During the 1967-1980 film era new filmmakers came on the scene, changing the way films were being made: the content, the look, the words, the actors. Most were young male writers and directors, children of the baby boom era, but one woman of all people, someone who did not make films or even attended film school changed the way people thought of movies, and some might debate how movies were made. Pauline Kael influenced the audience and those making the films as shown through quotes from various articles and notable people. Straw Dogs was perceived as male chauvinistic film that portrayed women in a negative light, but with Kael dubbing it “the first American film that is a fascist piece of art” and calling the rape scene “old male barroom attitude: We can see that she's asking for it,” and these were positive reviews. Though the film was rejected by audiences; being banned in Britain, a third of the audience walked out before the picture ended at one its first screenings taking place in San Fransisco. But now, years later, the film is looked at as a piece of cinematic art, followed with Criterion Collection DVD’s and a remake already in the process.
It could be said that she was the first critic to view the film for more than just the aesthetics, she put her own feelings and reactions in her reviews, letting the reader know what to expect emotionally. Though this was before the auteur era of filmmaking, her review of the 1946 film, Shoeshine, was just the start of changing reviews into an experience, rather than just a summary,
“after one of those terrible lovers' quarrels that leave one in a state of incomprehensible despair. I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, 'Well I don't see what was so special about that movie.' I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. For if people cannot feel Shoeshine, what can they feel?....Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. Yet our tears for each other, and for Shoeshine did not bring us together. Life, as Shoeshine demonstrates, is too complex for facile endings”
Kael was one of the few female critics in her time and she wasn’t afraid to butt head with fellow critics and journalists included Andrew Sarris and Penelope Gilliatt, whom she alternated writing reviews with at the New Yorker. Her style had shown through when being compared to Gilliatt. When reviews for Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket came out, it was easy to spot the difference. Gilliatt writes a realistic description of the film as if telling a blind person what they are not seeing,
“The whitened scenes in Full Metal Jacket make magnificent use of the way colour film-stock can produce monotones. A white of awesome hygiene in a training-camp latrine where murder and suicide occur among endless forced mopping. White lime on graves neatly lined with Vietnamese corpses. White dust on the faces of soldiers beyond fatigue.”
While Kael takes a more poetic approach,
“What happened to the Kubrick who used to slip in sly, subtle jokes and little editing tricks? This may be his worst movie. He probably believes he's numbing us by the power of his vision, but he's actually numbing us by its emptiness.”
One can argue though, was Pauline a great reviewer, did she understand film on a filmmaking level, or was she just a good writer? And that’s what people enjoyed reading, something exciting. Kael wrote about films as if they were love affairs, as shown with her review of Shoeshine, using wordplay and puns. Even the titles of her books, I Lost It at the Movies and When the Lights Go Down have a sexual connotation. In Richard Corliss’ article That Wild Old Woman he writes,
“Kael didn't teach you how to look at films -- descriptive consideration of a director's visual style was not her forte -- but she sure taught you how to feel about them.”
In that same article, Quentin Tarantino is quoted as saying,
“She was as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic. I never went to film school, but she was the professor in the film school of my mind.”
But is “feeling” a film mean its good or bad? I would have to disagree. People come from different backgrounds and believe in different things, so therefore they would have a different feeling, or relate differently to a particular film than the person sitting next to them. The question would be, did the filmmaker represent that feeling correctly, and while reading Kael’s reviews for various movies, it does not seem like she knows for sure. I think she almost “swooned” her readers into believing she knew which films were good and which were bad. There is nothing wrong with that, but again, I do not believe that makes her a great film critic, just a great writer. I think even Kael would have believed this thought as she has been quoted as saying, “I could live without movies. I couldn't live without books.”
The 1960’s came and films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde premiered, many critics and fellow filmmakers were dubbing the directors of such films ‘auteurs.’. The term ‘auteur’ can be dated back to André Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers du cinéma, who argued that films should reflect a director's personal vision and that the director was the auteur, or author, of a film. But Kael would not hear any of that. She believed that although the film was the director’s opinions and ideas, it would not be a good film or as good without the right synergy. I concur because if you miscast or do not work well with the cast and crew, the film will not be as good of quality and the film will not express clearly what the director was trying to show.
