Published at: Sept. 3, 2001, 8:35 p.m. CST by staff
I was not raised on Pauline Kael. The New Yorker was not in my home as a child and when I came to write about film, I came without her in mind… However, in the six years that I have been writing about the movies... I have not only come to know of Kael, I have come to love her.
Not because her opinions on specific films fell step in step with my own, they didn't, but because of something she believed intrinsically about film. Kael loved movies, not just cinema. She loved trash as well as art. Her opinions were decidedly her own without a care in the world for what others thought of her for saying them.
She disagreed with the status quo and committed so-called crimes as a film critic. She became a paid advisor to Paramount Pictures. She became friends with Filmmakers. She used slang in her reviews. However, most of all she didn’t accept the standard line about the films of the day.
Would the films of the Seventies be THE FILMS OF THE SEVENTIES had she not been there to tell us? Perhaps, but thank God we had her. She dreamed of a Hollywood that would advertise the small films with equal vigor as the big ones. At the same time that film criticism was becoming a standard format of book reports with shorthanded star ratings, she wanted her readers to read what it was she felt about this fantastic medium that we all attended… THE MOVIES.
She made it ok to LOVE film, instead of just analyzing them. She watched films once and only once. It was her opinion that with repetition came academic analyzation… and that was to take the joy out of film.
In reading her work I found that I either passionately agreed or passionately disagreed and for me… that’s the best possible reaction to a critic you can have. Even when I disagreed I delighted in her assured dissection of the film in question.
There are very few writers out there that have the nerve to speak their mind without hesitation or care for the ramifications of the outcome or impact of the statements. When she wrote her rather infamous RAISING KANE essay, I personally feel that she over simplified the situation in giving Herman Mankiewicz more credit than Welles, but applaud her piece if for no other reason than the fact that she was using her place as the preeminent film critic to raise the standing of the often disregarded place of the writer in the world of film. I feel she was wrong about Welles, but the essay shook up the world of criticism for forcing people to reconsider the auteur theory. It made people think. That is remarkable.
I began writing about film 5 years after she stopped. I never had a chance to talk with her about film. Never had the opportunity to hear her or see her speak. However, I did have the rather amazing honor of being published in the same volume on Peckinpah as she did, something that I’ve heard was her last published work. She wrote quite wonderfully about Peckinpah the filmmaker and the man. I wrote about the joys of CONVOY. I like to think she read my piece and thought me a little brained upstart from Texas.
The world of criticism has been mourning the loss of Pauline Kael since she retired in 1991. There was always whispered hope that she would begin to review again. Her passing gives a finality to the decision she made in 1991.
Many will claim that with her passing the final shovel of dirt has been tossed atop the grave of film criticism. No. Kael believed that Film Criticism was an artform all its own. She is well known for saying…
"If you think it is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet . . . may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets."
As with all artforms, time changes it. Kael’s phrasings and style were all her own. The most we can hope for from each critic working today is to be as unique themselves. As for Kael, head to AMAZON or your local bookstore you’ll find her opinions very much alive and worth considering.
