Pauline Kael, long-term film critic of the “New Yorker,” was truly a performance of her own. A slew of sharp language, harsh statements, and sarcasm, she was a show that was, at the very least, worth recognizing. 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 an entertaining and conversational manner. 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 Kael’s review of “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” for instance, she says simply, “[…] I decided the great lesson for us all was to shut up.”
Jazz critic Francis Davis in his book “Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael” quotes Kael and her reasons for choosing this style: “I didn’t want to write academic English in an attempt to elevate movies […] It denies them what makes them distinctive.” Using her prose to mimic moviegoers’ own reactions upon leaving the theatre, Kael avoids the condescending, “academic” tone she despised. Her precise word choice, “pop,” “trash,” “grungy,” “comic-strip,” emulates day-to-day language, and she artfully captures this common chitchat and grounds it on the page. Reviews dripping with slang and witty banter not only appealed to a greater audience but had the power to amuse as well.
Though immersed in a world of fictitious stories and images altered and distorted through special effects, Kael did not hesitate to embrace brutal honesty. She spoke of movies exactly as she saw them, nothing more and nothing less. Such sincerity was rare for critics of her time, and 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 expresses: “[…] 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 gripped them with her drastic opinions. Kael called the widely acclaimed “The Sound of Music,” a “sugarcoated lie that people seem to want to eat.” She was like a snappy, radical friend, the daring one who was most remembered and admired for crossing lines and taking risks. Her ideas, though not always shared, were full of personality, and who could resist such blatant, biting remarks?
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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