Are Movies Going to Pieces?
"I love subtextual film criticism, especially when it's fun, when a guy knows how to write in a readable, charming way. What I love the most about it is that it doesn't have a f---ing thing to do with what the writer or the actor or the filmmakers intended. It just has to work. And if you can make your case with as few exceptions as possible, then that's great."
-- Quentin Tarantino, in Sight & Sound, February, 2008
Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of Pauline Kael, who may have encouraged more people to articulate their love for movies than anyone of her generation. She wasn't necessarily all that big on what he calls "subtextual film criticism," but she knew how to write in a readable, engaging and idiosyncratic style. The titles of her collections of reviews and essays, with their suggestive sexual and romantic overtones -- "I Lost It at the Movies," "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," "Deeper Into Movies," "Reeling," "When the Lights Go Down" -- told you everything about her approach to movies. I don't remember her using the word "film" or "cinema" much, unless it was to deride them as vacuous or pretentious. Though she became most famous and influential while writing for an upper-caste, urban(e) institution, The New Yorker, that reeked of calcified East Coast provincialism, she presented herself as an ardent movie populist. (Kael came from the northern coast of California.)
In November, 1964 -- that would be about 43 years ago, for those keeping count -- she published an essay for The Atlantic Monthly called, "Are Movies Going to Pieces?" in which she asks a lot of questions we're still asking today (see recent Scanners post and discussion, "Moviegoers who feel too much," and Stephen Whitty's column in last Sunday's Newark Times-Ledger," Critic's Choice").
Standard disclaimer-cliché: I obviously don't concur with all that Kael says here (but at least at this point in her career she was willing to admit to feeling some ambivalence!). One of the things I've always found fascinating about her is that, even when I believe she's dead wrong, she unwittingly includes much of the evidence to make a case against her right there in her review. It's not that she didn't observe what was there, but that she drew such different conclusions from it. Also, her favorite rhetorical trick is the false dichotomy. It's fun to consider her arguments, but are we really forced to make such dramatic (or simplistic) either/or choices: "The Eclipse" or "His Girl Friday"? "Art" or entertainment? Right brain or left brain? Herman J. Mankiewicz or Orson Welles? George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden?
"Are Movies Going to Pieces?" (1964). Most of these excerpts are from the middle and the very end:
I trust I won't be mistaken for the sort of boob who attacks ambiguity or complexity. I am interested in the change from the period when the meaning of art and form in art was in making complex experience simple and lucid, as is still the case in "Knife in the Water" [Roman Polanski, 1962] or "Bandits of Orgosolo" [Vittorio De Seta, 1960], to the current acceptance of art as technique, the technique which in a movie like "This Sporting Life" [Lindsay Anderson, 1963] makes a simple, though psychologically confused, story look complex, and modern because inexplicable.
It has become easy—especially for those who consider "time" a problem and a great theme—to believe that fast editing, out of normal sequence, which makes it difficult, or impossible, for the audience to know if any action is taking place, is somehow more "cinematic" than a consecutively told story. For a half century movies have, when necessary, shifted action in time and place and the directors generally didn't think it necessary to slap us in the face with each cut or to call out, "Look what I can do!" [...]In one way or another, almost all the enthusiasts for a film like ["This Sporting Life"] will tell you that it doesn't matter, that however you interpret the film, you will be right... Surely [they] can read the most onto a blank screen?
There's not much to be said for this theory except that it's mighty democratic. Rather pathetically, those who accept this Rorschach-blot approach to movies are hesitant and uneasy about offering reactions. They should be reassured by the belief that whatever they say is right, but as it refers not to the film but to them (turning criticism into autobiography) they are afraid of self-exposure. I don't think they really believe the theory—it's a sort of temporary public convenience station. More and more people come out of a movie and can't tell you what they've seen, or even whether they liked it. [...]Kael herself often demonstrated that criticism is autobiography -- and her assumption that people emerging from a movie should instantly, instinctively and definitively know "whether they liked it" is a perfect example of that. Her reviews, like anyone's, are a chronicle of who she was and the time in which she wrote and whatever she was thinking about at the time. You can see this all the more clearly in the chronologically arranged collections. Kael claimed never to see a movie twice, and to always know exactly how she "felt" about each one -- something that seems preposterous, and probably disingenuous, to someone like me, for whom a couple hours in the presence of a movie is so often an experience I can't so easily or readily process. (I've always asked publicists not to probe me for my opinions as I'm leaving a screening -- but if I love it or hate it right then I may volunteer a response on my own.)... Although "L'Avventura" is a great film, had I been present at Cannes in 1960, where Antonioni distributed his explanatory statement, beginning, "There exists in the world today a very serious break between science on the one hand...," I might easily have joined in the hisses, which he didn't really deserve until the following year, when "La Notte" revealed that he'd begun to believe his own explanations—thus making liars of us all.
When we see Dwight Macdonald's cultural solution applied to film, when we see the prospect that movies will become a product for "Masscult" consumption, while the "few who care" will have their High Culture cinema, who wants to take the high road? There is more energy, more originality, more excitement, more art in American kitsch like "Gunga Din," "Easy Living," the Rogers and Astaire pictures like "Swing Time" and "Top Hat," in "Strangers on a Train," "His Girl Friday," "The Crimson Pirate," "Citizen Kane," "The Lady Eve," "To Have and Have Not," "The African Queen," "Singin' in the Rain," "Sweet Smell of Success," or more recently, "The Hustler," Lolita, "The Manchurian Candidate," "Hud," "Charade," than in the presumed "High Culture" of "Hiroshima, Mon Amour," "[Last Year at] Marienbad," "La Notte," "The Eclipse," and the Torre Nilsson pictures. As Nabokov remarked, "Nothing is more exhilarating than Philistine vulgarity."
