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Review
Archives
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Today's
Date is:
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PAULINE
KAEL 1919-2001
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Reviewed
by: |
Christopher
J. Jarmick |
| Genre: |
Writer,
Commentator, Essayist, Reviewer, Passionate Film Lover |
| Magazines: |
Magazine
Columnist: 1953 City Lights . 1954 To 1965: the Partisan Review,
Sight and Sound, The Atlantic Monthly. 1965: Life Magazine 1965-1966:
McCall's . 1966-1967: The New Republic. 1968-1991: The New Yorker
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| Books: |
BOOKS: "I
Lost It at the Movies" (1965); "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (1968);
"Going Steady" (1970); "Deeper Into Movies" (1973), "Reeling"
(1976); "When the Lights Go Down" (1980); "Taking it All in"
(1980); "State of the Art" (1983) "Hooked" (1985); "Movie Love"
(1988); "5001 Nights at the Movies" (1991) and "For Keeps" (1994).
|
| Language: |
English |
| Subtitle: |
English (Captions
Only) |
| Length: |
22 years
with The New Yorker. 82 years with Life. |
| Rating: |
The most
influential film writer/essayist/critic of our time. |
| Release
Date: |
June, 19,
1919 |
| Studio: |
All
of them. |
| Commentary:
|
"Art doesn't
come in measured quantities: it's got to be too much or it's
not enough." --Pauline Kael * * * * * Pauline Kael helped make
the streets safe for film geeks everywhere. She gave some precedence
to those of us who consider movies important and almost as enjoyable
as Sex, and Chocolate. |
| Documentaries:
|
The Magical
Eye (1989) Little seen Canadian documentary. She is interviewed. |
| Featurettes:
|
Kael on Woody Allen from
a review of Sleeper (1973): ``He has the city-wise effrontery
of a shrimp who began by using language to protect himself and
then discovered that language has a life of its own. ... The
tension between his insecurity and his wit makes us empathize
with him; we, too, are scared to show how smart we feel.'' *
* * * Kael on ``The Exorcist,'' (1974) ``Shallowness that asks
to be taken seriously -- shallowness like William Peter Blatty's
-- is an embarrassment. When you hear him on TV talking about
communicating with his dead mother, your heart doesn't bleed
for him, your stomach turns for him.'' * * * * Kael on ``Return
of the Jedi,'' (1983): ``If a filmmaker wants backing for a
new project, there'd better be a video game in it. Producers
are putting so much action and so little character or point
into their movies that there's nothing for a viewer to latch
on to. The battle between good and evil, which is the theme
of just about every big fantasy adventure film, has become a
flabby excuse for a lot of dumb tricks and noise.'' |
| Filmography/Biography:
|
Some of the most selective
and critical biographical sketches of industry giants you have
read. |
|
Interviews: |
Thousands. |
| Trailers/TV
Spots: |
None |
| Alternate/Deleted
Scenes: |
Several are included.
* * * George Lucas named the evil General Kael in his 1988 film
'Willow" after her. |
| Music
Video: |
None |
| Other:
|
There was
no other. There is only one Pauline Kael. For 22 years (between
1968-1991) she wrote what she wanted, and she wrote it as long
as she wanted for editor William Shawn and The New Yorker magazine.
|
| Cast
and Crew: |
Cast of thousands. |
| Screenplay
by: |
Written by:
geniuses, hacks, frauds, charlatans, and utterly illiterate
nincompoops |
| Produced
by: |
The usual suspects. |
| Directed
By: |
Important
visionaries, nearsighted dickwads, pretentious jerks, passionate
incompetents, ex-lovers, and all the rest. |
| Music: |
None |
| The
Review: |
Pauline
Kael was once one of the most widely read, widely known, and
most controversial but respected film writers and critics the
world has ever known. She reviewed films on a regular basis
from 1965 through 1991. She remains one of the most influential
film critics of all time, her style of writing remains the most
imitated, but her substance unfortunately is rarely captured.
