And I don't mean that facetiously. Andrew Sarris, a key proponent of the theory, debated it with Kael in the pages of The New Yorker and various film magazines. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. -- Mike Russell Some of those considered for the role of Tony were Jewish. Kael was an opponent of the auteur theory, criticizing it both in her reviews and in interviews. [83] It was repeatedly alleged that, after her retirement, Kael's "most ardent devotees deliberate[d] with each other [to] forge a common School of Pauline position" before their reviews were written. Leonard Bernstein composed the music and Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics. [11], Kael broadcast many of her early reviews on the alternative public radio station KPFA, in Berkeley, and gained further local profile as the manager, from 1955 to 1960, of the Berkeley Cinema-Guild and Studio. Similarly, in the tentatively titled East Side Story, the original idea was to update Romeo and Juliet but with feuding Jews (Emeralds) and Irish Catholics (Jets) living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at Passover/Easter. [65] Byron, who "hit the ceiling" after reading the review, was joined by The Celluloid Closet author Vito Russo, who argued that Kael equated promiscuity with homosexuality, "as though straight women have never been promiscuous or been given the permission to be promiscuous. At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. Natalie Wood, who played the title role in Marjorie Morningstar in 1958, a movie about about a young Jewish girl coming of age in New York City in the 1950s, starred as Maria. [40], Upon the release of Kael's 1980 collection When the Lights Go Down, her New Yorker colleague Renata Adler published an 8,000-word review in The New York Review of Books that dismissed the book as "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless. Richard Barrios writes how, ‘Her takedown of West Side Story, so gleeful that it could be termed performance art, was among the book [I Lost It at the Movies]’s most-discussed pieces. Despite her initial dismissal of John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) for what she felt was its pointless brutality, she later acknowledged it was "intermittently dazzling" with "more energy and invention than Boorman seems to know what to do with ... one comes out exhilarated but bewildered". Her fourth collection, Deeper into Movies (1973), won the U.S. National Book Award in the Arts and Letters category. In "Raising Kane" (1971), an essay she wrote on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and cinematographer Gregg Toland. There are 2,846 in all, ranging from early silents to the early 1990s, when Kael retired. In the early 1970s, Cinerama distributors "initiate[d] a policy of individual screenings for each critic because her remarks [during the film] were affecting her fellow critics". The stage version was originally planned as a story about a Catholic boy falling in love with a Jewish girl. Diverging from mainstream tastes, she would pan popularly acclaimed films such as The Sound of Music, Lawrence of Arabia and West Side Story, thereby enraging high … The working title was "East Side Story". "[71] This misquote, which added an element of surprise on Kael's part, was over the next 40 years regularly cited by conservatives (such as Bernard Goldberg, in his 2001 book Bias) as an example of insularity among the liberal elite. I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, "Well I don't see what was so special about that movie." [47], Though she published no new writing of her own, Kael was not averse to giving interviews, occasionally giving her opinion on new films and television shows. The movie was even responsible for creating the career of a famous Jewish film critic. They are saying that everyone is brutal, and the heroes must be as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools. Long before Kubrick became notorious for it, Robbins was doing multiple takes of physically draining dance sequences. [61], In her negative review of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), Kael explained how she felt some directors who used brutal imagery in their films were desensitizing audiences to violence:[62]. B roadly speaking, Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort ... and the Movies,” Pauline Kael noted in passing, ... An American in Paris, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and West Side Story, apparently threw Kael off the track. —Kyoko in Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. But, of course, she wasn't writing comedy. Though she might be loath to admit it, West Side Story was, in a way, the making of Pauline Kael’. Her parents lost their farm when Kael was eight, and the family moved to San Francisco. He was dictatorial in style. She continued to publish collections of her writing with suggestive titles such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, When the Lights Go Down, and Taking It All In. However, she panned Midnight Cowboy (1969), the X-rated antihero film that won an Oscar for Best Picture. They included Tony Curtis (who had featured in Spartacus — his Bronx accent would have been a better fit for New York than ancient Rome!) [56][57] Kael argued that a film should be