Pauline Kael Critical Review

Allison Luthy

Arts Journalism

2/3/08

Pauline Kael Critical Review

As one of the first film reviewers, Pauline Kael influenced the world of film critiquing legendarily, although her impact on film itself was limited. Kael writes in a manner that at some times seems self-congratulatory and at others seems purely brilliant. Her writing style was unconventional and she even said in Francis Davis’ book, Afterglow, “I was often accused of writing about everything but the movie.” In a review of the movie “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” Kael wrote two paragraphs that actually mentioned the movie, and in the rest of the article merely critiqued the people that went to see it. In this way, she makes wonderful points about the people that go to movies not to enjoy them, but to prove to the world how cultured they are. Her reviews are entertaining (if you are not the one at their mercy), but in many ways she proves herself to be one of the people that she mocks. Kael makes a point of going to “lowbrow” movies and claims to love them more than arts films, but this is really just another way of being snobbish herself. She seems to consider herself above the average moviegoer because she is so adept at seeing through the artistic film fad that they cannot. At the end of the film when everyone else in the art house applauds the movie, Kael is only applauding herself for her miraculous ability not to be taken in by the movie and its audience.

Despite her narcissism, Kael does hold a very important place in film criticism history. She made very atypical choices in the movies that she thought were good or bad. Arguably one of the toughest critics around, Kael even returned to work at The New Yorker after her coworkers published a piece criticizing all of her previous articles. Through all this opposition, Kael continued urging her editor to allow her to review such unconventional material as the pornographic film, “Deep Throat.” She believed that it is important to stay true to what the public is watching, and porn has always been a popular medium. This practice of using film reviews to inform the public of the movies available that they would actually want to see has revolutionized the concept of what criticism should be. Even the New York Times runs reviews of such movies as “Rambo” alongside criticism of the New York City Ballet. Without Pauline Kael’s influence, this might never have happened. This kind of power to change the course of literary history is very mind-altering and much of Kael’s work began to sound conceited. In spite of this, her writing style has always been creative and refreshing and future generations of film critics will continue to look up to her. While it is doubtful that Pauline Kael had as great an influence on film criticism as she would like to believe, she has undoubtedly altered the public perception of what it should be.