Pauline Kael, one of the most influential film critics of her time, took it as a great insult if readers found her reviews more appealing than the movies she was critiquing. Should her articles fail to make the audience “surrender to [her] passion,” then, in her eyes, she had achieved little as a critic. Whether or not she always accomplished extending this passion, Kael still achieved more than the average critic could hope for; she made incredible leaps and bounds in the art of criticism.
Kael was much more than the run-of-the-mill, frequently bland critics of her day. She wrote knowledgeable reviews that were as entertaining and in-your-face as the movies playing on the theatre screens, while still managing to relate her ideas in an understandable voice. Hence, she became a sensation, a master performance of her own.
Even Renata Adler in “House Critic,” an essay that tears Kael apart, cannot deny that “Ms. Kael seemed to approach movies with an energy and a good sense that were unmatched at the time in film criticism.”
In an era where critics’ works often were, at most, mechanical echoes and silhouettes of the film industry, Kael embraced a new and radical role; she wrote for the people occupying the plush, cinema seats beside her. Injecting realistic sass and personality into her reviews, Kael expressed her strong opinions in a conversational manner. In her review of “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” for instance, she says simply, “[…] I decided the great lesson for us all was to shut up.” In using her prose to mimic moviegoers’ own reactions upon leaving the theatre, Kael avoids the condescending, “academic” tone she despised. Her opinions take the form of a nod of excitement, up-in-arms frustration, or a simple shrug of the shoulders.
Kael did more than develop a comprehensible and attention grabbing style. She grounded her thoughts in her extensive knowledge of film. Between her extreme dedication to movie watching and her years spent at Berkley studying philosophy and the arts, Kael gained credibility and a sort of following; her ideas were, at the very least, definitely worth acknowledging.
Immersion in the world of acting and special effects did not stop Kael from exercising brutal honesty. Such sincerity was rare for critics of her time, and it worked in her favor, singling her out and bringing her into the public eye. It made her uniquely relatable, like she really could have been just another person at the theatre. The audience could understand, and had often too experienced, the moments of vulnerability, exasperation, and elatedness Kael expressed: “[…] it may be the most emotionally wrenching scene I’ve ever experienced at the movies,” “My reaction is simply, ‘OK, I got it the first time, let’s get on with it.’”
Even when readers didn’t necessarily agree with her, Kael still had the power to grip them with her drastic opinions. Kael called the widely acclaimed “The Sound of Music,” a “sugarcoated lie that people seem to want to eat.” Simply because she crossed lines and didn’t mind being harsh, her work was daring and unique. It was like a thriller film; her prose like the escalating music and rising suspense, who could resist such blatant and shocking ideas?
Still a legacy today, Kael marked a great transition in the world of criticism. Though she found no value in seeing any movie twice, it is quite arguable that her own work should be read and studied again and again and again.
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