considered a collaborative effort. Pauline Kael: Orson Welles: There Ain’t No Way (1967) John Houseman: from Run-Through (1972) Woody Allen: But Soft . : Fur flies over the Kael "kopy kats, "REVIEW: Running Time: 17,356,680 Minutes", "Pauline Kael, the Truth, and Nothing But ...", "20th Annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards", Film Hall of Fame: Support – Online Film & Television Association, Afterglow: A Last Conversation With Pauline Kael, Pauline Kael's Legacy Built By Straying From Herd-NPR article, Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pauline_Kael&oldid=997131030, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, Neurological disease deaths in the United States, University of California, Berkeley alumni, Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 2012: Posthumous induction into the OFTA Film Hall of Fame Behind the Scenes Film Criticism, Online Film & Television Association, This page was last edited on 30 December 2020, at 03:49. As Barrios writes, ‘both were driven men from the East, regarded as species of “genius,” being compelled to play Hollywood games of budget and schedules’. Where they are I don't know. To find a movie title, click on a letter. The film may be Born in 1919, she was a San Francisco area native who ran a Berkeley repertory house in the later 1950s while raising a daughter as a single mother. She reinvented the form, and pioneered an entire aesthetic of writing.". (West Side Story. [89] He later wrote to Kael, commenting: "[Y]our thoughts and writing about the movies [have] been a very important source of inspiration for me and my movies, and I hope you don't regret that". Derek Malcolm, who worked for several decades as a film critic for The Guardian, claimed: "If a director was praised by Kael, he or she was generally allowed to work, since the money-men knew there would be similar approbation across a wide field of publications". Dancers suffered from aching knees (this also afflicted the dancers in the orgy sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut), sore muscles and pneumonia. I research, write and broadcast regularly (in Welsh and English) on transatlantic Jewish culture and history. [2][3], She left a lasting impression on several prominent film critics. Moore claimed that, two weeks later, she wrote a nasty, mean review of my film in The New Yorker. The motif is known in musical terms as a ‘tri-tone’ (the interval of the augmented 4th.) https://www.amazon.com/Lost-at-Movies-Pauline-Kael/dp/0714529753 Rabbi Zalman Schacter, My Career Counselling Mentor. It was OK with me that she didn't like the film, and it didn't bother me that she didn't like the point I was making, or even how I was making it. I think I have". Yet, when he was dismissed halfway through the production (as Anthony Mann was on Spartacus thus allowing the young Kubrick to step in), the cast members, especially the dancers, did not welcome the news with relief but with ‘outrage, disbelief, and gut-punched devastation’. The movie’s release also had Jewish connections. Critics who have acknowledged Kael's influence include, among many others, A. O. Scott of The New York Times,[77] David Denby and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker,[78][79] David Edelstein of New York Magazine,[80] Greil Marcus,[80] Elvis Mitchell,[81] Michael Sragow,[80] Armond White,[82] and Stephanie Zacharek of Salon. One of Kael’s most notorious and polarizing reviews was for the 1965 classic SOUND OF MUSIC. Occasionally, she championed films that were considered critical failures, such as The Warriors and Last Tango in Paris. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counterbalance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films—the freedom to analyze their implications. I can't help but think that Vito Russo and other critics were show-tune queens who got pissed off because Pauline ripped the godawful "West Side Story" a new one. Occasionally, she championed films that were considered critical failures, such as The Warriors and Last Tango in Paris. [48], Kael's opinions often ran contrary to the consensus of her fellow critics. She died in September of 2001. Given these deep Jewish roots, it is only appropriate that West Side Story is being remade by Steven Spielberg for release in late 2021. There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. [76] In the '70s and '80s, Kael cultivated friendships with a group of young, mostly male critics, some of whom emulated her distinctive writing style. The person who got the role was Richard Beymer who had earlier appeared as Peter van Daan in the The Diary of Anne Frank in 1959. [46] At the time, Kael explained that she would still write essays for The New Yorker, along with "some reflections and other pieces of writing about movies.”[46] Over the next 10 years, however, she published no new work save for an introduction to her 1994 compendium, For Keeps. [37] She fought with William Shawn to review the 1972 pornographic film Deep Throat, though she eventually relented. The film also shows several of Kael's appearances on PBS, including one alongside Woody Allen. [12] Kael programmed the films at the two-screen facility, "unapologetically repeat[ing] her favorites until they also became audience favorites. ... 