* * * * Pauline Kael, after many years of living with Parkinson's
died on Monday September3, 2001 at her home in Great Barrington,
Mass. She was 82. * * * I wasn't quite 11 years old when I first
began regularly reading her film essays in The New Yorker. They
were more than merely film reviews ; they were passionate criticisms
and analysis of the movies. Kael was more than a critic--she
was a writer. A great writer capable of dazzling us with her
acute and perceptive observations and constructing beautifully
memorable sentences in the process. She had an accessible style
that would mix literary and modern pop culture references as
she delivered passionate essays exploring her feelings and thoughts
regarding the movies. Movies weren't films or Art to be put
up on a pedestal to Pauline Kael; movies (or at least ones worth
watching) were alive with feelings capable of delivering a myriad
of sensations to audiences and worthy of writing about at length
with as much professionalism as humanly possible. Movies however
were not bloodless and dispassionate and perfect, but passionate,
emotional and sloppy. I guess you could say so was Kael. * *
* * * As a teenager reading Kael I learned not just about film,
but about philosophy and a lot about life. At times I didn't
know what she was writing about and challenged myself to seek
out the sources of her references. If it was impossible for
me to see an older or more obscure film, I could at least go
to the library and read about the film . And I discovered other
film writers (like Agee for instance) and many philosophers
as well. Kael was a very good teacher, though as I learned more
about what she was writing about and matured, I also often found
myself disagreeing with some of her opinions and conclusions.
* * * * * * Kael was well read, smart, and perceptive. She was
sometimes almost relentlessly cruel in her skewering of movies
that disappointed her, but she also would over-praise the films
she really enjoyed and in the process get those films more attention
than they other-wise would have received. It was her praise
of the film Bonnie and Clyde that led to the film's re-release
and re-assessment by several critics, which turned the box-office
failure into a modest hit. A film that wound being an important
influence--still felt today. It was Kael who got Martin Scorcese's
Mean Streets the attention it deserved. Her praise of several
70's filmmakers had an important impact on how the films were
considered and discussed throughout the world. She had patience
with smaller, independent films and was sometimes downright
un-civil when it came to big studio films. She debunked the
auteur theory that claimed the Director was really the author
and creator of the film, --yet not completely. She researched
and wrote a book about how Welles wasn't the sole author, director,
creator, star, string puller behind Citizen Kane. She got a
lot of it exactly right but made a few factual errors in the
process as well. * * * * * * * She wrote her criticisms with
erudition and a razor sharp wit. She communicated her passion
for movies. She made it more acceptable to love the movies.
She recognized how both well-made and bad films were valuable.
She was controversial, unique, tough and unpredictable. She
wrote long, and was always worth reading. Even if you vehemently
disagreed with her opinion you would still find an interesting
insight, valuable perspective or at least several beautifully
written sentences within her reviews. Her essays on film became
sometimes as important as the films she was writing about and
so her passion for the movies and her writing created dozens
of other writers who imitated her in varying degrees. * * *
* * * * * She once wrote: " Irresponsibility is part of the
pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize."
It remains one of my favorite Kael quotes to return to because
often films are manufactured and play it safe to appeal to the
widest demographic as possible, bending over backwards to avoid
controversy and individuality. Parent groups and ratings boards
almost seem to insist that the movies themselves be responsible.
And I return to Kael's delicious quote: "Irresponsibility is
part of the pleasure of all art . . . " * * * * Pauline Kael
helped make the streets safe for film geeks everywhere. She
gave some precedence to those of us who consider movies important
and almost as enjoyable as Sex, and Chocolate. * * * Pauline
Kael was born to Polish immigrants on June 19, 1919 in Petaluma,
California. Her love of films began with frequent trips to the
movies with her father (whom she described as a gentleman farmer
and moviegoer). * * * * The Kaels lost their farm during the
depression moving to San Francisco in the late 1920's. Pauline
Kael enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley in
1936. She majored in philosophy and instead of going into teaching
or law school she went to New York with poet Robert Horan for
nearly three years. She returned to San Francisco where she
wrote some plays, and worked on some experimental films. She
was married and divorced three times and had a daughter Gina
James. She worked in a number of jobs over the next decade;
