Pauline Kael facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Pauline Kael
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Author portrait of Kael from the dust jacket of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968)
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| Born | June 19, 1919 Petaluma, California, U.S. |
| Died | September 3, 2001 (aged 82) Great Barrington, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Film critic |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Period | 1951–1991 |
| Children | 1 |
Pauline Kael (/keɪl/; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic. She wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews. Her opinions often went against what other critics thought.
Many people considered her one of the most important American film critics of her time. She made a lasting impact on how movies are seen and reviewed. Film critic Roger Ebert said that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person." He added that Kael's approach was very personal, without strict rules.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Pauline Kael was born on June 19, 1919, in Petaluma, California. Her parents, Isaac Paul Kael and Judith Kael, were Jewish immigrants from Poland. They lived on a chicken farm with other Jewish chicken farmers. Pauline had four older siblings: Louis, Philip, Annie, and Rose.
When Kael was eight, her family lost their farm. They then moved to San Francisco. She went to high school there. In 1936, she started studying at the University of California, Berkeley. She focused on philosophy, literature, and art. However, she left college in 1940. Kael had planned to go to law school. Instead, she joined a group of artists and moved to New York City with poet Robert Horan.
Three years later, Kael returned to Berkeley. She lived a free-spirited life, writing plays and working on experimental films. In 1948, Kael and filmmaker James Broughton had a daughter named Gina James. Kael raised Gina by herself. To support her daughter and herself, Kael worked many different jobs. She was a cook, a seamstress, and even wrote ads.
Starting Her Career in Film Criticism
In 1952, Peter D. Martin, the editor of City Lights magazine, heard Kael talking about movies. She was arguing with a friend in a coffee shop. Martin asked her to review Charlie Chaplin's Limelight. Kael called the film "Slimelight." After that, she started writing film reviews regularly for magazines.
Kael later explained her writing style. She wanted her sentences "to breathe, to have the sound of a human voice." She did not like the idea that critics should be completely unbiased. She called this "saphead objectivity." Kael also included parts of her own life in her reviews.
Kael shared many of her early reviews on the radio station KPFA in Berkeley. She became more well-known locally when she managed the Berkeley Cinema-Guild and Studio from 1955 to 1960. She later married the owner, Edward Landberg. Kael chose the movies shown at the theater. She would often show her favorite films again and again until the audience loved them too. She also wrote short, sharp reviews for the films, which people started collecting.
Becoming a Well-Known Critic
Kael continued to balance writing with other jobs. Then, she got an offer to publish a book of her reviews. The book, I Lost It at the Movies, came out in 1965. It sold 150,000 paperback copies and became a surprise bestseller. Around the same time, she got a job at McCall's, a popular women's magazine. This helped her reach a much wider audience.
In 1966, Kael wrote a very strong review of the super popular movie The Sound of Music for McCall's. She mentioned that some people called it "The Sound of Money." Kael said the movie's message was a "sugarcoated lie." Many thought this review led to her being fired. However, Kael and the magazine's editor, Robert Stein, said this was not true. Stein said he fired her months later. This was because she kept giving bad reviews to many popular movies. These included Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago.
After leaving McCall's, Kael worked for The New Republic from 1966 to 1967. The editors there often changed her writing without her permission. In October 1967, Kael wrote a long essay about Bonnie and Clyde. The magazine decided not to publish it. William Shawn of The New Yorker magazine got the essay and published it. Kael's very positive review was different from what most critics thought. They felt the film mixed comedy and violence in a strange way. Critic David Thomson said Kael "was right about a film that had bewildered many other critics."
A few months later, Kael left The New Republic. In 1968, Shawn asked Kael to join The New Yorker. She shared the film critic job with Penelope Gilliatt until 1979. Kael became the only film critic in 1980.
Her Time at The New Yorker
At first, many thought Kael's casual and bold writing style was a strange fit for the sophisticated New Yorker. Kael remembered one writer saying she was "trampling through the pages of the magazine with cowboy boots covered with dung." But during her time there, she could write long articles with little editing. This helped her become very famous. By 1968, Time magazine called her "one of the country's top movie critics."
In 1970, Kael won a George Polk Award for her work at The New Yorker. She kept publishing collections of her writings. Some titles were Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and When the Lights Go Down. Her fourth collection, Deeper into Movies (1973), won the U.S. National Book Award. It was the first non-fiction book about film to win this award.
Kael also wrote essays about going to movies, the modern Hollywood film industry, and why audiences might not explore less-known films. She rarely used the word "film" because she felt it sounded too fancy. Among her popular essays was a strong 1973 review of Norman Mailer's book about Marilyn Monroe. She also wrote a sharp 1975 look at Cary Grant's career. Her 1971 essay, "Raising Kane," was a book-length piece about who truly created the film Citizen Kane.
"Raising Kane" was first printed in two issues of The New Yorker. In this essay, Kael argued that Herman J. Mankiewicz, who co-wrote the script, was the main creative force behind Citizen Kane. She also claimed that Orson Welles tried to take credit away from Mankiewicz. Welles and his supporters, like Peter Bogdanovich, disagreed strongly with Kael's claims.
Woody Allen once said about Kael, "She has everything that a great critic needs except judgment." He meant she had passion, wit, a great writing style, and knowledge of film history. But sometimes, what she praised or missed was surprising.
In 1979, Kael took a job as a consultant for Paramount Pictures with Warren Beatty. But she left after only a few months to go back to writing reviews.