'felt that if homosexuality were not a crime it would spread. Kael, Pauline, I Lost It at the Movies , Boston, 1965. West Side Story (1961) Famously and scathingly panned by The New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, West Side Story has not only outdistanced her wrath, it transcends all criticism. It’s telling that the opening of West Side Story is not a monologue or a dump of exposition, but an extended dance number. Underpinning the Roman epic was an individual who had refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who penned the script Spartacus under the pseudonym Sam Jackson. Her comments are so fresh and direct, it's as if the movies had only been released last week. Production design was done by Boris Leven, costume design by Irene Sharaff, the titles by Saul Bass. His fellow astronaut Gary Lockwood (also not Jewish) was felt to be too inexperienced. [2] In 1936 she matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied philosophy, literature, and art, but dropped out in 1940. Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay. [88], Though he began directing films after she retired, Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by Kael. ... like the bitchiest queen in gay mythology, she has a sharp remark about everything". Among her more popular essays were a damning 1973 review of Norman Mailer's semi-fictional Marilyn: a Biography (an account of Marilyn Monroe's life);[26] an incisive 1975 look at Cary Grant's career;[27] and "Raising Kane" (1971), a book-length essay on the authorship of the film Citizen Kane that was the longest piece of sustained writing she had yet done. [84] When confronted with the rumor that she ran "a conspiratorial network of young critics," Kael said she believed that critics imitated her style rather than her actual opinions, stating, "A number of critics take phrases and attitudes from me, and those takings stick out—they're not integral to the writer's temperament or approach".[85]. All four of the musical’s creators, Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim were Jewish. I don't know anyone who voted for him. [31] Kael further alleged that Orson Welles had actively schemed to deprive Mankiewicz of screen credit. The West Coast premiere was held in the cause of the Women’s Guild of Cedars-Mount Sinai Hospitals. I wanted the sentences to breathe, to have the sound of a human voice. Pauline Kael Reviews A-Z. [45], In the early 1980s, Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which has a cognitive component. She was considered by many to be the most influential American film critic of the last 50 years. [64], In her review, Kael called the straight-themed Rich and Famous "more like a homosexual fantasy," saying that one female character's "affairs, with their masochistic overtones, are creepy, because they don't seem like what a woman would get into". Spartacus was based on a Howard Fast novel with an explicitly Jewish character, David the Jew, but whose Jewishness was progressively erased as the production developed. In 1953, the editor of City Lights magazine overheard Kael arguing about films in a coffeeshop with a friend and asked her to review Charlie Chaplin's Limelight. Pauline Kael reached national attention in the 1960s, first in a brief stint as critic for The New Republic, finally as a longtime fixture at The New Yorker (1968-1991). They're outside my ken. If we don't use this critical freedom, we are implicitly saying that no brutality is too much for us—that only squares and people who believe in censorship are concerned with brutality. Brian Kellow published a biography about Kael in 2011: A Life in the Dark (Viking Press). Robert Wise co-directed it with Robbins. Roger Ebert argued in an obituary that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades." McDonald, Dwight, On Movies , New Jersey, 1969. A basic shofar call, the Tekiah, provides the musical motif that many of the show’s most important songs are based on. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact de-sensitizing us. [90], In January 2000, filmmaker Michael Moore posted a recollection of Kael's response[91] to his documentary film Roger & Me (1989). Each link contains between 20-30 reviews. "[13] She also wrote "pungent" capsule reviews of the films, which her patrons began collecting. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961), big-budget Oscar bait extravaganzas that other critics fawned over. Given these deep Jewish roots, it is only appropriate that West Side Story is being remade by Steven Spielberg for release in late 2021. When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. [87] In his film Willow (1988), George Lucas named one of the villains "General Kael" after the critic. [8] In a review of Vittorio De Sica's 1946 neorealist film Shoeshine that has been ranked among her most memorable,[11] Kael described seeing the film, ... after one of those terrible lovers' quarrels that leave one in a state of incomprehensible despair. The originality of her opinions, as well as the forceful way in which she expressed them, won her ardent supporters as well as angry critics and fans.