as an advertising copywriter, a textbook writer, a bookstore
clerk, a short order cook and even a seamstress. * * * * She
claimed she didn't write any film criticism until she was nearly
35. It began by accident when in 1953 she was in a coffee shop,
arguing about the movies with a friend, when the editor of City
Lights magazine overheard them and asked them to each write
a review for Charlie Chaplin's Limelight. Kael's friend did
not submit a review but Kael's review was called 'Slimelight'
and it jumpstarted her career. Soon she was writing film essays,
and reviews for a number of magazines and her reviews were broadcast
on a weekly basis by the listener supported radio station KPFA
in Berkeley. * * * * * The radio show exposure led to her managing
a movie theater which became the two screen Berkeley Cinema
Guild Theaters and was an art and revival theater. Kael help
revive the films of W.C. Fields and Mae West, and Busby Berkeley
and helped make minor hits of Welle's Touch of Evil and several
Ingmar Bergman films. She wrote often-funny reviews for the
theater programs, which broadened her influence, and she began
lecturing on films at colleges and universities in San Francisco
and then, Los Angeles. * * * Her first book, I Lost It at the
Movies was a collection of her essays from mainly the Partisan
Review, and Sight and Sound magazines was published in 1965
when she was 46 years old. She started receiving assignments
from many magazines and moved to New York with her daughter
in 1965. She became the film critic for Life magazine in 1965,
then for McCall's in 1965 and 1966 (McCall's almost dismissed
her for her scathing review of The Sound of Music in 1965 which
she called treacle and dubbed The Sound of Money) and then for
The New Republic in 1966 and 1967. * * * In 1968 she began her
career with The New Yorker when editor William Shawn (father
of actor,writer, Wallace Shawn) asked Kael to write whatever
she wanted and at whatever length she wanted. From 1968 to 1979
Kael reviewed films every week from September through March
(Penelope Gilliatt reviewed from (March to August). * * * *
* In 1979 the 59 year old Kael left The New Yorker to briefly
work as a production executive for Warren Beatty in Hollywood.
That job ended quickly due to 'artistic differences' and Paramount
put Kael under contract as a consultant until Kael returned
to the New Yorker in 1980. Penelope Gilliatt had left the magazine
and Pauline Kael began writing her reviews and essays every
other week until she retired in 1991 after 22 years of writing
for The New Yorker. * * * As her popularity and influence grew,
eventually Kael was harshly criticized herself. The worst of
it came from the former film critic for The Times Renata Adler
when she declared in a New York Review of Books article that
Kael's work "piece by piece, line by line, without interruption,
worthless." She wrote that Kael's recent work "falls somewhere
between huckster copy and ideological pamphleteering." * * *
George Lucas named the evil General Kael in his 1988 film 'Willow"
after her. * * * "Generally, when I'm really rough, it's on
something that I know is going to be a big hit," Kael said.
" … And that everybody is going to go for it, and I think it's
an atrocity - that's fair game. I'm interested in discovering
talent, and in trying to explain why I think someone is talented.
I'm more interested in that than I am in panning." * * * Kael's
influence on today's critics is widespread. She upped the bar
considerably on modern film criticism and many have made careers
out of being pale imitators of what she did. * * * Kael's essays
and reviews have been collected into a series of books they
include: "I Lost It at the Movies" (1965); "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"
(1968); "Going Steady" (1970); "Deeper Into Movies" (1973),
"Reeling" (1976); "When the Lights Go Down" (1980); "Taking
it All in" (1980); "State of the Art" (1983) "Hooked" (1985);
"Movie Love" (1988); "5001 Nights at the Movies" (1991) and
"For Keeps" (1994). * * * * Her ability to communicate her passion,
love and obsession for the movies was so strong it stirred a
passion for the movies in others. For film buffs, aficionados,
critics, scholars and historians, Kael's essays and criticisms
are living gospels. Living because they aren't and were never
meant to be the last word on the subject, just Kael's. Kael's
writing was not steeped in dry academia but alive with slang
and the occasional obscenity. She enjoyed surprising and at
times shocking the reader, because sometimes that is exactly
what the movies did to her. The one's who complained the loudest
about Kael seemed to be those who hated even the hint of non-conformity
or anarchy or perhaps they were just jealous. * * * Kael was
far from perfect. Putting herself on a bit of pedestal to write
about film with prejudice, she then temporarily quit her job
and joined Hollywood. It was a mistake for her personally and
to some of her detractors it was evidence she was utterly impure
as a journalist. * * * Never mind that it was all part of being
in love and temporarily seduced by the movies. She was blessed
and damned by the movies-- and she let us know all about it.