Regrettably, one of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down. Macdonald believes that "a work of High Culture, however inept, is an expression of feelings, ideas, tastes, visions that are idiosyncratic and the audience similarly responds to them as individuals." No. The "pure" cinema enthusiast who doesn't react to a film but feels he should, and so goes back to it over and over, is not responding as an individual but as a compulsive good pupil determined to appreciate what his cultural superiors say is "art." Movies are on their way into academia¹ when they're turned into a matter of duty: a mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is. In this country, respect for High Culture is becoming a ritual.
If debased art is kitsch, perhaps kitsch may be redeemed by honest vulgarity, may become art. Our best work transforms kitsch, makes art out of it; that is the peculiar greatness and strength of American movies, as Godard in "Breathless" and Truffaut in "Shoot the Piano Player" recognize. Huston's "The Maltese Falcon" is a classic example. [...]
In the last few years there has appeared a new kind of filmgoer: he isn't interested in movies but in cinema.... [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. [Aside from JE: And Kael claimed she wasn't an aueterist?!?!] [...]
... Many academics have always been puzzled that [James] Agee could care so much about movies. [Lawrence] Alloway,¹ by taking the position that Agee's caring was a maladjustment, re-established their safe, serene worlds in which if a man gets excited about an idea or an issue, they know there's something the matter with him.
Kael also comes across here as virulently anti-academic here -- but, I confess, I know nothing about the status of film in American academia in 1964. Sure, the rigid politics and conventions of academia have helped to stunt and stifle a lot of good minds, and ruin potentially good writers by turning them into automatons who learn to write for at other academics, for publication (aka, job security). But that's surely an individual flaw as much as an institutional one. Thinking rigorously and analytically (like an "academic") does not necessarily mean succumbing to obscurantism and humorlessness. Not every intellec-shul feels the need to theorize about how many angels can dance on the head of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But even if some analyses of Weerasethakul's films are dead and empty, that doesn't mean the films themselves are.
Kael tears apart movies like David Lean's 1957 "The Bridge on the River Kwai" for being sloppy and incoherent: "Was it possible that audiences no longer cared if a film was so untidily put together that information crucial to the plot or characterizations was obscure or omitted altogether?" Yet she adores Howard Hawks' 1946 "The Big Sleep" -- a movie that, famously, even those who made it never bothered to quite figure out. Audiences, Kael writes, used to insist that the movie get the story straight: "A movie had to tell some kind of story that held together: a plot had to parse." Well, not always. Kael never saw the unearthed original cut of "The Big Sleep" -- without the most memorable Bogart-Bacall scenes that didn't do much to advance the plot -- in which the story was explained, but nobody really cared.
Reading Kael's piece now, I find it interesting what a difference four-plus decades (and a two-term presidency) can make. Given what I see as a prevailing anti-intellectualism in American culture today (the highest standard of evaluation is whether you feel like you could have a beer with it), I wonder if anyone besides A-- C------ would write a sentence like: "In this country, respect for High Culture is becoming a ritual."
What do you see in Kael's piece that matters to you -- or doesn't? Any points you'd like to expand upon? C'mon: Do you like it or not?
- - - -
¹ Kael makes a reference to "Critics in the Dark," an essay by Lawrence Alloway published in the "prestigious" Encounter, which she says appealed to "several of the academic people I know who have least understanding of movies." I found an excerpt online:
There is a new problem facing critics who are now starting to approach pop movies seriously, which arises from their dependence on the idea of individual authorship. Detailed analysis of the work of pop directors who work within the commercial framework has certainly revealed some recurring factors which are, correctly, translatable into a personal style. However, such nuanced discrimination risks being more like the esoteric expertise of specialists than like the humanist's tribute to individuality. [...] The risk for film criticism is that the canon of individual authorship, applied to an expendable art form, will simply lead to the insulation of criticism within a kind of hobbies-corner specialism. Then the criticism of pop films might become technical and esoteric, like the cult of Hi Fi, or like surfing in the United States. In point of fact, what is needed is a criticism of movies as a pop art which can have a critical currency beyond that of footnotes and preposterous learning."
(tip: thepopview in a girish comment.)
Comments
Wow. I simply must read more of what this woman wrote (most of which I have came from my copy of Cinemania 96 ^_^). I alternately agree and disagree with her (I too quite dislike the theory of single-viewing opinions; sorry honey, we're not all as sharp as your nose or fast as your tongue), but damn those are meaty statements. Even if she does hate [i]200[/i].
Seriously, how do you watch [i]2001[/i] only once?! (how do you watch [i]Gremlins 2[/i] only once?)
Posted by: rob | February 6, 2008 12:04 AM
Two things strike me from this article.
First, how odd that she chooses a film like "This Sporting Life" as an example of "inexplicable" High Culture technique. I don't know what it must have seemed like at the time. Having just seen it for the first time and reviewed the Criterion DVD, I find nothing the slightest bit "inexplicable" about it. It seems pretty damned straightforward, so much so it feels downright theatrical (both for the good and for the bad, but mostly for the very good that is Richard Harris' superb performance). I can't even imagine what in the film's style would have appeared the least bit fractured or indirect.
Second is what, for me, is the least attractive quality of Kael's writing, her insistence on putting films into categories. We all do it; it is essential to categorize not only films but everything in life (language is a system of categorization) simply to make heads or tells of the whole great mishagoss. But her categories come with giant labels written in indelible ink: "Kitsch - GOOD" - "High Culture - DO NOT OPEN UNTIL... EVER." As one critic wrote of Kael: "She comes to conquer, not to comprehend." This is ungenerous, of course, but one of the ironies of Kael (that perhaps she was aware of) is that for all her theory-bashing, few critics have imposed their own personal theoretical framework on films as rigidly as she did.
