Pauline Kael (68 page)

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Authors: Brian Kellow

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40
“Pauline is Pauline”:
Author interview with Dana Salisbury, September 2009.
40
“what sounded like such a solid thing”:
Letter from Robert Horan to Pauline Kael, undated.
40
“excepting the fact”:
Letter from Horan to Kael, July 25, 1949.
40
“When it happens to you”:
Author interview with Meredith Brody, February 28, 2011.
41
“The pictures of Gina are a delight”:
Letter from Horan to Kael, July 25, 1949.
41
“I’m Gina!” “I’m a baby!”:
Gina James’s baby book, May–June 1950, housed at the Lilly Library, Indiana University.
41
“a farce for people who read and write”:
Orpheus in Sausalito
, play by Pauline Kael, housed at Lilly Library.
41
“The world doesn’t find you”:
Ibid.
42
“There is not an unintelligent line in
The
[sic]
Shadow of a Man
”:
The Santa Barbara Star
, November 2, 1950.
42
“brash, confident, pugnacious”:
Original screen story by Pauline Kael,
The Brash Young Man
, housed at the Lilly Library.
42
“He became modest and shy”:
Ibid.
42
“Mr. Benjamin Burl’s infatuation”:
Ibid.
43
“no”:
Ibid.
43
“about the substance and quality of a slick-paper magazine story”:
Columbia Pictures reader report on
The Brash Young Man
, housed at the Lilly Library.
43
“its first best chance would be with the magazines”:
Ibid.
44
“I was never hungry in my life”:
Author interview with Warner Friedman, May 12, 2009.
44
“You never were?”:
Ibid.
45
“When
Shoeshine
opened in 1947”:
Pauline Kael,
I Lost It at the Movies
(Boston: Atlantic–Little, Brown,1965), 114.
46
“somewhat segmented art-film audience”:
City Lights
, winter 1953.
46
“When the mass audience becomes convinced”:
Ibid.
46
“The Chaplin of
Limelight
is no irreverent little clown”:
Ibid.
46
“surely the richest hunk of self-gratification”:
Ibid.
46
“My dear, you are a true artist”:
Ibid.
46
“The camera emphasis on Chaplin’s eyes”:
Ibid.
CHAPTER FIVE
48
“The new wide screen surrounds us”:
Pauline Kael,
I Lost It at the Movies
(Boston: Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1965)
,
323–24.
48
“When Senator McCarthy identifies himself”:
Ibid., 328.
49
“the type of thing I have been trying to get hold of for a long time”:
Letter from Penelope Houston to Pauline Kael, July 23, 1954.
50
“What keeps
you
going?”:
Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,”
The New Yorker
(July 4, 2005).
51
“She was the closest thing to somebody who had my kind of vision about movies”:
Author interview with Edward Landberg, May 24, 2008.
51
“I hadn’t written notes”:
Ibid.
52
“There was a little resistance to the notion”:
Author interview with Stephen Kresge, June 15, 2008.
52
“one of the first imaginative approaches to the musical as a film form”:
Pauline Kael, Berkeley Cinema Guild notes for
Sous les toits de Paris.
52
“not really so ‘great’ as its devotees claim”:
Kael, Berkeley Cinema Guild notes for
Red River.
52
“My parents hardly ever went to the movies”:
Author interview with Carol van Strum, February 11, 2010.
53
“They were doing it”:
Ibid.
53
“Landberg was very remote”:
Author interview with Ariel Parkinson, November 29, 2009.
54
“We were married for something like a year”:
Author interview with Edward Landberg, May 24, 2008.
54
“Pauline and Ed Landberg came for dinner one night”:
Author interview with Ariel Parkinson, November 29, 2009.
54
“I soon found out that I couldn’t stand this woman”:
Author interview with Edward Landberg, May 24, 2008.
55
“Like a public building designed to satisfy the widest public’s concept of grandeur”:
“Movies, the Desperate Art,” Daniel Talbot, ed.,
Film: An Anthology
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 52.
55
“about as magical as a Fitzpatrick travelogue”:
Ibid.
55
“protagonists in any meaningful sense”:
Ibid., 65.
56
“been quick to object to a film with a difficult theme”:
Ibid., 57.
56
“She was one of the most ethical people I ever knew”:
Author interview with David Young Allen, September 9, 2009.
57
“Cinema Studio and Guild!”:
Remarks by Gina James, memorial tribute to Pauline Kael, November 30, 2001.
57
“Her mind was always moving five times faster”:
Author interview with Donald Gutierrez, July 21, 2009.
57
“She had a motherly side”:
Author interview with Ernest Callenbach, September 9, 2008.
58
“She started damning his poems”:
Author interview with Donald Gutierrez, July 21, 2009.
59
“Her attention to Gina would go on and off like a searchlight”:
Author interview with Stephen Kresge, June 15, 2008.
60
“Does a poet edit his own poetry?”:
Ibid.
60
“She was overwhelmed in his presence”:
Ibid.
60
“She got Gina and me out of the house”:
Author interview with David Young Allen, September 9, 2009.
CHAPTER SIX
61
“She was kind of a champion of mine”:
Author interview with Alan Rich, February 21, 2009.
61
“I remember running into Pauline on Telegraph Avenue”:
Ibid.
63
“I would like to suggest that the educated audience”:
Pauline Kael,
I Lost It at the Movies
(Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1965)
,
31.
63
“large generalizations in order to be suggestive”:
Ibid., 31.
63
“incense burning”:
Ibid., 32.
63
“audiences of social workers”:
Ibid., 34.
63
“It is a depressing fact”:
Ibid., 41.
64
“The codes of civilized living ”:
Ibid., 129–130.
64
“a study of the human condition at the higher social and economic levels”:
Ibid., 148.
65
“cinematic masterpiece”:
Ibid., 142.
65
“The irony of this hyped-up, slam-bang production”:
