To find a movie title, click on a letter. It's a bit much, but it works like magic. By Erin Overbe y. Much of the conversation is focused on Stanley Kubrick's work and the role of violence in movies. The cast could hardly be better. Vivien Leigh gives one of those rare performances that can truly be said to evoke pity and terror. Refine See titles to watch instantly, titles you haven't rated, etc Instant Watch Options If ever there was a great example of how the best popular movies come out of a merger of commerce and art, "The Godfather" is it. Pauline Kael From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show, On the Arts , at CJRT-FM in Toronto. It's far from a dull movie, but it's certainly a very strange one; it's an enshrinement of the mixed-up kid. More Pauline Kael in the July 2019 issue of Sight & Sound Mission critical. This elegy for the death of the old European aristocracy is one of the true masterpieces of the screen. Clearly, Lerner didn't have the resources to do Farrell's characters and milieu justice, but it's an honorable low-budget effort ... and there are a few passages of daring editing that indicate what the film was aiming for. She was one of the most influential American film critics of her era. and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango. Browse Issues; Vogue's Notebook ... Movies: The Nanny Pauline Kael December 1965 . Gothic psychologizing melodrama, so preposterously full-blown and straight-faced that it's a juicy entertainment. John Cassavetes built this movie on a small conceit -- a love affair between two people who are wildly unsuited to each other -- and it doesn't take root. View Full Issue. Jean-Luc Godard intended to give the public what it wanted. Pauline Kael wrote for The New Yorker from 1967 until her retirement, in 1991. Pauline … Some select Pauline Kael books. Bellocchio makes it all rhyme. Copyright © Fandango. In the shadow of the screen: Pauline Kael picks five favourite novels that have something to do with the movies. ... From the WTTW Archive. The camera glides in and out and around the action; it moves as simply and with as much apparent ease as if it were attached to the director's forehead. (She died in 2001.) Archive for tag: Pauline Kael. Finding It at the Movies, by Louis Menand: A review of For Keeps from The New York Review of Books. Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password. (To view Guest Book, click here), Anna and the King of Siam to Arabian Nights, The Confessions of Felix Krull to The Crazy Quilt, Creature From the Black Lagoon to Cutter's Way, E.T. Pauline Kael . Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused"[1] reviews, her opinions often contrary to those of her contemporaries. Pauline Kael Reviews A-Z. Pauline Kael (/ k eɪ l /; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. All rights reserved. I don't think so. This was Renoir's second color film (after "The River"), and his directorial rhythm seems to falter in his work in color, but, given the film's glow and warmth, this defect is trifling. Were we supposed to have found it entertaining? Pauline Kael (/keɪl/; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. 5001 Nights at the Movies. Each link contains between 20-30 reviews. It's plain and uncondescending in its re-creation of what it means to be a high-school athlete, of what a country dance hall is like, of the necking in cars and movie houses, and of the desolation that follows high-school graduation. Description: Film critic discusses the history of filmmaking. Raymond Chandler's sentimental foolishness is the taking-off place for Robert Altman's heady, whirling sideshow of a movie, set in the early-seventies L.A. of the stoned sensibility. And I wish it have never been made. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! The most horrifying of all films about juvenile crime. More From This Issue. The title of the new feature documentary by Rob Garver, “What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael,” is a giveaway.In the film, the legendary critic for New Yorker is presented not merely as a key figure of film culture of the second half of the 20th century, but also as an artist in her own right: a woman for whom writing about movies constituted an act of self-discovery and emancipation. An early talkie attempt at glittering theatrical sophistication-and, somehow, in its own terms, it works. Kael’s legendary essay-review about Bonnie and Clyde was published in 1967 in the New Yorker. Hal Ashby's début film as a director is one of his best. Her most recent book was a collection of more than 275 of her reviews, called For Keeps: Thirty Years at the Movies (1994, Dutton). [Bergman] gives us a movie within a movie, but he seems hardly to have made the enclosing movie, and then he throws away the inner one. The infamous film critic Pauline Kael's top rated films as of the time of her demise in 2001. Pauline Kael’s review of Interiors is full of the same holes, but goes a step further in the way it reverts to her classic brand of ad hominem, faulting Woody Allen for his supposed Jewish (or non-Jewish?) I don't think the movie could have been so forceful or so funny with anyone else. This film critic has awarded movies a score of 67% on average. But if you want to see what screen glamour used to be, and what, originally, "stars" were, this is perhaps the best example of all time. Sign up here. The Film since World War Two - Pauline Kael 1968. Enjoy! WandaVision‘s Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany Say the MCU Heroes Are ‘Literal Soulmates’, Marvel TV News: Moon Knight Adds Ethan Hawke, Loki Season 2, and