Later Years and Retirement
In the early 1980s, Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. This condition can affect thinking. As her health got worse, she felt sad about the state of American movies. She also felt she "had nothing new to say." On March 11, 1991, Kael announced she was retiring from regularly reviewing films. She said she would still write essays and other pieces about movies for The New Yorker. However, over the next 10 years, she published almost no new work.
Even though she didn't publish new writings, Kael still gave interviews. She sometimes shared her thoughts on new movies and TV shows. In a 1998 interview, she said she sometimes wished she could still review. She died in 2001 at her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She was 82 years old and died from problems related to Parkinson's disease.
Her Strong Opinions
Pauline Kael's opinions often went against what other critics thought. Sometimes, she strongly supported films that other critics didn't like. Examples include The Warriors and Last Tango in Paris. She was also not very harsh on some films that many critics disliked, like the 1972 Man of La Mancha, where she praised Sophia Loren's acting.
She also gave bad reviews to films that other critics admired. These included Network, A Woman Under the Influence (which she called a "murky, ragmop movie"), and 2001: A Space Odyssey (which she called a "monumentally unimaginative movie"). She also disliked most experimental cinema and student films. Her unique opinions and the strong way she expressed them earned her both passionate supporters and angry critics.
Kael's reviews included a negative one for West Side Story (1961), which caused strong reactions from the film's fans. She wrote very positive reviews for Z and MASH, which greatly boosted their popularity. She also praised Brian De Palma's early films. Her "preview" of Robert Altman's film Nashville (1975) was published months before the movie was finished. She hoped this would stop the studio from changing the film and help it become a box-office hit.
Kael was against the auteur theory. This theory says that the director is the main author of a film. She criticized it in her reviews and interviews. She preferred to analyze films without thinking about the director's other works. Andrew Sarris, who supported the auteur theory, debated with Kael in magazines. Kael believed that a film should be seen as a team effort. In her essay "Raising Kane" (1971), she showed how Citizen Kane used the special talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and cinematographer Gregg Toland.
The "Nixon Quote"
In December 1972, after U.S. President Richard Nixon was reelected by a lot of votes, Kael gave a talk. She said, "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they [Nixon's other supporters] are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." This quote was in The New York Times.
Later, Kael was often misquoted as saying, "I can't believe Nixon won. I don't know anyone who voted for him." This misquote became a famous story. Some people used it to say that liberal thinkers were out of touch with regular people.
Her Influence on Film and Critics
As soon as she started writing for The New Yorker, Kael had a lot of influence on other critics. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kael became friends with a group of younger critics, mostly men. Some of them copied her unique writing style. They were sometimes called the "Paulettes." These critics became very important in film criticism in the 1990s.
Many critics have said Kael influenced them. These include A. O. Scott of The New York Times, David Denby of The New Yorker, and David Edelstein of New York Magazine. There were rumors that after she retired, her biggest fans would talk to each other to agree on a "Pauline Kael position" before writing their reviews. Kael said she believed critics copied her style, not her actual opinions.
When asked if her criticism changed how films were made, Kael avoided a direct answer. She said, "If I say yes, I'm an egotist, and if I say no, I've wasted my life." However, she did greatly affect the careers of several directors. For example, Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader was accepted into film school because of Kael's recommendation. She also mentored him as a critic. Derek Malcolm, a film critic for The Guardian, said that if Kael praised a director, they were usually allowed to make more movies.
On the other hand, Kael was also said to have the power to stop filmmakers from working. David Lean said her criticism of his work "kept him from making a movie for 14 years."
In 1978, Kael received the Women in Film Crystal Award. This award honors women who have helped expand the role of women in entertainment. In his film Willow (1988), George Lucas named a villain "General Kael" after the critic. Kael had often given Lucas's work negative reviews. In her own review of Willow, she called the character an "hommage à moi" (a tribute to me).
Even though he started directing after she retired, Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by Kael. He read her criticism a lot when he was growing up. He said Kael was "as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic." Wes Anderson also tried to screen his film Rushmore for Kael. He later wrote to her, saying her writing was a very important source of inspiration for his movies.
In 2000, filmmaker Michael Moore shared a story about Kael's reaction to his documentary Roger & Me (1989). Moore wrote that Kael was upset she had to watch his film in a cinema. She also didn't like that Roger & Me won Best Documentary at an awards show.
Kael's career is explored in the documentary For the Love of Movies (2009). It features critics she helped shape, like Owen Gleiberman, and those who disagreed with her, like Andrew Sarris. A biography about Kael, A Life in the Dark, was published in 2011. In 2018, the documentary What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael was released. It tells the story of her work and influence.
Personal Life
Pauline Kael briefly lived with the poet and filmmaker James Broughton. They had a daughter, Gina James, born in 1948. In the 1950s, Kael was married to Edward Landberg, who owned the Berkeley Cinema-Guild and Studio. Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the early 1980s. She had one grandchild, William Friedman.
Awards and Recognition
- 1964: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
- 1970: George Polk Award, for Criticism
- 1974: National Book Award, Arts and Letters, for Deeper into Movies
- 1978: Crystal Award, Women in Film Crystal Awards
- 1980: Muse Award, New York Women in Film & Television
- 1991: Mel Novikoff Award, San Francisco International Film Festival
- 1994: Special Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
- 1995: Writer Award, Gotham Independent Film Awards
- 2012: Posthumous induction into the Online Film & Television Association Film Hall of Fame, Behind the Scenes, Film Criticism
See also
- Women in film
- Andrew Sarris
- Auteur theory
- Film criticism
- The New Yorker
- Susan Sontag