Andrew Sarris wrote what is considered a ground breaking article about the auteur theory titled Notes on the Auteur Theory for Film Culture Magazine, which he later admitted wasn’t a theory at all, but “a collection of facts, a reminder of movies to be resurrected, of genres to be redeemed, of directors to be rediscovered.” After Notes on the Auteur Theory, both he and Kael went back and forth arguing over this term. In her article Circles and Squares, Kael disagreed with the opinions of the term auteur in general. She found it hard to believe that a filmmaker, or even journalist, would not have some similarities in each piece of work and in there she quotes Andrew Sarris as saying, “Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director’s personality and his material” (Circles and Squares, 12), and retorts back questioning, how could there not be an interior meaning? Isn’t the meaning interior and personal enough?
Sarris seemed to believe that there was meaning underneath the meaning, and I agree with Kael in thinking, isn’t the meaning right there in front of us? The director wouldn’t hide his or her opinions or underlining meaning in their work. They are representing what they think through their films. Sarris then comes back in his article, also for Film Quarterly, The Auteur Theory and The Perils of Pauline, saying he was misunderstood and that the auteur theory is really a critical theory, and not a creative theory, “the artist does not worry about technical competence, personality or interior meaning, nor about imitating nature or the objective correlative nor about the form and content” (p. 30). Although I feel Sarris does not really know what he even means by auteur theory, it is very entertaining to read the back and forth arguments between Kael and him through Film Quarterly.
But she just did not influence the audience of films, many filmmakers and future critics praised her writing and felt it changed the way films were made. In the power point presentation are just a few quotes. She was even sent sort of thank you notes by filmmakers and the like including a script for Rushmore from director Wes Anderson inscribed, “For Pauline Kael, Thank you for all of your thoughts and writings about the movies. They have been a very important source of inspiration for me and my movies, and I hope you don't regret that.”
It is hard for me to decide whether or not I believe she influenced filmmaking on a technical level. Like I had written previously, she rarely spoke of the technical things that were done well in a movie, but spoke mostly of the emotion it evoked. I can see where she would influence filmmakers in that they want to try and inspire others and want to create a more emotional experience for their audience, but at the same time, isn’t that why films are made? To evoke emotion and let the filmmaker’s express their thoughts and feelings? Otherwise wouldn’t we just be watching newsreels? Although I may be a little confused on how she was considered so influential to filmmakers, it isn’t a surprise that she changed the way films are viewed and critiqued.
It could be said that she was the first critic to view the film for more than just the aesthetics, she put her own feelings and reactions in her reviews, letting the reader know what to expect emotionally. Though this was before the auteur era of filmmaking, her review of the 1946 film, Shoeshine, was just the start of changing reviews into an experience, rather than just a summary,
“after one of those terrible lovers' quarrels that leave one in a state of incomprehensible despair. I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, 'Well I don't see what was so special about that movie.' I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. For if people cannot feel Shoeshine, what can they feel?....Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. Yet our tears for each other, and for Shoeshine did not bring us together. Life, as Shoeshine demonstrates, is too complex for facile endings”
Kael was one of the few female critics in her time and she wasn’t afraid to butt head with fellow critics and journalists included Andrew Sarris and Penelope Gilliatt, whom she alternated writing reviews with at the New Yorker. Her style had shown through when being compared to Gilliatt. When reviews for Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket came out, it was easy to spot the difference. Gilliatt writes a realistic description of the film as if telling a blind person what they are not seeing,
“The whitened scenes in Full Metal Jacket make magnificent use of the way colour film-stock can produce monotones. A white of awesome hygiene in a training-camp latrine where murder and suicide occur among endless forced mopping. White lime on graves neatly lined with Vietnamese corpses. White dust on the faces of soldiers beyond fatigue.”
While Kael takes a more poetic approach,
“What happened to the Kubrick who used to slip in sly, subtle jokes and little editing tricks? This may be his worst movie. He probably believes he's numbing us by the power of his vision, but he's actually numbing us by its emptiness.”