* * * She was an important writer to me, and it made it all
the sweeter because she was an important and influential writer
to so many. * * * Agree with her or not (and often I do not),
her writing remains something special and very much worth reading…
reading slowly so as to enjoy not only what she was saying,
but how she was saying it. I've collected some quotes and review
excerpts, which I hope you will read. Some of them you will
find some Internet URL links on to enable you to read the longer
versions of the articles I am quoting. * * * * Enjoy.* * * *
* =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"The words "Kiss Kiss Bang bang," which I saw on an Italian
movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable
of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts
us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand
how seldom movies are more than this." --Pauline Kael |
| Image
and Sound |
Kael on
La Grande Illusion 1961 reprinted in I Lost It At The Movies
(Little, Brown and Co.: Boston, 1965), * * * In cinema there
is the artistry that brings the medium alive with self-conscious
excitement (Eisenstein's Potemkin, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane)
and there is the artistry that makes the medium disappear (La
Grande Illusion, De Sica's Shoeshine). La Grande Illusion is
a triumph of clarity and lucidity; every detail fits simply,
easily, and intelligibly. There is no unnecessary camera virtuosity:
the compositions seem to emerge from the material. It's as if
beauty just happens (is it necessary to state that this unobtrusive
artistry is perhaps the most difficult to achieve?). The characters,
the dialogue, the fortress, the farm, the landscape, all fuse
into the story and the theme. The result is the greatest achievement
in narrative film. It's a little embarrassing to state this
so baldly, but La Grande Illusion, like Renoir's earlier, but
very different, Partie de Campagne, is just about a perfect
work (in fact, I can't find a flaw in it). There was no reason
for Renoir to tap this vein again. His next great work was the
tragi-comic carnal chase, La Règle du Jeu, which accelerates
in intensity until it becomes a macabre fantasy. * * * Perhaps
it's because Renoir is thoroughly involved in his films; he
reaches out toward us, he gives everything he has. And this
generosity is so extraordinary that perhaps we can give it another
name: passion. * * * The URL FOR THIS ARTICLE IS AT: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/9384/films/grand_illusion/kael.htm
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Excerpt from: Are Movies Going to Pieces? By Pauline Kael from
the December 1964 Atlantic Monthly and I Lost it At the Movies.
* * * * * * One evening not long ago, some academic friends
came to my house, and as we talked and drank we looked at a
television showing of Tod Browning's 1931 version of Dracula.
Dwight Frye's appearance on the screen had us suddenly squealing
and shrieking, and it was obvious that old vampire movies were
part of our common experience. We talked about the famous ones,
Murnau's Nosferatu and Dreyer's Vampyr, and we began to get
fairly involved in the lore of the genre--the strategy of the
bite, the special earth for the coffins, the stake through the
heart versus the rays of the sun as disposal methods, the cross
as vampire repellent, et al. We had begun to surprise each other
by the affectionate, nostalgic tone of our mock erudition when
the youngest person present, an instructor in English, said,
in clear, firm tone, "The Beast with Five Fingers is the greatest
horror picture I've ever seen." Stunned that so bright a young
man could display such shocking taste, preferring a Warner,
Brothers forties mediocrity to the classics, I gasped, "But
why?" And he answered, "Because it's completely irrational.
It doesn't make any sense, and that's the true terror." * *
* * AND. . .* * * In the last few years there has appeared a
new kind of filmgoer: he isn't interested in movies but in cinema.
A great many of the filmmakers are in this group: they've never
gone to movies much and they don't care about them. They're
interested in what they can do in the medium, not in what has
been done. This is, of course, their privilege, though I would
suggest that it may explain why they have such limited approaches
to film. I'm more puzzled by the large numbers of those who
are looking for importance in cinema. For example, a doctor
friend called me after he'd seen The Pink Panther to tell me
I needn't "bother" with that one, it was just slapstick. When
I told him I'd already seen it and had a good time at it, he
was irritated; he informed me that a movie should be more than
a waste of time, it should be an exercise of taste that will
enrich your life. Those looking for importance are too often
contemptuous of the crude vitality of American films, though
this crudity is not always offensive, and may represent the
only way that energy and talent and inventiveness can find an
outlet, can break through the planned standardization of mass
entertainment. It has become a mark of culture to revere the
old slapstick (the Mack Sennett two-reelers and early Chaplin's
that aren't really as great as all that) and put down the new.
But in a movie as shopworn as Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?
there is, near the end, an almost inspired satirical striptease
by Carol Burnett. The Nutty Professor is too long and repetitive,
but Jerry Lewis has some scenes that hold their own with the
silent classics. I enjoyed The Prize, which opens badly but
then becomes a lively, blatant entertainment; but there's no
point in recommending it to someone who wants his life enriched.