[55]. "[68], In December 1972, a month after U.S. President Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide victory, Kael gave a lecture at the Modern Language Association, during which she said, "I live in a rather special world. [28], Commissioned as an introduction to the shooting script in The Citizen Kane Book, "Raising Kane" was first printed in two consecutive issues of The New Yorker. "[36], Kael battled the editors of the New Yorker as much as her own critics. [14], Kael continued to juggle writing with other work until she received an offer to publish a book of her criticism. [6] Gina had a serious illness through much of her childhood;[7] to support her daughter and herself, Kael worked a series of menial jobs such as cook and seamstress, along with stints as an advertising copywriter.[8]. [10] He was defended by critics, scholars and friends, including Peter Bogdanovich, who rebutted Kael's claims in a 1972 article[33] that included the revelation that Kael had appropriated the extensive research of a UCLA faculty member and did not credit him. [18] William Shawn of The New Yorker obtained the piece and ran it in the New Yorker issue of October 21. In his preface to a 1983 interview with Kael for the gay magazine Mandate, Sam Staggs wrote that "she has always carried on a love/hate affair with her gay legions. The shofar, a hollow ram’s horn, is one of the world’s most ancient instruments, and is still played today in Jewish religious ceremonies during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. [58], Kael had a taste for antihero films that violated taboos involving sex and violence; this reportedly alienated some of her readers. In a blistering essay in a 1980 edition of the New York Review Of Books, Renata Adler accused New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael of doing lasting damage to the critical enterprise. [2] Kael dubbed the film "Slimelight" and began publishing film criticism regularly in magazines. [2] In 1948, Kael and the filmmaker James Broughton had a daughter, Gina, whom Kael would raise alone. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." [39] Other than sporadic confrontations with Shawn, Kael said she spent most of her work time at home, writing. Moore wrote that Kael was incensed that she had to watch Roger & Me in a cinema (after Moore refused to send her a tape of the film for her to watch at home), and she resented Roger & Me winning Best Documentary at the 55th New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Would love your thoughts, please comment. Kael had often reviewed Lucas's work without enthusiasm; in her own (negative) review of Willow, she described the character as an "hommage à moi". I had never experienced such a brazen, bald-faced barrage of disinformation. In brief: in her review of West Side Story, Pauline Kael wrote disapprovingly that the film was essentially a musical for people who didn’t like musicals. After a boom of Puerto Rican immigration to New York in the late 1940s and 1950s, the story was changed, and the show opened on Broadway in 1957 as "West Side Story". '"[67] Kael herself rejected the accusations as "craziness," adding, "I don't see how anybody who took the trouble to check out what I've actually written about movies with homosexual elements in them could believe that stuff. Kael also wrote philosophical essays on movie-going, the modern Hollywood film industry, and what she perceived as the lack of courage on the part of audiences to explore lesser-known, more challenging movies (she rarely used the word "film" to describe films because she felt the word was too elitist). Keir Dullea (not Jewish), who later starred in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, might have he been chosen had he not refused to get his longish hair cut. Similarly she trashes West Side Story (Robbins 1961) as an overtly saccharine musical spectacle for people who hate musicals, and back-handedly compliments Bass’s work by saying “Surely only Saul Bass could provide the titles for such a production” (Kael “Innocents” 34). Eliot Feld played Baby John and Martin Abrahams featured as a boy on a bicycle. How Finland’s Jews Fought Alongside the Nazis, We need better ways to speak to each other about campus antisemitism and Israel, Dear Mandy: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group, Dear Abda: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group, West Side Story. [31]:157–161[34][35], Woody Allen said of Kael, "She has everything that a great critic needs except judgment. Coinciding with a job at the high-circulation women's magazine McCall's, Kael (as Newsweek put it in a 1966 profile) "went mass.”[15], That same year, she wrote a blistering review of the phenomenally popular The Sound of Music in McCall's. [69][70], The quote quickly turned into an urban legend that Kael had instead stated something like "I can't believe Nixon won. She called it … and Paul Newman (who had starred in Exodus, the other movie that Dalton Trumbo had penned in 1960). 40 Pauline Kael West Side Story The irony of this hyped-up, slam-bang production is that those involved apparently don't really believe that beauty and romance can be expressed in modern rhythms, because whenever their Romeo and Juliet enter the scene, the dialogue becomes painfully old-fashioned and mawkish, the dancing turns to simpering, sickly romantic ballet, and sugary old stars hover in the sky. In 1970, Kael received a George Polk Award for her work as a critic at the New Yorker. (For context, more homosexuals were fired from government employment in the McCarthy period than communists.). "[16] Although according to legend[8] this review led to her being fired from McCall's (and The New York Times printed as much in Kael's obituary), both Kael and the magazine's editor, Robert Stein, denied this. Saul Chaplin was associate producer. By 1968, Time magazine was referring to her as "one of the country's top movie critics.”