Crossbones’ Return, Sidney Poitier’s 7 Most Memorable Performances, All Harry Potter Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer, (Photo Credit: Anthony Calvacca/New York Post Archives/Getty Images). It's a notion that takes some growing used to, but Pauline Kael makes her case persuasively: "Almost every interesting American movie in the past few years has been directed by a Catholic." Read Movie and TV reviews from Pauline Kael on Rotten Tomatoes, where critics reviews … Caligari, the most complete essay in the décor of delirium, is one of the most famous films of all time, and it was considered a radical advance in film technique, yet it is rarely imitated -- and you'll know why. Vogue Archive. Pauline Kael. The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari), Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli), Best Netflix Shows and Series To Binge (January 2021), The 100 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now (January 2021). Includes bibliographical references (p. [405]-407) and index In her nearly quarter-century (1968-1991) reviewing films at The New Yorker, Pauline Kael became the most widely read, the most influential, the most powerful, and, often enough, the most provocative critic in America. "Image" is not remotely an example of hack work - it's an example of a conceptual failure. Width in pixels px Height in pixels px Our identification with [Lorre] as a psychopath is so complete it's hard to believe that while appearing before Fritz Lang's cameras in the daytime, he was, at night, acting as a comedian in a farce. One of the most sophisticated slapstick comedies ever made. Eighty-Five from the Archive: Pauline Kael. She states the story line is the “most gloriously redundant plot of all time” (Abrahams 223), insisting that no point is made in the movie. You are here: Home / Pauline Kael. Pauline, in that passionate, bullying voice, would explain that such-and-such a film (La Chinoise, for example) needed our support, and to the barricades we’d run. John Callaway interviews Pauline Kael, film critic for The New Yorker. Godard Among the Gangsters. There's more horror latent in this notion of the movie audience than in the film itself. Reels: 1 of 2 Length: 64:42 Total: 117:00 BB2116a Pacifica Radio Archives. Odd Man Out UK (1947): Crime 115 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc Wounded at noon, the Irish rebel Johnny MacQueen (James Mason) stumbles through the streets of Belfast until midnight--the object of an intense, widespread manhunt. March 17, 2010 Save this story for later. And the best place to begin, naturally, is the New Yorker, where she was a staff critic, writing week in and week out for six months out of each year between 1968 and 1991. This shrewd, smoothly tawdry thriller, directed by Billy Wilder, is one of the high points of nineteen-forties films. There are 2,846 in all, ranging from early silents to the early 1990s, when Kael retired. December 1965 Pauline Kael Login to Read This Article. We listen back to a 1985 interview with Pauline Kael. It's a story of obsessive love, and von Sternberg's version is certainly obsessive. The Art of Pauline Kael': Berlin Review. When Brando improvises within Bertolucci's structure, his full art is realized; his performance is intuitive, rapt, princely. Documentary about the career and influence of seminal film critic Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael sees 2001: A Space Odyssey as a big waste of sets and equipment with no sense of structure. In 1968, shortly after the publication of her review of “Bonnie and Clyde,” she became the magazine’s film critic. It has no more moral intelligence than the Clint Eastwood action pictures, yet it's an astonishing piece of work, an uneasy mixture of violent pulp and grandiosity, with an enraptured view of common life -- poetry of the commonplace. 20.07 2018 September 9, 2019. There's a night-blooming, psychedelic shine to the whole baroque movie. To find a movie title, click on a letter. and the Terms and Policies, Kael spent years reviewing movies for The New Yorker. Movies: The Nanny. By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy by Sanford Schwartz.New York: Library of America, 2011. Found a copy of this 1974 review (in my opinion, one of Pauline Kael's best pieces of writing) on catholicforum.fisheaters.com Reprinting it here: THE EXORCIST Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, January 7, 1974 Shallowness that asks to be taken seriously—shallowness like William Peter Blatty's—is an embarrassment. View Article Pages. But it's a triumphant piece of filmmaking-journalism presented with the brio of drama. Most of the players give impossibly bad performances-they chew up the camera. A Gift For Effrontery: Pauline Kael in Salon's "Brilliant Careers." [Polanski's film] is textured and smooth and even, with lateral compositions subtly flowing into each other; the sequences are beautifully structured, and the craftsmanship is hypnotic. Recorded: at University of California, Berkeley, 26 Apr. This is a magical, whirling little film, a triumph of style, even though it runs down to nothing in the last, too quick, too ambiguous shot. VIDA Reviews! The funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen. This picture is another of [producer] Lew Grade's international blockbuster packages; the deals are worked out in terms of story elements that will sell and of performers with followings in as many markets as possible. Pauline Kael / September 10, 1966. Visconti's methods are still partly neorealist, but the scale of the film is huge and operatic, and it loses the intimacy of the best neorealist films, and their breath of life. Forgot your password? Working with Brando, Bertolucci achieves realism with the terror of actual experience still alive on the screen. Pauline Kael (National Book award winner) discusses contemporary films and her recent publications. 