I couldn't persuade friends to go see Charade, which although
no more than a charming confectionery trifle was, I think, probably
the best American film of last year--as artificial and enjoyable
in its way as The Big Sleep. The word had got around that it
isn't important, that it isn't serious, that it doesn't do anything
for you. * * * Here's where you will find the entire Kael article
from 1964 . There's enough in the article to discuss for several
weeks:. The URL for this article is: * * * http://www.theatlantic.com//unbound/aandc/movies/movies2.htm
* * * |
| The
Extras |
Excerpt
from: Marlon Brando: An American Hero" by Pauline Kael, 1966
* * * Brando's career is a larger demonstration of the same
principle at work in mass culture; but instead of becoming normal,
he (like Norman Mailer) became an eccentric, which in this country
means a clown, possibly the only way left to preserve some kind
of difference. When you're larger than life you can't just be
brought down to normalcy. It's easier to get acceptance by caricaturing
your previous attitudes and aspirations, by doing what the hostile
audience already has been doing to you. Why should Bette Davis
let impersonators on television make a fool of her when she
can do it herself and reap the rewards of renewed audience acceptance?
* * * Earlier, when his roles were absurd, there was a dash
of irony; now it's taken over: the nonconformist with no roles
to play plays with his roles. Brando is still the most exciting
American actor on the screen. The roles may not be classic,
but the actor's dilemma is. * * * Emerson outlined the American
artist's way of life a century ago--"Thou must pass for a fool
for a long season." We used to think that the season meant only
youth, before the artist could prove his talent, make his place,
achieve something. Now it is clear that for screen artists,
and perhaps not only for screen artists, youth is, relatively
speaking, the short season; the long one is the degradation
after success. * * * The article on Brando's 60's career slump
by Pauline Kael can be found at this URL: * * * http://brando.crosscity.com/HTMLVer/Articles/arti1.asp
* * * =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "Great
movies are rarely perfect movies." -- Pauline Kael =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Kael On One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Excerpted From When
the Lights Go Down (1980) * * * Forman isn't a manhood-and-size
obsessive like Kesey, but the film's plot structure derives
from Kesey's male-female symbolism, and when that is somewhat
demythified, the plot goes a little out of kilter, into melodrama.
Those who know the book will probably feel that Nurse Ratchet
is now more human, but those who haven't read it may be appalled
at her inhumanity. The melodramatics are flagrant in the episode
involving Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), the stuttering, mother-fixated
virgin of the ward. McMurphy fixes him up with his own hooker
girlfriend Candy (Marya Small), and the next morning Billy is
cured of his stutter -- until Nurse Ratted tells him that she
is going to inform his mother of what he's done. Then the stutter
comes back. Brad Dourif gives the role a fey spark, but without
Kesey's giddy pop view this crybaby-juvenile bit is a bummer
-- psychiatric dramaturgy circa Lon McCallister and, before
him, Eric Linden. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Kael On The Shining From the New Yorker June 9th 1980 * * *
Kubrick is the man who thought it necessary to introduce a godlike
force (the black slab) to account for evolution. It was the
slab that told the apelike man to pick up the bone and use it
as a weapon. This was a new version of original sin: man the
killer acts on God's command. Somehow, Kubrick ducked out on
the implications of his own foolishness when he gave 2001 its
utopian, technological ending -- man, reborn out of science,
as angelic, interplanetary fetus. Now he seems to have gone
back to his view at the beginning of 2001: man is a murderer,
throughout eternity. The bone that was high in the air has turned
into Jack's axe, held aloft, and Jack, crouched over, making
wild, inarticulate sounds as he staggers in the maze, has become
the ape. |
| Commentary |
From Kael's
``Trash, Art and the Movies,'' 1969: `` Good movies make you
care, make you believe in possibilities again. If somewhere
in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to
break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn't
all corruption. The movie doesn't have to be great; it can be
stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance,
or the joy in just a good line.'' =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information.