And, yes, JE, Kael was definitely an auteurist. She just reframed it into her whole kitsch-cult aesthetic (Brian DePalma was a favorite but only as long as he was making the right kind of trash; same for most of her other faves.)
Posted by: Christopher Long | February 6, 2008 12:18 AM
rob: Yeah, you gotta read Kael. And you make me want to see "Gremlins 2" again. (I've seen it more than once!) After all, it's un film de Joe Dante -- and my friend Julia Sweeney is in it!
CL: I'll bet a lot of films that Kael criticizes for seeming too quick or fragmented or "incoherent" around 1957-64 don't seem that way at all now. What may have seemed "cutting edge" then now may seem perfectly classical now -- the way Andrew Sarris (speaking of American auteurism) once said each Godard movie would seem radical until the next one, when the previous would seem like the last full-flowering of classicism.
I think you're quite right about Kael's rigidity, but I don't think there was much "theory" behind it. What she insisted upon most rigorously was the primacy of her own taste. I've always thought she was like Rachel in "Blade Runner": an auteurist who didn't know she was an auteurist, even if others did. I think I absorbed the idea of auteurism from her (and Robin Wood's "Hitchcock's Films") before I'd ever heard of Sarris...
Posted by: jim emerson | February 6, 2008 12:45 AM
Thanks for pointing this out -- I read this piece, along with a lot of other Kael, a few years ago, but it's great to be reminded of her peculiar pronouncements every so often. It seems a typically idiosyncratic Kael gesture that she ascribes the success of films like The Cardinal and The Birds to some kind of popular disinterest in sophisticated storytelling. Huh? Has she seen these films? If anything, their success could probably be attributed to audiences appreciating them on the same surface level that Kael seems to view them from.
I do think her comments about horror films at the beginning are interesting, and seem to still be relevant today, with the barrage of Saw and Hostel movies where nobody cares about the plots, and audiences just go to see a succession of shocking images. But that seems quite a different phenomenon from the prevalence of fractured or ambiguous narratives in art films, and she doesn't do her argument much justice by lumping the two together.
Posted by: Ed Howard | February 6, 2008 07:04 AM
Jim: I must confess that much of my own knowledge of Kael is based on indirect engagement with her work. I've read a great deal from others who've sounded off on her, but surprisingly little of her own criticism. Nevertheless I have been learning quite a bit in recent years about her occupation in film criticism, particularly how she has influenced it.
One thing I'd like to look into more is the routinely made claim that she was an anti-intellectual. That term is difficult to swallow, I think, because anti-intellectualism tends to be another form of intellectualism, only perhaps it is worse because those who advocate it don't believe they're stereotypically "intellectual" or "academic." I, too, share your trepidation about embracing academia. I currently have a strange relationship with it, since I am currently in a graduate program in media and culture, and I have been exposed to a number of individuals and schools (so to speak) that embody that image of ivory tower elitism so commonly associated with it.
And, yes, the publishing processes are often so bogged down in bureacracy, condescension, and self-importance that the world of academia has become more about status than anything else. It has built a hermetically sealed system of language and rhetoric that is very exclusive. But am hopeful that academia, as a whole -- at least "the arts" -- will move toward more interdisciplinary approaches and make itself open to the paradigmatic shifts its members so often speak of but are usually too self-absorbed and territorialized to enact.
It's ironic that Kael frequently relied on false dichotomies to such an extent, because academic criticism is so often pitted against journalistic criticism that you would think they two are night and day. These binary apparatuses are exactly what critics (not matter the camp) should unite to destroy. Too often critics rely on these reductive distinctions and, in order to expose the weakness of the other side, play up the stereotype of one's own side. It's like the squid and the whale; both are devouring the other, and somewhere in the mix, real criticism disappears.
To me, Kael was so significant because she invoked a dialogue about intellectualism in film criticism, which has since culminated in a harsh, bitter division between academic and journalistic film criticism. I don't think she was responsible for what's happened as a result of this dialogue, but her criticism allowed that dialogue to happen, and it's one that calls for more attention.
Posted by: Ted Pigeon | February 6, 2008 07:15 AM
Rachel was an auteurist? I completely missed that.
I agree with much of what Christopher Long says. I've always loved Kael but in the same way you love Blofeld or Darth Vader. I found her always interesting to read (she was the only reason I bought the New Yorker - once Rafferty took over I stopped) but I found her logically challenged on many fronts. As with Kwai and This Sporting Life she consistently made a solid point and then backed her point up with the wrong movie. You half expected her to launch into a defense of action/adventure as the purest form of cinema (or movies) and then cite My Dinner with Andre as the grandest example.
Also, people who spend time dissecting semantics or noting loudly and often that they use common words (movies) over elitist words (film - and I wasn't even aware it was elite) seem to me to be the most pretentious of all.
As exemplified by the Pink Panther story Kael had a pattern of tricks she employed as a critic. The first trick was to let you know that she was not one of those elitist snobs who look down their nose on common entertainment. The next trick was to let you know that that very same common entertainment could be quite good and was often better than what those snobby elitists liked. And finally, once she had hooked you in, she'd tell you how great this really elitist snobby movie she liked was. But she'd do her best to make it sound like pulp trash. The ones she liked were never snobby or elite. Only the ones other critics liked.