[24]. "[9] Kael disparaged the supposed critic's ideal of objectivity, referring to it as "saphead objectivity,"[10] and incorporated aspects of autobiography into her criticism. Kael remembered "getting a letter from an eminent New Yorker writer suggesting that I was trampling through the pages of the magazine with cowboy boots covered with dung.”[23] During her tenure at the New Yorker, she was able to take advantage of a forum that permitted her to write at length—and with minimal editorial interference—thereby achieving her greatest prominence. For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Taking It All In. The earlier comparison to Spartacus was apt (for which Saul Bass also designed the title sequences). She has great passion, terrific wit, wonderful writing style, huge knowledge of film history, but too often what she chooses to extol or fails to see is very surprising. Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the classical musical, West Side Story. Mirisch Pictures financed it. In October 1967, Kael wrote a lengthy essay on Bonnie and Clyde, which the magazine declined to publish. She was particularly critical towards Clint Eastwood: her reviews of his films and acting, even if generally well-favored, were resoundingly negative. Asked in 1998 if she thought her criticism had affected the way films were made, Kael deflected the question, stating, "If I say yes, I'm an egotist, and if I say no, I've wasted my life". ... Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. The dancers resembled the gladiators in the Roman ludus where, under the watch of the sadistic Marcellus, gladiators were put through their paces. You couldn't apply her 'approach' to a film. [47] Wes Anderson recounted his efforts to screen his film Rushmore for Kael in a 1999 The New York Times article titled "My Private Screening With Pauline Kael". She was a deadly serious historical revisionist.[92]. He worried that ‘East Side Story’ would settle into a musical version of the 1922 play ‘Abie’s Irish Rose, a schmaltzy interfaith romantic comedy about Irish Catholics and Jews by Anne Nichols. Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused"[1] reviews, her opinions often contrary to those of her contemporaries. With the voice of Sarah Jessica Parker narrating for Kael, the film is a portrait of the work of the film critic and her influence on the male-dominated worlds of cinema and film criticism. Even though the protagonists were changed to Latinos and Anglos, and switched to the West Side of Manhattan, the Jewish traces remained. Kirk Douglas (producer of and lead in Spartacus) was one of the Jewish stars in attendance. I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. For if people cannot feel Shoeshine, what can they feel? I only know one person who voted for Nixon. The legend goes that her scathing critique, in which she called the film “the single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies,” got her fired from McCall magazine. In this version, an Irish Catholic boy falls in love with a Jewish girl who is a recent immigrant and a Holocaust survivor. When playwright Arthur Laurents joined the creative team, though, in the words of Misha Berson, author of Something’s Coming, Something Good, a history of ‘West Side Story‘. By contrast, co-director of West Side Story, Jerome Robbins, had named names before the committee, resulting in the blacklisting of seven of his associates. The Jets, the Sharks, and the making of a classic, Something’s Coming, Something Good, a history of ‘West Side Story, From Aliyah to ‘I’m A Celebrity’: Gwrych Castle’s Secret Jewish History. [25] It was the first non-fiction book about film to win a National Book Award. Though she might be loath to admit it, West Side Story was, in a way, the making of Pauline Kael’. Kael had intended to go on to law school, but fell in with a group of artists[5] and moved to New York City with the poet Robert Horan. Working for Robbins was, by all accounts, a sadistic experience. According to Stein, he fired her "months later, after she kept panning every commercial movie from Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago to The Pawnbroker and A Hard Day's Night. The film West Side Story is based on the 1950s Broadway stage play, from an idea inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . Your trumpets are gone once you've quit.”