I'm a little shocked and appalled. No doubt she was a fine critic, but I don't care who you are - there's no way that you can "get" everything that a great film has in a single viewing. Even bad movies reveal more on subsequent viewings, let alone great ones.

All great art becomes richer and deeper upon further examination. I feel sad for her that she limited herself to a mere first impression with every film. We all know that first impressions can be misleading.

When was that first interview done? It is fascinating to hear of a time when people were just becoming familiar with DVD as a format.

I read of a critic, perhaps yourself, that upon watching The Social Network twice, was able to appreciate the complexity of the dialogue in a way which would have been too parochial and perhaps confusing upon the first viewing. There are writers, like Kaufman, whose minds work faster than the rest of ours, and it takes multiple viewings to catch up. I watched Being John Malkovich three times in the theater and felt like a detective each and every time.

Pauline Kael is the best writer ever to write about film. When she's engaged and enthusiastic, she's a thrill to read. When she's cranky and pissy, she's annoying to read. When she's flat out wrong, she's a chore. When she's just needs some attention and has to spend convincing you (and herself) that she's cooler than you because she writes with a pen and doesn't rewatch movies, she's an outright pain in the, uh, glutes.

Thanks for that, Roger! Now I just have to track down more of her movie reviews.

I never cared for Ms. Kael, and now can't even remember specifically why. I mostly avoided reading her. I was wrong.

Someone with a photographic memory may possess instant access resource to any portion of the film previously viewed.
Culturally literate film critics from the 1970's-90's have been replaced by cyber-literate film critics. Cybers lack the luster of literates because habitual movie viewing is shrinking reading time to nothing. -You should be very worried about sh----age!

Watching Mulholland one time? Hah! Still a Kael fan though.

Memento just once?

It's funny. Armond White would tell me I'm not qualified to pass a judgment on Kael's remarks, and just as I think he's terribly misguided I also find Kael's position alienating. I find it unfathomable that anyone would believe themselves capable of critical thinking while insisting they "get" everything the first time and that only children re-watch movies. To suggest that re-watching a film is beneath a grown up is absolutely insane.

I think of "Eyes Wide Shut," and how I walked out of the theater in 1999 feeling completely misled; that it was soft porn masquerading as art, and that the critics had projected their own feelings for Kubrick onto their viewing. It took repeat viewings for me to appreciate the film, and I now rank it as an all-time favorite. I've talked about the film enough over the years with others to know that it was certainly not singular viewing material. Different elements are revealed each time I see it, and I for one value growing as a viewer and as a person far more than I cling to absurd notions about what movie-watching behavior is beneath my age level.

In the interest of full disclosure I've also never quite forgiven Kael for berating David Lean so much over "Ryan's Daughter" that it took him 11 years to make another movie. Who knows; maybe if she'd not come into her one time screening with such a negative take on "Doctor Zhivago" she might have been disposed to evaluate it more favorably. That's a decade of film that doesn't exist in large part to her arrogance.

Of course, in that same book, she goes on to admit that she's seen Wallace Shawn's film version of "The Designated Mourner" (starring Mike Nichols) more than once:

pp. 82-83: I don't know how to react to it at times. I've tried to lure friends into watching it, but I don't think any of them has made it all the way through. So it may be a fluke that I really love it. I've looked at it three or four times, and I almost never look at a movie even twice. It's a bewildering, fascinating movie.

I miss Brian Linehan so much. He had this show that came on at 2 AM and he was the most informed, most incisive interviewer on television. He could bring out a guest in a way that no other interviewer could.

While I now re-watch movies with some regularity, I can see where Ms. Kael was coming from. There are some movies where the initial experience is so personal and life changing that to consider watching them again is to risk having that initial impact weakened by contrary thoughts. Even though my first impressions may prove faulty over time, my love for these films is based on the gifts they gave at that moment in time, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

I'd be interested to learn if you, Roger, were ever instructed to like a film by an editor, as Ms.Kael says many critics were (5:30 of 2nd video).