As I said before I enjoyed reading her thoroughly but she was as transparent as they come and I believe, and it is only my humble lowly opinion, that her reputation has been overinflated for far too long. She relied on false dichotomy as you said but she also heavily relied on straw men of all shapes and sizes. I can remember more than one example where I thought she had brutally refuted some critic's thesis only to then read that critic's thesis and realize he didn't say anything approaching what Kael said he said. Even in her refutation of Sarris' "Notes on the Auteur Theory" she ignores what he wrote much of the time. First of all, her rebuttal has always come off as a little petty if only because Sarris states and restates several times that the theory is on its last leg and his is nothing but a desperate attempt to sustain. So right there I'm thinking that's a helluva caveat that would make a response difficult. But not Kael, she just ignored that he said that and starting ripping. To offer up a Kaelesque dichotomy, either she was... how to put this... not very successful at thinking and thus didn't comprehend what Sarris was writing or she was mean-spirited and selfish and didn't care. And yes, there are many more choices I'm sure but for years I went with "mean" in dichotomies like this one but as I read her more and more I begin to lean towards "not very smart."
And let's not forget Raising Kane which has become infamous for being one of the most poorly researched books ever published in any field! Almost all of her "findings" are based on the hearsay of an addled former RKO secretary. Yes! You go Pauline! Score!
Oh I'll stop. I thought she was very entertaining, even, dare I say it, pulpy, but not exactly the boldest roast at the coffee bar. That would be anyone from James Agee in the past to Mahola Dargis today. Kael still commands far too much respect and shouldn't be placed in this group. She was good. She wasn't great.
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 6, 2008 07:33 AM
This is more of question than a comment....I've read much of Kael's work (several of her collections), and, like most, I find her perplexing, annoying, interesting, fascinating, food for thought, food for angst.....but one part of this article in particular resonates with me (indeed, has been resonating with me ever since Iread it for the first time a year ago).
I do not at all agree with her single-viewing theory. I will watch a film I didn't 'get' over and over again, and, to me, one of the main parts of being a film-lvoer is watching my favorites over and over again (over time, of course).
But Kael raises the question of a movie-lover watching a film he supposedly didn't get (according to her), because he's told by critics that a film is sheer brilliance.
On the one hand, I disagree with that, as, from experience, I've seen a film once and didn't like it, but felt a nagging to see it again, as if there was something I missed. Some of my favorite movies were discovered such (I saw A.I. about 6 times, never really liking it, but always being fascinated. The 7th time, it was brilliant, and it's become one of my absolute favorites).
But what about so many other 'high culture' films? There have been many I didn't get the first time. And I often feel like I'm missing out on something if it's a film that has been praised forever as a masterpiece. I am wondering...what do you think about this issue? Is the fact that a film concidered a classic reason enough to view and review it, even if it doesn't partiuclarly strike us the right way? I mean, speaking for myself, aside from a couple of Truffaut films (400 Blows and Day for Night), I have had a muted reaction at best to most new wave films. Am I wrong for keeping at it, even though, in this case, I really have no idea how many of them I will eventually come to like and get a handle on.
Posted by: John Porath | February 6, 2008 08:22 AM
I agree a lot with what Christopher Long said above.
As someone who's tastes run from the extremely lowbrow (I like the 1967 Casino Royale much more than the 2007 version) to what others consider extremely highbrow (Hiroshima Mon Amour and The Eclipse are two of my favorite films), I have a lot of problems with the way Kale categorizes everything into "kitsch" or "high-culture" and when I read her I often feel as if she's encouraging people not to think too much, which I find rather insulting. She seems to think she is talking to "average folks" and in Kael's mind "average folks" don't want their films filled with big ideas.
She often appears to prefer films that offer easy answers to any questions they raise or easy laughs, easy visuals, etc. In other words, easy cinema that doesn't leave room for much intellectual audience participation. I love plenty of "easy cinema" myself, but I also enjoy being challenged and provoked into thinking outside the box or outside my comfort zone. I don't personally care for preachy movies that tell me how to think and how to feel.
How Kael can adore De Palma's Blow Out and despise Antonioni's Blowup is really impossible for me to fathom. I like both movies, but De Palma’s "easy film" is a pale remake of a much smarter and superior movie. Even Argento’s Deep Red (another Blowup remake) is vastly superior to Blow Out. Sorry to digress a bit, but I coulnd't help myself. I'm sure plenty of De Palma's fans will disagree with me.
Kael often seemed to respond to films with her gut instead of her brain, which I can't really understand since I value the way my whole being (brain, heart and gut) responds to a movie. When I was reading her thoughts above I was reminded of Stephen Colbert's shtick about "Truthiness" and people who claim to know things "from the gut" without any intellectual examination of the facts.
I do find Kael interesting, but ultimately really frustrating to read even if I respect her a lot. I want to like her so I keep trying to find common ground with her, but I always hit a roadblock. Since she's really one of the few highly respected female film critics I (as a female) guess I feel sort of obligated to continue reading her, but when I do I often feel like my head's going to explode.
Thanks for sharing this Jim since I found it (and the responses so far) fascinating to read even I did get a little flustered.
Posted by: Kimberly | February 6, 2008 02:18 PM
Jonathan: Yes, and Deckard is an auteurist, too!
Posted by: jim emerson | February 6, 2008 03:04 PM
Deckard too? Ever since reading "Notes on the Replicant Theory" I suspected as much.
I wanted to say one more thing about Kael. I don't think she would have survived in today's blogging culture. Her baseless pronouncements of taste and quality would have been met with a constant firestorm of bloggers and commenters demanding some actual argumentation to back up her dogma. Just my opinion.
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 6, 2008 03:34 PM
This was the first time I've ever read this particular piece from Pauline Kael, and while ultimately it exasperated me more than it fascinated me, I can't dismiss it out of hand any more than I can dismiss Kael herself---the first film critic I fervently read, and thus one who was important to shaping the way I view movies (even if I have gradually tried to adopt a more multifaceted approach to watching 'em rather than just simply going with my gut, as Kael seemed to do as a hard and fast rule).