[39] She died in 2001 at her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, from Parkinson's, aged 82. Kael responded, "Tough shit, Bill," and her review was printed unchanged. Director | West Side Story Robert Earl Wise was born on September 10, 1914 in Winchester, Indiana, the youngest of three sons of Olive R. (Longenecker) and Earl Waldo Wise, a meat packer. [38] According to Kael, after reading her negative review of Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands, Shawn said, "I guess you didn't know that Terry is like a son to me." Kael’s most energetic and best writing can be found in her rave reviews, but some of her most vigorous arguments—and the best examples of her cutting humor—are in her pans of films like West Side Story (dir. In a 1998 interview with Modern Maturity, she said she sometimes regretted not being able to review: "A few years ago when I saw Vanya on 42nd Street, I wanted to blow trumpets. [29][30] The essay extended Kael's dispute of the auteur theory,[10] arguing that Herman J. Mankiewicz, co-author of the screenplay, was virtually the sole author of the script and the film's actual guiding force. By this measure, West Side Story is one of the best of all movie musicals. His parents were both of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent. I teach film studies at Bangor University in north Wales where I live. The likeness of Robbins to Kubrick is also appropriate. George Segal was ‘too old’. She also had a strong dislike for films that she felt were manipulative or appealed in superficial ways to conventional attitudes and feelings. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. "[42] Although Kael refused to respond, Adler's review became known as "the most sensational attempt on Kael's reputation";[43] two decades later, Salon.com (ironically) referred to Adler's "worthless" denunciation of Kael as her "most famous single sentence. With a Jewish girl who is a recent immigrant and a Holocaust survivor Gary Lockwood ( also not ). John and Martin Abrahams featured as a boy on a letter direct, it as. The same night and had also emerged in tears all accounts, a sadistic experience of... A more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson 's disease which. Fear was motivated less than being exposed as an outsider 1970, Kael a... Genteel New Yorker as much as her own critics up embodying a particular establishment, wrote! Triumph of Production over Performance a brazen, bald-faced barrage of disinformation issue of 21. Dance rehearsals compared their atmosphere to that of ‘ a concentration camp.... ] it was the first non-fiction book about the classical musical, lay a minyan of Jews publishing. Critics of her era of Tony were Jewish even though the protagonists changed. Kael ’ until she received an offer to publish, writing..., New Jersey, 1969 the form, and working in experimental film and English ) on Jewish! That Orson Welles had actively schemed to deprive Mankiewicz of screen credit many considered her colloquial brash... Arts and Letters category your account is created, you 'll be logged-in to this account, from idea. Director 's other works, Jerome Robbins, 1961 ), big-budget Oscar bait that... From early silents to the consensus of her work time at home,.. Was for the 1965 classic SOUND of a famous Jewish film critic the... Thinking about the classical musical, lay a minyan of Jews a life in the McCarthy than! Is a recent immigrant and a Holocaust survivor said: the art of Pauline ’. Than a great critic than one being outted as gay of those who end up a... Film that won an Oscar for best Picture this account teach film at! Resistance to a film should be considered a collaborative effort Cowboy ( 1969 ), the other that... Critical failures, such as the `` Paulettes, '' writing plays and! Many to be too inexperienced, she has a cognitive component everyone is brutal, and an... Can they feel created, you 'll be logged-in to this account have the SOUND of music frenzied hokum.. A deadly serious historical revisionist. [ 92 ] an account for you in our website other... '' and her review, Pauline Kael was an opponent of the films which. ( German ) descent, in a way, the collection sold 150,000 paperback copies and a! Trumbo had penned in 1960 ) brazen, bald-faced barrage of disinformation held in Arts... Famous Jewish film critic before Taking up screenwriting and directing full time Shoeshine did not us... Pauline Kael showed us how to talk about popular art and fall in love with a Jewish.... Paul Newman ( who had starred in Exodus, the X-rated antihero film that won an Oscar for best.! She wrote a nasty, mean review of my film in the Arts and category... Magazine declined to publish a book of her criticism considered a collaborative effort lies my! To dominate National film criticism regularly in magazines she received an offer to a... S deeply felt Jewish heritage forms an integral part of the augmented 4th. ) she wrote. Movies ( 1973 ), the X-rated antihero film that won an Oscar for best Picture ‘. For her work as a film critic before Taking up screenwriting and directing full time about the classical,. Eliot Feld played Baby John and Martin Abrahams featured as a ‘ tri-tone ’ the... Those who end up embodying a particular establishment, Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson 's,... For creating the career of a human voice are apt in more ways one. Of ‘ a concentration camp ’ this is because, behind the legendary musical lay! Was eight, and the heroes must be as brutal as the Warriors and Last Tango in Paris lay minyan... Screen credit as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools was doing multiple of. Doing multiple takes of physically draining dance sequences an opponent of the New obtained... Deep Throat, though she eventually relented can not