Ibid., 143, 146.
65
“overwrought, tasteless, and offensive”:
Ibid., 150.
65
“irresistible evocation of the mood of Mark Twain”:
Ibid., 150.
66
“The injustice of it is almost perfect”:
John Osborne and Nigel Kneale, screenplay of
Look Back in Anger,
1959.
66
“a conventional weakling”:
Kael,
I Lost It at the Movies
, 68.
66
“about the failures of men and women”:
Ibid., 69.
67
“Aren’t we supposed to feel sorry for these girls”:
Ibid., 176.
67
“very expansive guy”:
Author interview with Bob Greensfelder, October 3, 2008.
67
“sleepy and bored”:
Pauline Kael, KPFA broadcast, November 22, 1961.
68
“the most simple and traditional and graceful of all modern Westerns”:
Pauline Kael,
5001 Nights at the Movies
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 629.
69
“interviews with Quakers and Unitarians”:
Pauline Kael, KPFA broadcast, December 8, 1962.
69
“Do you really want to be endlessly confirmed”:
Ibid.
69
“And you I suppose”:
Ibid.
69
“a million words delivered without remuneration is a rather major folly”:
Kael, KPFA broadcast, March 27, 1963.
69
“if KPFA is not a station”:
Ibid.
70
“although some of her charges made that an attractive possibility”:
Letter from Trevor Thomas to KPFA subscribers, April 17, 1963.
70
“Despite your implacable harassment of me in print”:
Letter from Dwight Macdonald to Pauline Kael, November 27, 1963.
70
“one of the best I’ve read”:
Ibid.
70
“the most urgent task for American film criticism . . . a rationale for . . . Critical practice”:
Letter from Dwight Macdonald to John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, November 27, 1963.
70
“cinema has become”:
Ibid.
70
“Miss Kael has little income independent from what she earns by her pen”:
Ibid.
71
“She had a style that appealed to a lot of people:”:
Author interview with John Simon, March 6, 2008.
71
“Her main trouble was, of course”:
Ibid.
71
“She felt that it would make me more important than I am”:
Ibid.
71
“marvelous ambiguity and split in the content”:
Pauline Kael, panel discussion at Donnell Library, September 1963.
71
“enjoying Hud’s anarchism”:
Ibid.
71
“That’s sociology”:
Ibid.
71
“I am worried about Pauline Kael’s position”:
Ibid.
72
“to assuage their own boredom”:
Ibid.
72
“I’ve never been bored, John”:
Ibid.
72
“wants to be a great film—it cries out its intentions”:
Pauline Kael,
I Lost It at the Movies
, 192.
72
“surprisingly like the confectionary dreams”:
Ibid., 263.
72
“And isn’t it rather adolescent to treat the failure of love with such solemnity?”:
Ibid., 184.
72
“For whom does love last?”:
Ibid.
73
“Pauline had her blind spots”:
Author interview with Colin Young, June 12, 2009.
CHAPTER SEVEN
75
“The strong director imposes his own personality”:
Andrew Sarris,
The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968
(New York: E. P. Dutton), 31.
75
“Ultimately, the auteur theory”:
Ibid., 30.
76
“If I had not been aware of Walsh”:
Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, eds.,
Film Theory and Criticism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 665.
76
“Would Sarris not notice the repetition”:
Pauline Kael,
I Lost It at the Movies
(Boston: Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1965), 294.
76
“The greatness of critics like Bazin in France”:
Ibid., 295.
76
“technical competence”:
Ibid.
76
“The greatness of a director like Cocteau”:
Ibid., 296.
76
“the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value”:
Ibid.
76
“The smell of a skunk”:
Ibid., 297.
77
“because Hitchcock repeats”:
Ibid.
77
“not so much a personal style as a personal theory of audience psychology”:
Ibid., 298.
77
“interior meaning”:
Ibid., 302.
77
“extrapolated from the tension”:
Ibid., 302.
77
“the opposite of what we have always taken for granted in the arts”:
Ibid.
77
“Their ideal auteur is the man who signs a long-term contract”:
Ibid.
77
“I suspect that the ‘stylistic consistency’”:
Ibid., 306.
78
“What’s the matter?”:
Author interview with Andrew Sarris, February 17, 2009.
78
“She was always on the boil”:
Ibid.
78
“I wasn’t as worldly and aggressive”:
Ibid.
78
“Pauline acted as if I were a great menace of American criticism”:
Ibid.
78
“attack on the theory received more publicity”:
Sarris,
The American Cinema
, 26.
CHAPTER EIGHT
80
“Growing numbers of middle-class consumers”:
Todd Gitlin,
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
(New York: Bantam, 1987), 16.
80
“The rock ’n’ roll generation”:
Ibid., 6.
81
“The Associated Press picked up the editorial”:
Author interview with Judith Crist, July 17, 2008.
82
“
The Group
is the book that Mary McCarthy’s admirers have been waiting for”:
Pauline Kael, unpublished review of
The Group
, September 1963.
83
“rather fruitless to care so much about how fairly”:
Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Pauline Kael, September 14, 1963.
83
“the general recommendations which are truly not too radical”:
Letter from Peter Davison to Pauline Kael, July 16, 1964.
83
“some of the very best pieces were marred by being too long”:
Ibid.
84
“It’s
all right
, I want to say”:
Eudora Welty, “Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?,”
Critical Inquiry
(September 1974), 220.
84
“were restless and talkative”:
Pauline Kael,
I Lost It at the Movies
(Boston: Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1965), 15.
84
“accepts lack of clarity”:
Ibid.
85
“boob who attacks ambiguity and complexity”:
Ibid.
85
“more and more people”:
Ibid.

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