At the very least, when she mentions that acquaintance of hers who dismisses The Pink Panther b/c it's a light entertainment that won't "enrich your life," it cuts right into a very personal concern I've had for a while now: in trying to approach film as a "serious" art, have I become so high-minded that I've lost the capacity to pleasurably enjoy inconsequential entertainments on their own terms? Last year I came out of Live Free or Die Hard having mildly enjoyed it but feeling the same way as that guy who dismissed The Pink Panther just because it didn't "enrich his life." It could be that the movie itself was disposable fluff anyway---yet I can't help but wonder if a certain snobbishness I've developed over time is somehow blocking me from being able to accept a piece of fun entertainment like that on its own modest terms. Have I become so insufferably highbrow to the point that I intellectually deny my genuine pleasures---the way a monk might deny himself sexual pleasures for the sake of his supposed religious calling---just because those pleasures are directed toward a megabudget action flick or a well-made suspense exercise or romantic melodrama? I don't think I'm anti-intellectual---like most people here, I assume, I like movies that entertain me and make me think---but still, the thought that I might become that kind of seemingly unfeeling, cold academic does kinda get deeply reflect on what I value from an art form I love so much. And in some ways, Kael's piece, however anti-academic and disagreeable it often is, did get me in such a reflective state (although, of course, she's dead wrong about The Birds being "pointless and incomprehensible").
Posted by: Kenji Fujishima | February 6, 2008 05:05 PM
In reference to Kenji's statement the thing with Kael for me was that the Pink Panther story is a ruse. I always felt Kael was an elitist in her own way. Again, I enjoyed reading her but I always had a nagging feeling that she didn't quite understand a great deal of what she saw. Going back to my comments about Kwai & This Sporting Life earlier, she presents points (films should not be muddled or inexplicable - agreed) and then uses two movies (Kwai & This Sporting Life) that are neither muddled nor inexplicable rendering her own words... well... muddled and inexplicable.
I still remember the wet dream she had over Casualties of War. Here was a case where she was once again trying to persuade everyone (mainly her fellow New York critics) that the films she liked were done in a muscularly emotional way that other films lacked when at the same time she was attempting to exalt it to an elite status in which the movie suffered at the box office because the masses didn't get it.
And by the way, don't even try to tell me Roy was an auteurist too cause I'm not buying it. That guy approached each killing in a totally different way.
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 6, 2008 06:51 PM
I've read a lot of Kael's stuff but all well after the fact in big collections (not the best way to read any kind of journalism) but I have to wonder how much of her fame comes simply from the fact that more people of, shall we say, more mainstream tastes were paying attention to movie reviews 40 and 50 years ago. Films (movies) were released differently with less time to build word of mouth (hype) and there were a lot fewer choices in a given week, as I understand it. I can see why there would have been a big audience looking for someone to represent the "masses". Maybe she was just smart enough to play to that segment of her audience even if her tastes weren't really so anti-intellectual. If the average joe did actually read her and pay her heed her effect on movie-going taste was probably positive whereas I think the average joe now, if he reads a review at all, does so mostly to scoff at the critic's isolation from the real world of "The Water Cooler". What's Hot/What's Not, as it were.
To Kenji, I would say that if "The Sweet Smell of Success", "His Girl Friday" and "Citizen Kane" are just disposable fluff than I'm ready to gorge myself. I guess I have a different definition of American kitsch. Either that or it simply doesn't exist anymore.
Posted by: Dane Walker | February 6, 2008 07:46 PM
Reading this again (and catching up on the comments), I found myself trying to figure out why her defense of The Pink Panther films bugged me. I love The Pink Panther films, but something about her comments just rings false. Instead of defending The Pink Panther on it's own terms and pointing out what it can offer viewers, she seems to take another route by approaching it as something "less" to begin with. At least that's how I first read it, but that could easily be my own bias or twisted thinking showing.
I did want to say something positive and point out that in many ways I agree with her statement that:
Our best work transforms kitsch, makes art out of it; that is the peculiar greatness and strength of American movies,
There is some truth in that and I'm constantly defending what she would call "kitsch" from many countries besides America and calling it art (which it often is just done on a smaller budget wrapped in genre trappings), but Kael’s approach to cinema sometimes seems as limited as the so-called "intellectuals" she's attacking. Just because she doesn't "get" a film or understand it is no reason to dismiss it. In the end, her arguments about why a particular film like The Birds doesn't work just don't hold a lot of water in my opinion. But I find myself at odds with most critics 85% the time so it's not surprising that I rarely see eye-to-eye with Kael.
Now I'm off to go watch a double feature of that crude film The Pink Panther followed by that pretentious film La Notte…
Posted by: Kimberly | February 6, 2008 07:57 PM
Kimberly (and everybody): When I first started reading Kael (I was probably 15 or so), I was bewildered by her use of the terms "trash" and "kitsch." I still am. I don't recall her ever offering an explanation of what she meant when she tossed around those words, which she did freely throughout her career. (At least Susan Sontag, whom she also disses in this piece, wrote a whole essay about "camp"!) The notion that American movies can transform kitsch into art, as she says, is delightful: What a lovely sentence! But while I know what I think it means, I'm not really sure what she thinks it means.