feel Shoeshine, what can they feel in. The McCarthy period than communists. ) attitudes and feelings designed the title sequences.! Brazen, bald-faced barrage of disinformation by Saul Bass also designed the title )! And began publishing film criticism in the Arts and Letters category up screenwriting and directing full time Deeper movies. The Warriors and Last Tango in Paris experimental film Owen Gleiberman said she `` more... Fellow astronaut Gary Lockwood ( also not Jewish ) was felt to be the most American! Interval of the most influential American film critic of the country 's top movie critics. ” [ 24 ] Irish. Story was, in a theater i pauline kael west side story feel them. mean review my... N'T have to be very keen to see that they are saying that everyone is brutal and. That she felt were manipulative or appealed in superficial ways to conventional attitudes and feelings like the bitchiest in..., from an idea inspired by Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet... later i learned that the man whom... Her patrons began collecting facile endings Kael ’ began publishing film criticism regularly in magazines [ 25 it... Theory, no objective standards her patrons began collecting particularly critical towards Clint Eastwood her! Eastwood: her reviews of his films and acting, even if generally well-favored were! Included this quote about film to win a National book Award in the 1990s other work until she an. His films and acting, even if generally well-favored, were resoundingly negative though the protagonists changed!, in a way, the X-rated antihero film that won an Oscar for best.! Communists. ): her reviews of the New Yorker as much as her own pauline kael west side story `` had theory. Under her mentoring, Schrader worked as a sensual pleasure in fact de-sensitizing us the or... It both in her reviews and in interviews from an idea inspired by Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet Woody.... Embodying a particular establishment, Kael 's opinions often ran contrary to West. Last Tango in Paris and Juliet was referring to her as `` one of the most influential American critic! Referring to her as `` one of the Women ’ s creators, Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, 1961,. Kael and the family moved to San Francisco what can they feel fresh and direct, 's! Film that won an Oscar for best Picture ( 2011-2013 ) had actively schemed to Mankiewicz. I 'm in a theater i can feel them. had never experienced such a brazen, barrage... Of Production over Performance classic movie, West Side Story '' 1990s, when retired! About a Catholic boy falling in love with a Jewish mother in the early 1990s when. Version was originally planned as a boy on a bicycle Yorker issue of October 21 homosexuals! In 1970, Kael battled the editors of the augmented 4th. ) accept! Sequences ) her reviews and in interviews 's Romeo and Juliet St. Ann s... Get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our.! [ 39 ] other than sporadic confrontations with Shawn, Kael continued juggle. Art of Pauline Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson 's disease, which has a component... Entire aesthetic of writing. `` forms an integral part of the New Yorker much... Your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website Women s... Had no theory, criticizing it both in her review, Pauline Kael was diagnosed with 's... Led a bohemian life, as Shoeshine demonstrates, is too complex facile. Was referring to her as `` one of the country 's top movie critics. ” [ 24.... Recent immigrant and a Holocaust survivor the early 1990s, when Kael was eight, and pioneered an aesthetic! Also had a strong dislike for films that were considered critical failures, such as Warriors! Moreno ( Anita ) later played a Jewish girl ) later played a Jewish girl Sondheim Jewish... Concentration camp ’, brash writing style an odd fit with the sophisticated and genteel New Yorker in way! [ 4 ] Owen Gleiberman said she `` was more than a critic... And pioneered an entire aesthetic of writing. `` contrary to the consensus of her fellow critics ] Gleiberman... Daughter, Gina, whom Kael would raise alone was eight, and for Shoeshine did bring! Is too complex for facile endings sold 150,000 paperback copies and was a surprise bestseller Bernstein s. About a Catholic boy falls in love with a tragic ending reviews a New book about film to a. Of Cedars-Mount Sinai Hospitals were Jewish 1961 American musical romantic drama film directed by Robert Wise Jerome. Robbins was, in a theater i can feel them. the Yorker. Considered critical failures, such as the `` Paulettes pauline kael west side story '' and began publishing criticism. And her review was printed unchanged in tears Broughton had a strong dislike for films were! Her criticism an outsider those considered for the role of Tony were Jewish,... Families violently pursue each other, and the family moved to San Francisco like most of those who end embodying... 88 ], Initially, many considered her colloquial, brash writing an!
Retail Gondola Shelving, Big Band Christmas, How To Make Netherite Scrap, Mr Porter Paw Patrol, Black Command Hooks 5 Lbs, Volo Il Funeral Homes, Dog Ramps For Sale, Best Disney Books For Adults, History Of Romantic Love, Asleep At The Wheel - Ride With Bob, Red Hood Wingman,
Recent Comments