Revised Kael Review

Audience: Young readers of an alternative independent arts magazine

Pauline Kael: All Critic, No Heart

There is no doubt that Pauline Kael, famed film critic of the fifties and sixties, loved movies. In fact, she loved them so much that, according to protégé Francis Davis in “Afterglow,” she “[asked] more of them than they could routinely deliver.” In that manner, her love for movies comes across as affectionate abuse, like squeezing a beloved puppy until it cannot breathe. Pauline Kael embodied a series of contradictions: love folded in hate; crass taste disguised as a personable tone; and a critical eye covering up a lack of sympathy.

In “Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael,” Kael says to Francis Davis, “I loved lowbrow taste, and that was hard to get across.” However, the vocabulary and vulgarity of her film reviews convey her lowbrow taste more than adequately. In Renata Adler’s “House Critic” Adler mercilessly points out many of Kael’s “ad personam physical images” such as “a new brand of pop manure” and “flatulent seriousness.” Alder also calls attention to Kael’s affinity for four basic film components typically associated with adolescent males: “frissons of horror,” “physical violence,” “sex scenes,” and “fantasies of invasion.” In “Afterglow” Kael stated that she wrote her reviews in “the language we really spoke.” However, Kael’s language compares to that of a cocky teenage boy with an extensive knowledge of film.

Kael’s appetite for the harshness in life appears in her praise of “My Left Foot” and “Klute.” For both films she makes note of the “toughness” of the characters and the directors’ straightforward take on the respective stories of a cerebral palsy victim and a call girl. It is understandable wanting a film to give its subject justice unburdened by sentimentality; however, Kael’s lack of sensitivity extends to almost anti-social proportions. In her review of “Funny Girl” Kael says that movies stars are “more intense and dazzling than people we ordinarily encounter in life, and far more charming than the extraordinary people we encounter” because “we don’t have to undergo the frenzy or the risks of being involved with them.” Is she being witty or inadvertently revealing herself? It’s hard to connect to a review, much less a reviewer, sporting statements of mild misanthropy.

Kael’s desire for un-involvement with people extended to un-involvement with movies. She never saw a film more than once—she admitted in “Afterglow” that she wanted to see Robert Altman’s Nashville another time, but would not allow herself to do so. Kael had the potential to be a film lover, but was too disciplined in her profession, and instead became a mere film expert.

In her review of “Hiroshima Mon Amour” Kael claims that actress Emmanuelle Riva “was exposing one of the worst faults of intelligent modern women: she was talking all her emotions out.” In turn, the opposite was true of Kael—her biggest fault was not feeling enough.