic of the last forty, fifty years. Very odd that a magazine needs to pile dirt on somebody's grave, to make sure that she's really dead. I wonder what they're worried about.

haaaaaarsh

I disagree with Marcus about Denby generally. Denby aggravates me; he's inflexible, a pedant who's learned how to whine in argumentative prose (I'm trying to write a response to his Preminger essay). But I like Denby's early stuff, which is his most Kael-influenced work.

The "pauline is nice to writer, writer does something she doesn't like, she tells them, they complain about it once she's dead" thing IS pretty ewww.

Actually, if you want to honor a critic who began as a Paulette and went his own way (and probably didn't give a fuck if she respected him), tip your hat at Roger Ebert.

I was gonna say! He was clearly a major fan of her "let's talk about eroticism in film, as vulnerable as it makes us" stance, even if it just meant for him that Angelina Jolie movies have to suck really bad not to get three stars.

I've never heard him say anything disagreeable about an actor. Watching those clips with Siskel, it's clearly Siskel who has no problem with John Simon-esque disses of big noses, Botox, and miscasting.

man I just saw part of Prince Of The City on TV yesterday and Pauline was right, I really did want to throw something at Treat Williams.

I NEED to see the whole movie though. Shit's insane!

that's one terrible performance.

And non-fans who gripe at her championing of De Palma, Altman, and Bertolucci haven't read her reviews of Obsession, Scarface, Body Double, Buffalo Bill, and The Last Emperor.

Don't forget Images and Brewster McCloud.

"Everyone remembers her Bertolucci and Altman swoons, but I'd argue that she was at her very best when she was reviewing hack films."

i love that stuff. the state of the art essays and the kane stuff never did as much for me as the forgotten genre picture reviews. i was always in awe of her ability to find some glimmer of hope in the cruddiest of crud. "there's a movie in here somewhere..." it's one reason i've always felt she had something to teach future filmmakers in a way that a lot (or most) critics couldn't. here is all this stuff that doesn't work, but wait, here is five minutes or five seconds that does! i would study that five minutes or five seconds if i was a director. she had a great eye. most movie critics are so non-visual these days it's crazy. they don't SEE anything. and they never describe what they see and how it makes them feel in the way that she did.

scott is otm and also omg that marcus takedown of denby is so awesome!

greil marcus is insane

i know; i'm not generally a fan but the enemy of my enemy...

Fletch:

Chevy Chase does some of his smoothest, most polished underplaying in this low-key, investigative-reporter-as-private-eye comedy, directed by Michael Ritchie, from a script by Andrew Bergman. (It's based on a novel by Gregory McDonald.) It's a lightweight, breezy movie with no pretense of realism. The setting is L.A., where Chase's wisecracking Fletch, who's researching an exposé on the drug scene at the beach and also trying to figure out a murder that's about to take place, wears a series of disguises. (They're tomfoolery: at 6 feet 5 inches Chase is fairly easy to spot.) It's too bad that the crime plot doesn't come to enough (nothing ever seems to be at stake) and that some of the supporting players—Richard Libertini and Geena Davis, in particular—are wasted in stock roles. Although Joe Don Baker, as a dimply, crooked police chief, has a good moment or two, the movie is really nothing but a star turn for Chase, who is required to be laid-back, deft, and, regrettably, more clever than anybody else. His line readings are beautifully timed, but smart-aleck facetiousness and smugness are built into the conception of the character; Fletch is the narrator, and even when he's talking to someone, most of the time he's putting that person on and joking directly to us. Ritchie gets everything he can out of Bergman's dialogue; he keeps the picture moving along, and its casual tone might be likable and diverting on television. In the theatre, it isn't enough, the casualness doesn't pay off, and the picture just drifts by.

greil marcus is my biggest fan, so i have to love him. i agree about denby though. he's pretty useless.

here is all this stuff that doesn't work, but wait, here is five minutes or five seconds that does! i would study that five minutes or five seconds if i was a director.

the flipside of this is how in her longer pieces, she'd point out the five minutes in some film she adored that didn't work. Nobody got through unscathed.

when I was reading all her stuff in school (so glad the library had all the essay books), I felt like I wanted to see almost EVERY movie she wrote a long piece about, good or bad, because I wanted to experience what she had.

My favorite of her ambivalent reviews of films she loved is The Conformist. For a few pages it sounds like she's describing a masterpiece, until she raises her hand: "I don't think it's a great film." It's too enamoured of fascist kitsch, etc.

I have the blurb compendium, and it doesn't have that same effect (also I'm suffering from some video store burnout). I'm looking forward to picking up all the books eventually and seeing if it still has hold.

x-post

has THAT hold.

I rented the Conformist the other week but didn't get around to watching it! I can barely seem to get through anything these days.

xpost: I trudged through every Jessica Lange and Joseph Ruben film thanks to her.

It pisses me off that she prefers Ghostbusters II to the original.

Yeah, that was batty. There are some pretty banal comedies she likes cuz they've got the spirit of the good ol' days, like Caveman.

i.e. lots of Bette Midler movies.

i was just reading the snooze new yorker parody book. did you ever read the kael parody in there? she's pauline zeal though.

here's something that artforum published when she died - lol @ gary indiana

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-84182767.html

I've never understood that idea of liking Kael for her writing style but finding her opinions inscrutable.

yeah her opinions aren't hard to understand -- i think she makes good, clear cases for stuff she loves or hates. which is obviously different from agreeing with her, but she's not inscrutable.

Yeah, her detractors are usually taken aback by those royal "we's" and "you's" and other bludgeoning tactics of her early style that they forget how serenely clear the "middle period" (1970-1980) was, and how willing she was to be persuaded by the particular kind of hackery coming from Hollywood in the eighties. Isn't this what we want from critics? I can't understand how they must attach so many qualifiers ("great writer even though I don't agree", yawn).

*are usually SO taken aback

the comments re: welles upthread are missing the point. of course welles was responsible (mostly) for not getting to make another film after "f for fake." but kael's "raising kane" is a big old pudding of lazy criticism and outright calumnies. yes, it's got some great insights, but that doesn't excuse the sloppiness of the piece.

We acknowledged as such.

*much. I really can't type tonight.

anybody ever read renata adler's legendary takedown in the ny review of books - "perils of pauline"??

Yup. Adler's flummoxed by Kael's slang.

haha yes! it's a fantastic piece of writing and analysis, listing in excruciating and hilarious detail every last weird thing about kael's writing. even fans (and i'm a bit one, despite my criticism of "raising kane") should check it out.

uh, i'm a BIG one, that is. not "a bit of one."

Is Atkinson using the word "feckless" correctly?

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/courtneykaehler/maracas.jpg

At what, the feckless boxer?

Stumped.