The rest is advertising. -- Pauline Kael in Newsweek Dec. 24,
1973 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I believe that we respond most and best to work in any art form
(and to other experience as well) if we are pluralistic, flexible,
relative in our judgments, if we are eclectic. -- Pauline Kael
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= In
this country we encourage "creativity" among the mediocre, but
real bursting creativity appalls us. We put it down as undisciplined,
as somehow "too much." --Pauline Kael =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety bout
judgment is. -- Pauline Kael -1965 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Pauline Kael wrote several essays regarding director Sam Peckinpah's
films. Peckinpah was a friend of sorts to Kael and often wrote
her letters. When a Peckinpah film series was put together by
the Austin Film Society in 1999, Kael surprisingly contributed
to the film series' program. Here's an excerpt from the original
article/interview (which was also edited and appeared in The
New Yorker) Charlie Sotelo contacted Kael who because she was
80 and suffering from Parkinson's agreed to write some short
answers for some questions. The short answers grew to more than
2,000 words. * * * * Here's an excerpt: * * * Charlie Sotelo:
How has your view of Sam and his films changed in the past 15
years? * * * Pauline Kael: I feel the same almost inordinate
love of his films, but the turmoil has gone out of the atmosphere
surrounding them. When he was making movies it felt, for some
of us, as if we were watching an ongoing street accident. We
felt helpless; he was determined to be doomed. Toward the end,
on a Saturday morning before the screening of a restored Wild
Bunch, he drank straight booze for breakfast and, grinning like
an imp, snapped the heart device that was on the surface of
his chest. * * * CS: What was Sam's most potent strength as
a director? * * * PK: That mystery known as a film sense. His
was rich and voluptuous. It fused his movies. A true film sense
is rare, and he knew he had it; he depended on it the way a
scoundrel depends on his charm. It didn't let him down very
often, but it did, I think, in his lighter moods, such as passages
in The Ballad of Cable Hogue, because he likes the characters
too much -- he basks in his affection. They haven't earned all
this affection, and the results are muted and sentimental. *
* * * His Ride the High Country, on the other hand, feels pure.
It doesn't have the anger and contempt that muddle his later
work yet give it its unholy power. I don't think he ever treated
a woman as sensitively again as he did Mariette Hartley in Ride
the High Country -- she was the young bride who was expected
to service other men in the groom's family. Her terror when
she discovers hat's expected of her is a terror that Peckinpah
responds to with great delicacy. As viewers we feel as if we're
under her skin. I doubt if any feminist filmmaker has matched
this scene. But the only other woman character in his movies
who really stands out is the slut played by Susan George in
Straw Dogs. He had changed by then in his personal behavior
too. With me, for instance, he had always been courteous and
convivial and he still was when we were alone. But later, when
there were other people around, and he was making a show of
his drunkenness, he would lunge at me lewdly. He readily played
the bad boy. The idea was to embarrass me for having brains
and tits. * * * * Right before the audience's eyes, he grew
into Sam Peckinpah. His love-hate for moviemaking is right up
there on the screen in the later pictures; it swamps the stories.
Yet it can also bring something ecstatic to his Western elegies.
* * * I remember his talking to me, when he was planning The
Wild Bunch, saying that he was going to make a picture so ferocious
that it would rub people's noses in the ugliness of violence.
They would never want to see anything violent again. But when
the picture came out and there were insensitive people who cheered
the bloodshed, he seemed delighted, he acted vindicated. * *
* The phenomenon of moviegoers responding crudely is not surprising.
Some people loved what they regarded as warm family values in
The Godfather movies -- they wanted to be part of that life,
though Coppola's work was far more clear-cut in its horror of
killing than The Wild Bunch was. If the director is ambivalent,
as Kubrick was in the "Singin' in the Rain" sequence of A Clockwork
Orange, the bullies out there will be gratified. The question
is: is Kubrick secretly in cahoots with them? And the question
comes up with Peckinpah, because he romanticizes his bunch of
killers. Peckinpah made a deeply cynical movie, yet, confusingly,
it's a great one. I'm not sure what The Wild Bunch says to us,
except that filmmaking can be a glorious high. * * * You can
find the entire article at this URL: * * * http://www.auschron.com/issues/dispatch/1999-11-19/screens_feature2.html
* * * =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- On Clockwork Orange
from the article: Stanley Strangelove By Pauline Kael The New
Yorker Magazine, January, 1972. The trick of making the attacked
less human than their attackers, so you feel no sympathy for
them, is, I think, symptomatic of a new attitude in movies.