Same with the "Pink Panther" anecdote. On the one hand, she says we shouldn't be ashamed of enjoying ourselves at the movies, even if we didn't "get anything" from a particular picture. She loves "The Lady Eve" -- but didn't she see "Sullivan's Travels"? On the other hand, she says she had "a good time at" "PP" (but goes no further), then in the same paragraph mentions "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.'" So, a movie that she guages is no more than a charming, confectionary trifle is also her choice for the best American movie of the year? Maybe what I most want to know is what she means by the word "best." Can a "trifle," no matter how enjoyable or entertaining, provide enough satisfaction to be considered "the best"? While "trifle" is another word for "dessert," it also means something insubstantial or of little value. OK, maybe a charming dessert can be the "best" or most memorable dish you had last year. But, if that's the case, why the defensiveness implied by the phrase "no more than"? Is she proudly announcing that she was unashamedly entertained? If so, why does she seem mildly ashamed of feeling that way?
Posted by: jim emerson | February 6, 2008 09:01 PM
The difference between Bridge on the River Kwai and The Big Sleep is that the plot details are unimportant in the latter, while the former is supposedly about very large significant themes, which means the story will be considered as a whole piece, which means it's a real problem if it the details aren't clear.
Incidentally, I could do a detailed plot synopsis of The Big Sleep right now without any assistance, but I can only remember a few specific plot details from Bridge.
Posted by: Jeff Fries | February 7, 2008 01:24 AM
I give up on trying to understand the hostility towards Kael and the gross misreadings of her proliferating nowadays. She was as analytical a critic as Rosenbaum, and she has few peers as a writer. But what's the use of persuading people of that? Manohla Dargis who reads comic books and condescends to Kenneth Branagh while championing Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz and Chris Tucker is here considered a celebrant of high culture in comparison to Kael, who only read Henry James complete and, though she supposedly couldn't think, studied phenomenology in college. Poor Kael--intellectually outclassed by all those other film critics.
Posted by: dm494 | February 7, 2008 06:56 AM
but I can only remember a few specific plot details from Bridge. I would say that is because there is not much plot to remember whereas The Big Sleep is heavily plotted. Kwai concerns a British Officer obsessed with building a bridge for the enemy for his own personal glory and an American Pseudo Officer escapee making his way back to blow said bridge up. That's it. It's all character study. So when Kael writes, "information crucial to the plot or characterizations was obscure or omitted altogether?" I don't know what in the hell she's talking about. I have never felt there is anything pertinent to the story of Shears or Nicholson that is left out. She just didn't like the movie and when she didn't like a movie it could never be just that for her. There are well-received movies I don't like but I generally understand why they are praised even if they are not to my taste. But that was not the case with Kael. If she did not like a movie it had to be bad. She had to prove that the reason she didn't like it was because it had been poorly pieced together and ineptly shot even if it wasn't. Not to be too much of a psycho-babble pop psychologist but I think she was extremely insecure in her tastes and opinions.
It's why I'll state again that she was one of the last of her kind. She would not today, I think, get away with 70% of the stuff she wrote in a world of film bloggers and commenters calling her every step of the way. Back then she could hold court but now I think she'd sink fast.
Still I'd love to have seen it. I imagine she would have been on the hyper-defensive after every essay just waiting for one of us to ask her for specifics on a sweeping judgment - and knowing she had no answer. Oh well, it would have been fun.
But hey, we still have Jim calling out Jonathan Rosenbaum to entertain us (that's what I imagine the Kael situation would have been like only magnified by four or five powers of ten).
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 7, 2008 07:14 AM
Isn't the internet great! Finally, we humble folk get a chance to criticise the almighty critics! My thought is that the litmus test for critics and critical theories should be the influence that they exert. The auteur theory may be flawed, but it did empower directors to make more individual and interesting films in the 60s and 70s. In the same way, it can be argued that Kael's opinions made the world safe for the era of the leave-your-brain-in-the-parking-lot blockbuster and the general tendency to pander to the audience. A great many films today are very successful at creating that immediate sense of satisfaction at the end of the movie, but the impression is lost by the time you've digested the last of the popcorn. My own feeling is that I need a couple of days to realise whether I liked a particular film (I don't mind using the word) and at least a decade to know if it was great. If I'm honest about it, the critics who I like are the ones who agree with me, but I remain open to being given new insights which let me look at something in a new way. Sometimes, an elitist attitude stops you from seeing the hidden depths of the most unpretentious of entertainments. I suppose that Kael was at least right about that.
Posted by: Sean Ellis | February 7, 2008 09:41 AM
I would draw a distinction (here I go being all binary) between anti-intellectual and anti-academic. Kael may have resisted the institutionalization of film criticism, but she was anything but anti-intellectual. The breadth of her knowledge allowed her to contextualize movies in a very useful way. As someone (my memory fails me on who) once wrote, some of the best writing on literature came in Kael's reviews of the movie versions of classic lit ... she knew the books as well as the movies.
Kael was a very smart writer. She was willing to foreground her personal reaction to a movie (perhaps most famously when she talked about seeing Shoeshine after she'd broken up with a lover) because she was a part of the context of the film. When we experience art, the work itself matters, but it also matters what we each bring to the work, and Kael never shied from giving us not only the external but the personal context.
Certainly her insistence of the importance of the personal reaction meant she could seem inconsistent ... if she liked one movie and didn't like another, that mattered more to her than constructing a coherent theory that explained both positions. But accusations of anti-intellectualism are misguided.
Posted by: Steven Rubio | February 7, 2008 10:04 AM
Hi, it's me again. Sorry to keep commenting on this but Kael always had the ability to start debate, didn't she?
dm494 - It may sound like it but I'm not saying Kael was stupid. I'm saying that with film she didn't necessarily think them through properly and/or understand them fully. She may have understood many other things in life beautifully, but with film it always seemed she had a gut reaction that she then tried to turn into an intellectual argument. If she was only seeing movies once as she claimed maybe that was the problem. However, no matter what her intellectual capacity, none of it can be judged by what she studied in college. I've said many times, some of the most intellectually challenged people I ever met had advanced degrees. I also have a friend, Steve, who never completed more than a single community college class and whose intelligence and debating skills I would hold up to the best in the country. And if Dargis reads comic books I'm not sure how that makes her less intelligent as a critic.