Hmm... well I only need to watch these taped interviews once.

I listen to the Studs Terkel tapes all the time. Your entry and today's news prompted me to remember these, and I listened again:

Pauline Kael's interview from 1971. The poignant memories of a Depression era child, in San Francisco, during the forgotten general strike of 1929: "The first real violence I had ever seen...a sense of terror."

And Virginia Durr just later in the same section. Dark childhood remembrances from the same tragic time: "People blamed themselves. They were ashamed. The fundamental preachers told them they had sinned. They believed that."

studsterkel.org-Hard Times section>
terkel-aOaOk5-b.rm(Kael)
terkel-aOaOr3-b.rm(Durr)

This sort of adds to the impression that I've always had of her: a very good writer but a bad film critic. The idea that once could ever be enough for any film of intellectual substance is just insane, to the point where I question how much she actually enjoyed film as a medium.

Actually, Pauline would admit in another interview (available online) that she did see some movies more than once before allowing her pieces to be published in The New Yorker. Two examples: "The Godfather II" and "Casualties of War." She said she wanted to be certain of details. When you look at the length of some of her other reviews, you begin to suspect she saw a much wider number of movies more than once.

BTW, Opera News' Brian Kellow, author of the popular Ethel Merman bio a few seasons back, is currently writing a Kael biography, due out on the fall of 2011.

As far as I know, I have never met anyone who has never seen a movie more than once. I find it incomprehensible. It's too much like having sex with someone I really like only once.

I agree with Joe G: A good writer,a bad film critic and,I think, a very unhappy person. So many of her reviews just drip with contempt.

David (who wrote the first comment):

It seems to me that the films I have seen the most are, for whatever reason, "Eyes of Tammy Faye" "All the Little Animals" and "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul." The summer I first saw "Rear Window," I watched it about six times. I do not hate any of them. I plan to see all of them again. But consider that Pauline's perspective would allow someone like me, or you, to experience many other films we'd never get to see, if only for lack of time, because we used up time examining the ones that most appealed to us. Is there really a right and a wrong in this? It's just two different ways to live a life. On one hand, I envy Pauline's viewing methodology. On the other, I couldn't bear to know I'll never see those films I mentioned ever again. We could argue that not viewing a film more than once would limit our understanding of it. But how can we argue the fact that Pauline is considered a crown jewel in film criticism who influenced masses and must have known her stuff?

just the thought that i would never see "five easy pieces" or "midnight cowboy" again get me shivering

A film is just a film and you only live once.

I have mixed feelings about Kael. Sometimes she really gets things and sometimes she doesn't. She is an awesome writer, though, and when she's good, she's very good. I think her smackdown of A Clockwork Orange is probably the best film review I have ever read. Never really sympathized with her love of Brian DePalma. though.

I don't have an opinion either way on the merits of seeing a movie more than once. Clearly, if Kael wrote her reviews after one viewing, she managed to see a lot in the first go, which is what you might expect in a film critic. Humans get very quick and adroit doing things they specialize in.

For no particular reason I have been grazing a lot of writing about Kael on the web. I have noticed a tendency to try to decide whether she's worthy as a critic or not based on some litmus test or another - Insufficiently appreciating Kubrick or Hitchcock, not watching a film more that once. This coincides with a realization I have recently that people. particularly Americans, approach everything on religious terms. Something or someone is either all good or all bad.

There is no question Pauline Kael is an excellent writer. She reviewed films for a living. Some reviews were great. Some less so. She says she only saw a movie once. Big deal.

I am a great admirer of Pauline Kael's work. What does it matter if she saw a movie once or ten times? It's the reviews she wrote that count, the way she wrote about and responded to the films -- which was like nobody else. Most reviewers go on about the plot, a couple of the main actors, and the subject matter. She dug much deeper than them and her reviews were organic and incredibly insightful. I tend to agree with her that she 'got' the movie on the first viewing, simply because I've read (almost all of) her reviews. By the way, I tend to read them more than once!