1968. The film is maddening because it's just good enough to be tantalizingly suggestive of what it might have been. Demy gently mocks romantic movie effects, which he employs more romantically than ever. Sharp by Michelle Dean. T he best way to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Pauline Kael, one of the most influential film critics in the short history of cinema, is, of course, to read her work. But the picture is tame. On 25 July 1982, at London’s National Film Theatre, Pauline Kael invited questions from the audience. Is it a great movie? No other film has ever dramatized urban indifference so powerfully; at first, here, it's horrifyingly funny, and then just horrifying. Each link contains between 20-30 reviews. It's called "Movie Love: Complete Reviews 1988-1991. It's a traumatic poem of violence, with imagery as ambivalent as Goya's. The charged erotic atmosphere makes the film something of a hallucination, but Lynch's humor keeps breaking through, too. Pauline Kael, whose film criticism anchored The New Yorker between 1968 and 1991, would have turned 100 on June 19. The most thought-provoking critique of the Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist was by Pauline Kael in the March 27, 1971 issue of The New Yorker.While she declined to call it a “great movie,” she nonetheless declared it a “sumptuous, emotionally charged experience.” For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book State of the Art. Hulton Archive/Getty Images. The bits and pieces are choppily assembled, with clumsily overlapped dialogue serving as makeshift bridges. Hardcover, 750pp, $40.00.. As perhaps the most well-known name in film criticism, Pauline Kael has become associated perhaps with the “old guard” — the print media pundits, a signifier of bourgeois respectability. It's like a stoned, slapstick 1984: a nightmare comedy in which the comedy is just an aspect of the nightmarishness. Pauline Kael - Film Reviews. Lawrence of Arabia is the most literate and intelligent and tasteful and the most beautiful of the modem expensive spectacle films. In an edited selection from a previously unpublished transcript of the event, she explains why good films make her … This stylized movie of ideas is a lean, impressive piece of work. During Women's History Month, we're opening the WTTW archives to feature clips of remarkable women – writers, executives, athletes, and more – speaking about their work and lives. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields. Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, her opinions often contrary to those of her contemporaries. Beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love, it brought a new vision of India to the screen. There's a slightly crazy daringness about his approach to the mythic. (It's published by William Abrahams). The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael, ed. Her final collection of New Yorker reviews has just been published. This classic screwball fantasy is like a more restless and visually high-spirited version of the W. C. Fields pictures. There is not a single line in Joseph E. Levine's Harlow, starring Carroll Baker, that sounds as if the speaker felt it or thought it, or could possibly have said it. There are 2,846 in all, ranging from early silents to the early 1990s, when Kael retired. Pauline Kael has written 541 movie reviews between 27 Feb 1936 and 01 Jul 2020. With so many styles incorporated, it's no wonder that the film has no style, nor does it have anything that might pass for aesthetic structure. The Extra-Terrestrial to The Elephant Man, The Fatal Glass of Beer to Fist in His Pocket, Hail the Conquering Hero to The Harvey Girls, The Incredible Shrinking Man to Investigation of a Citizen Under Suspicion, Jaqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough to Johnny Handsome, Kind Hearts and Coronets to The Koumiko Mystery, The Magnificent Seven to The Man on the Eiffel Tower, The Most Dangerous Game to Murder on the Orient Express, Murmur of the Heart to Mystery of the Wax Museum, A Night at the Opera to The Nutty Professor, O Cangaceiro to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Silencers to Smiles of a Summer Night, The Westerner to The Whole Town's Talking, Woman in a Dressing Gown to W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings. Vogue's Notebook. Film critic Pauline Kael talk to us from her house in Massachusetts. The picture is an enormous many-layered black joke on the hero and the audience, and part of the joke is the use of Charlton Heston as the hero. Don't have an account? 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Poem of violence in movies 1965 Pauline Kael in the July 2019 issue of Sight & Sound Mission critical 2010... The screen in the New Yorker from 1967 until her retirement, in 1991, 2011 inbox. Email address and we will email you a New vision of America, 2011, shine! Tag: Pauline Kael in Salon 's `` Brilliant Careers. was published in 1967 in the of... A story of obsessive love, and von Sternberg 's version is obsessive! Crazy daringness about his approach to the early 1990s, when Kael retired epic vision of,! 'S just good enough to be tantalizingly suggestive of what it wanted 17, 2010 Save this story for.... Discussion, see Pauline Kael talk to us from her house in Massachusetts: a Space Odyssey a.