As for some of us here charging Kael with anti-intellectualism I would say that my beef against her, as I think I've made clear, is that she wanted people to think she was anti-intellectual when in fact she was a closet intellectual elitist.
And she was a terrific writer I agree. I just think that she seemed much more impressive to me as a critic when I was younger and now having read and engaged with so many other historians and critics of film she doesn't seem as towering as she once did and I do think her reputation is just a bit overstated.
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 7, 2008 11:00 AM
Kael always got by on the sheer exhilirating force of her writing and confidence in her own pronouncements. Like many who spend all their time denouncing purists and pretension, she was an extremely pretentious purist. Lack of intellectual arguments in her work was not just a weak point--it was a trademark.
Now, you tell me, how is any of that different from much of the blogging world?
Not any of us, of course, we're all unpretentious anti-purists who always back up our every word with carefully reasoned intellectual arguments.
As far as not seeing a movie more than once: nevermind that almost any artwork worth your time once is better the second time around--isn't it a bit bizarre that a movielover wouldn't want to repeat the joys of a favorite film?
Posted by: Ed Hardy, Jr. | February 7, 2008 02:26 PM
Whether you agree with her or not, Kael was always readable, engaging and, like the movies she championed, entertaining.
As far as intellectualism goes, I think Kael would've thought herself a "smart" critic; the "intellectuals" were the Marxists, Freudians and auteurists whose writing was so prevalent (and, c'mon, unreadable). In this sense, she *was* "anti-intellectual", and a better critic for it.
One great thing that's come out of this conversation: it seems we've finally uncovered the reason Blade Runner left her so cold - all those auterists!
Posted by: Toshi Yano | February 7, 2008 02:32 PM
Ed! Good to see you. You know, I never said that every other blogger besides me didn't do this, but I figured you'd know I've never made a baseless judgment in my life. For instance, I believe No Country for Old Men is better than There Will Be Blood and I know this because I say so. See, I totally backed it up. Oh yeah, and the auteur theory - it's totally true. I feel it.
Ah, alright we all know we do this too but we're not paid by the New Yorker. Thanks for injecting realism into the situation. Harumph! And now I shall storm off. Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 7, 2008 05:03 PM
Dennis Cozzalio sent me a a substantial piece, originally intended for this comment thread, that had unexpectedly developed into a post of his own as he was writing it. You will be able to read the whole thing at sergioleoneifr.blogspot.com. Meanwhile, I enjoyed it so much that I asked if I could go ahead and post some excerpts here, anyway, since this is the thread that inspired him. -- JE
... [C]owed as I could be by [Kael's] insistence on the kind of false dichotomy that would seem to force a choice between "Art" over "entertainment," as if there were no possibility for the two to coexist in the same work, the spirited quality of Kael's writing (some would term it arrogance) encouraged me to more often than not argue with her as I was reading, thus developing my own critical muscles. In this way, she became and remains my favorite critic because I knew in encountering one of her pieces that I could just as easily be swayed as roll my eyes in disbelief, but her writing, which facilitated her very specific voice, the kind of voice (female) that was willing to stand by, accurate or misguided, her claims and her tastes, was fresh and, to use one of her favorite words, liberating. There was something about the way she wrote that was convincing, even if you could still go out and see something she panned and love it for your own reasons. But I never felt, even when she was at her most annoying, that she ever stooped to disparaging actors over their physical attributes, a la John Simon, or adopted anything close to the "my criticism, right or right" stance of someone like Armond White. [...]
... [B]ack to Tarantino's comment about subtextual film criticism not having much at all to do with the filmmaker's intentions. Pauline Kael rarely wrote with subtext in mind. Her feelings and fears and enthusiasms were right thee on the surface, and no less rich for their accessibility. But I think she did a lot to expose the truth of what Tarantino is asserting here, that directors, writers and actors who often work awfully close to the surface may still have subterranean levels of achievement or purpose or commentary that they themselves may be least qualified to articulate. It's what's behind her disdain for Antonioni's pontificating at the Cannes film festival; it's what behind the high percentage of uselessness of proliferating DVD commentaries in which we get to hear every dull anecdote, redundant explication of plot development and any other inanity that strikes the director of the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com to blurt out breathlessly; and it is what's behind a director like Eli Roth, who tailors his films' subtexts as afterthoughts to be bleated out in
defensive bursts on Larry King. (You said it best, Jim, when Hostel Part II was the talk of the blogosphere last summer: next time, Eli, let your movie do the talking for you.) [...]
... It is true that she would often bait the reader with a rather high-minded assessment of something she appreciated that she would still classify as a bauble or a trifle. Is she denigrating an entire class of American film by calling Charade the best American film of 1963? Or is she saying that the vitality of movies like Charade, trashy as they may be, are more valuable, at least to her, and perhaps to film culture, than the obsessive high-mindedness of some of the accepted artifacts of "Art" that she routinely dismissed as others piled on the praise? In reading Kael I always tended toward an interpretation that skewed toward an appreciation of the fact that she was open to the glories of Hollywood films like His Girl Friday or To Have and Have Not, and perhaps her reluctance to confer greatness upon them was that it might align her too closely with the auteurist film buffs she so regularly disparaged. She was inconsistent, and maddening because of it. [...]