This attitude says there's no moral difference. Stanley Kubrick
has assumed the deformed, self-righteous perspective of a vicious
young 5 punk who says, "Everything's rotten. Why shouldn't I
do what I want? They're worse than I am." In the new mood (perhaps
movies in their cumulative effect are partly responsible for
it), people want to believe the hyperbolic worst, want to believe
in the degradation of the victims -- that they are dupes and
phonies and weaklings. I can't accept that Kubrick is merely
reflecting this post-assassinations, post-Manson mood; I think
he's catering to it. I think he wants to dig it. The whole text
is here: * * * http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0051.html
* * * =-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= =-=-=-=-=-=-= Kael on
This is Elvis Almost everything that directors' (Malcolm) Leo
and (Andrew)Solt have done to the raw footage makes you cringe.
They've even got the man singing "And now the end is near" when
he's melting away. But Presley is the star in his life that
he never was in his Hollywood movies. He commands the screen,
as powerful an image of the artist that loses faith in the audience
as Brando. Some people have it all--greatness is in their reach.
And they piss it away. It's overwhelming to see a life spread
out on film--especially the life of someone who peaked a couple
years after finishing high school, when he still had the look
of a white-trash schoolboy sheik. Presley showed the strength
to peak again when he quit Hollywood, and then just slid. This
Is Elvis is hair-raising because of what Elvis turns into: joyless
stardom gives him the look of a mutant. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Some still timely excerpts from Why Are Movies So Bad by Pauline
Kael from The New Yorker, June 23, 1980 * * * * There are a
lot of reasons that movies have been so bad during the last
couple of years and probably won't be any better for the next
couple of years. One big reason is that rotten pictures are
making money - not necessarily wild amounts (though a few are),
but sizable amounts. So if studio heads want nothing more than
to make money and grab power, there is no reason for them to
make better ones. Turning out better pictures might actually
jeopardize their position. . . . . Financially, the only danger
in an argument like this is that if the film goes seriously
over budget the studio will lose money. That's why directors
who have the reputation of always coming in on schedule are
in steady demand even if they've had a long line of box-office
failures and their work is consistently mediocre, and why directors
who are perfectionists are shunned as if they were lepers -
unless, like Hal Ashby, they've had some recent hits. * * *
The studios no longer make movies primarily to attract and please
moviegoers; they make movies in such a way as to get as much
as possible from prearranged and anticipated deals. Every picture
(allowing for a few exceptions) is cast and planned in terms
of those deals. Though the studio is happy when it has a box-office
hit, it isn't terribly concerned about the people who buy tickets
and come out grumbling. They don't grumble very loudly anyway,
because even the lumpiest pictures are generally an improvement
over television; at least, they're always bigger. TV accustoms
people to not expecting much, and because of the new prearranged
deals they're not getting very much. There is a quid pro quo
for a big advance sale to television theaters: the project must
be from a fat, dumb bestseller about an international jewel
heist or a skyjacking that involves a planeload of the rich
and famous, or be a thinly disguised show business biography
of someone who came to an appallingly wretched end, or have
an easily paraphrasable theme, preferably something that can
be done justice to in a sentence and brings to mind the hits
of the past. How else could you entice buyers? Certainly not
with something unfamiliar, original. * * * . . . For a big advance
sale to worldwide television, a movie should also be innocuous:
it shouldn't raise any hackles, either by strong language or
by a controversial theme. And there must be stars, though not
necessarily movie stars. It has recently been discovered that
even Americans are actually more interested in TV personalities
than in movies, and may be roused from their TV viewing to go
see a film with John Denver or John Ritter. * * * A somewhat
altered version of the original article can be found at this
URL: * * * http://www.reel.com/content/reelimages/hollconf2001/kael_rant.html
· * * |
| Final
Words: |
Perhaps it's because Kael was thoroughly
committed to the movies, she reached out toward us and gave
us everything she had when discussing and analyzing them.
When her passion dimmed and her health declined because of
Parkinson's she retired. She was both kind and cruel, right
and wrong. She was always honest about her feelings and thoughts
regarding the love of her life --the movies --and it filled
her writings with the spirit of passion. * * * Kael didn't
just have movies on her mind; she had them in her soul. She
so beautifully shared her love of the movies that those who
read her appreciated the movies more too. time out. * * *
* Christopher Jarmick,is the author
of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder a critically acclaimed,
steamy suspense thriller. For information on Author readings/signings
or availability of special autographed editions of the novel
email: glasscocoon@hotmail for details. * * * Original portions
of this review Copyright© Christopher J. Jarmick 2001. The
above work is protected by international copyright law.
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