One can argue though, was Pauline a great reviewer, did she understand film on a filmmaking level, or was she just a good writer? And that’s what people enjoyed reading, something exciting. Kael wrote about films as if they were love affairs, as shown with her review of Shoeshine, using wordplay and puns. Even the titles of her books, I Lost It at the Movies and When the Lights Go Down have a sexual connotation. In Richard Corliss’ article That Wild Old Woman he writes,
“Kael didn't teach you how to look at films -- descriptive consideration of a director's visual style was not her forte -- but she sure taught you how to feel about them.”
In that same article, Quentin Tarantino is quoted as saying,
“She was as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic. I never went to film school, but she was the professor in the film school of my mind.”
But is “feeling” a film mean its good or bad? I would have to disagree. People come from different backgrounds and believe in different things, so therefore they would have a different feeling, or relate differently to a particular film than the person sitting next to them. The question would be, did the filmmaker represent that feeling correctly, and while reading Kael’s reviews for various movies, it does not seem like she knows for sure. I think she almost “swooned” her readers into believing she knew which films were good and which were bad. There is nothing wrong with that, but again, I do not believe that makes her a great film critic, just a great writer. I think even Kael would have believed this thought as she has been quoted as saying, “I could live without movies. I couldn't live without books.”
The 1960’s came and films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde premiered, many critics and fellow filmmakers were dubbing the directors of such films ‘auteurs.’. The term ‘auteur’ can be dated back to André Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers du cinéma, who argued that films should reflect a director's personal vision and that the director was the auteur, or author, of a film. But Kael would not hear any of that. She believed that although the film was the director’s opinions and ideas, it would not be a good film or as good without the right synergy. I concur because if you miscast or do not work well with the cast and crew, the film will not be as good of quality and the film will not express clearly what the director was trying to show.
Andrew Sarris wrote what is considered a ground breaking article about the auteur theory titled Notes on the Auteur Theory for Film Culture Magazine, which he later admitted wasn’t a theory at all, but “a collection of facts, a reminder of movies to be resurrected, of genres to be redeemed, of directors to be rediscovered.” After Notes on the Auteur Theory, both he and Kael went back and forth arguing over this term. In her article Circles and Squares, Kael disagreed with the opinions of the term auteur in general. She found it hard to believe that a filmmaker, or even journalist, would not have some similarities in each piece of work and in there she quotes Andrew Sarris as saying, “Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director’s personality and his material” (Circles and Squares, 12), and retorts back questioning, how could there not be an interior meaning? Isn’t the meaning interior and personal enough?
Sarris seemed to believe that there was meaning underneath the meaning, and I agree with Kael in thinking, isn’t the meaning right there in front of us? The director wouldn’t hide his or her opinions or underlining meaning in their work. They are representing what they think through their films. Sarris then comes back in his article, also for Film Quarterly, The Auteur Theory and The Perils of Pauline, saying he was misunderstood and that the auteur theory is really a critical theory, and not a creative theory, “the artist does not worry about technical competence, personality or interior meaning, nor about imitating nature or the objective correlative nor about the form and content” (p. 30). Although I feel Sarris does not really know what he even means by auteur theory, it is very entertaining to read the back and forth arguments between Kael and him through Film Quarterly.
But she just did not influence the audience of films, many filmmakers and future critics praised her writing and felt it changed the way films were made. In the power point presentation are just a few quotes. She was even sent sort of thank you notes by filmmakers and the like including a script for Rushmore from director Wes Anderson inscribed, “For Pauline Kael, Thank you for all of your thoughts and writings about the movies. They have been a very important source of inspiration for me and my movies, and I hope you don't regret that.”
It is hard for me to decide whether or not I believe she influenced filmmaking on a technical level. Like I had written previously, she rarely spoke of the technical things that were done well in a movie, but spoke mostly of the emotion it evoked. I can see where she would influence filmmakers in that they want to try and inspire others and want to create a more emotional experience for their audience, but at the same time, isn’t that why films are made? To evoke emotion and let the filmmaker’s express their thoughts and feelings? Otherwise wouldn’t we just be watching newsreels? Although I may be a little confused on how she was considered so influential to filmmakers, it isn’t a surprise that she changed the way films are viewed and critiqued.
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