For me Kael set the bar. I believe she is a great critic, not just a good one. Maybe she wouldn't have survived as well in an online world where her every argument would be subject to round upon round of contrary opinion. But I believe she would have written what she felt just the same, and for those of us willing to search it out, in much the same way we can search out voices worth listening to amongst the competing din of a thousand Harry Knowleses, it would have resonated with similar fervor and excitement.
Posted by: Dennis Cozzalio | February 7, 2008 06:13 PM
A great assessment Dennis. I look forward to seeing the complete piece on your page but I don't see it up yet. I believe one of the reasons for Kael's success was certainly that she came along at the proper moment when critics (herself, Sarris, Bogdanovich, Truffaut, Godard) were becoming celebrities within the film community with some of them (three I mentioned above) going on to make films themselves. But...
I will wait to see your completed piece before being too contrarian.
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 7, 2008 08:10 PM
I strongly adhere to the "one-viewing" practice, at least when it comes to movies that I don't like.
Honestly, how many times do you have to hit your hand with a hammer before you can say that it hurts? How many times do you have to watch Resident Evil 2 before you can say that it sucks? If you don't like it, doesn't that mean you didn't "get" it? Didn't meet the film on its own terms? I mean, there are people who like Resident Evil 2, so don't you think that they are seeing something there that you don't?
That's the crux of my problem. The "one-viewing" school of thought is the only one that can be pragmatically implemented.
If you change your opinion on the second or third time, I believe it's because you weren't really trying to recognize your response the first time. Whenever I watch a film, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether or not I like it and why I feel that way. If you put some work into figuring out why you are responding the way that you are, you shouldn't need a second viewing.
Movies I like I'll watch again though. That's one of the biggest (if perhaps one of the most superficial) reasons that I watch movies. To find something that I'll want to see again and maybe even share with people.
I'd also splinter away from Kael in that I don't distinguish between art and entertainment at all. I don't think we can really concretely define what those terms mean and so I regard them as meaningless. If a film doesn't give you pleasure in some way, it's not a good film, and if a film doesn't reflect your moral or aesthetic values or better yet, meaningfully redefine them; it's not a good film.
Posted by: Alex Jackson | February 8, 2008 02:17 PM
Alex: Your comment about the "one-viewing school of thought" leaves out the possibility that you, the viewer, could have changed between viewings. You could have had your sensibilities shifted; your tastes may have broadened to include aspects of the text you would have previously rejected; you may simply be in a different mood than the first time around, one more open to that particular work.
Obviously you don't need to see every movie a second time to know whether you like it, but if you haven't seen that film in three years, why not give it another try and see if you don't have different responses to it?
Posted by: Ed Hardy, Jr. | February 9, 2008 09:33 AM
If you don't need to see every movie a second time, then what makes the few worth a second go around? Any law with selective applicability can be hardly be very useful.
It seems like a blow-off to me besides. Any time that you don't like a film that everybody else likes they can simply say "You're not ready for it. Come back in another three years".
Personally speaking, my tastes never broaden they just get more specific. I see the same "thing" in The Passion of Joan of Arc that I did in Return of the Jedi. Only it's less diluted and harder to miss.
Maturation doesn't involve me being more receptive to new ideas, it involves me developing higher and higher standards. My favorite film will likely change in twenty years, but my idea as to which films are crap will likely not.
And if your mood is affecting your experience of watching the film, then you aren't working hard enough to justify your response.
Posted by: Alex Jackson | February 9, 2008 05:34 PM
In response to Alex's question, "Honestly, how many times do you have to hit your hand with a hammer before you can say that it hurts?" - I have several damaged nerves in my right hand so usually at least two, sometimes three. Also, if it's a nerf hammer then probably around 1,347 (and you've really gotta be hitting hard!).
Posted by: Jonathan Lapper | February 9, 2008 05:44 PM
I don't rigidly follow a one-viewing rule, but I do rigidly follow this corrollary (not original with me, but I heard it from Bilge Ebiri of ScreenGrab):
A movie that you have to see twice also has to be a movie that you want to see twice.
Posted by: Victor Morton | February 10, 2008 02:11 PM
As I spend a rare snow day catching up on all the posts and comments I've not read in the past few weeks, I have to say a big "Thank You!" to Jonathan Lapper for FINALLY putting into words what I have always disliked about Kael but never took the time for myself to articulate.
Posted by: Liz | February 12, 2008 11:40 AM
I have mixed feelings toward kael because sometimes I agree with her and sometimes I think she can be condesending and over the top.For example is exorcist II better than exorcist and is Casualties of War a great movie? but she doesn't seem like she was a complete snob (compared to John Simon,she seems like santa claus)she did like many of spielberg early works and rumor has it that in her "Why movies are so bad,or the numbers"essay that she showed respect to the empire strikes back,even she mercilessly panned star wars and slammed jedi to pieces.I disagree when people said she championed scorsese and yes she gave rave and ethusiatic reviews to Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't live here anymore and the last waltz but does that overlook the fact that she didn't like Raging Bull and King of Comedy and sorta kinda liked Goodfellas.Also just because she gave rave reviews to the first two godfather films does not mean she championed coppola because she did not like Apocalypse Now or the Cotton Club or any of his later films.However,I think it is fair to say that she championed Depalma,Kershner and peckinpah because their has not been one film they have made that she didn't give a negative review to.I did enjoy myself when she gave negative reviews to films that I thought were overrated like Dances with Wolves and the cartoonish Full Metal Jacket. However, I don't like when she has an attitude where if she doesn't like a movie she acts as if its bad because I have seen films that I wouldn't support but have redemptive qualities that are watchable.I give her points for being pasionate and provactive but the fact that she can often can came across as unlikable does put me in an I like you and I hate you mode.
Posted by: Sam Erickson | March 20, 2008 07:59 PM