Comments on: Pauline Kael: One Against the Herd

By: NeoconsNailed

NeoconsNailed — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 12:06:37 +0000

Well, you know the Jews and their quaint custom of calling everything they don’t like fascist :)

Did any of you see Straw Dogs? I didn’t — sounded awful. Some were into trashing on the old standards eg re celluloid violence, I wasn’t. I realize I might personally enjoy it now being as disgusted with humanity as I am.

So, he was the meter reader in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Keep seeing his name as the credits pass, just looked it up. I assumed for a long time IOTBS was about the blight of political correctness, but the internet came along and I found out it was quite the opposite. (Like Hollywood would bust PC? Well, it used to avocationally.)

By: Rob Lawson

Rob Lawson — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 23:58:59 +0000

That comment about Straw Dogs being a “fascist work of art” shows how dim Kael could be. Peckinpah’s work in general, and Straw Dogs in particular, is about the individual struggling against forces at large in the world. Fascism suppresses the individual in favor of the state; Peckinpah favored the individual against the forces of conformism.

Kael came to think that because she was writing for a prestigious publication she knew what she was writing about, beyond film history and film form, which she did have a depth of knowledge about.

She was, however, a fine stylist in her writing.

By: Andrea Ostrov Letania

Andrea Ostrov Letania — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 14:48:19 +0000

“It is almost like a reflex, a form of mindless rebellion when she raved about Straw Dogs”

She appreciated its power but denounced it as a small-minded ‘fascist work of art’.

By: NeoconsNailed

NeoconsNailed — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:10:43 +0000

Kael was an egomaniac whose writing was precious and leftwing. A traditionalist writing for commie McCall’s and New Yorker? I don’t think so! She hated The Ten Commandments (1956). The first sentence under the first subheading of Wikipedia’s article on her is no surprise.

By: Rob Lawson

Rob Lawson — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:03:11 +0000

Also, the film director Sam Peckinpah may have said it best, in his characteristic way: “Sometimes she’s just cracking walnuts with her ass.”

By: Rob Lawson

Rob Lawson — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:43:29 +0000

William Shawn no doubt hired Pauline Kael because she could be a “lively” writer. As noted in this article, being “lively” didn’t always mean “insightful,” or even particularly intelligent. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a “monumentally unimaginative movie”; the first showing of Last Tango in Paris “should become a landmark in movie history comparable to May 29, 1913–the night Le Sacre du Printemps was first performed–in music history.” Kael was often shameless in coming up with a review that would draw attention to…Pauline Kael. Ultimately that was all that she was interested in. Nothing so banal as reviewing a film could interest someone who felt she ought to be seen as a public intellectual, and who cultivated an audience who reveled in what tart dismissal or disarmingly honeyed encomium she would come up with.

She was informative, even illuminating as a film historian, but her need to fan the coals of her own cult of personality rendered her nugatory as a film critic.