When the Lights Go Down

The Film Writings #6

by Pauline Kael

Brings together all of Kael's writings for The New Yorker over the past four years, including her famous profile of Cary Grant and her reviews of some two hundred films of the late 1970s

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Criticism, Essays, Media Tie In, Pop Culture

591 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. She was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated, and sharply focused" movie reviews. She approached movies emotionally, with a strongly colloquial writing style. She is often regarded as the most influential American film critic of her day and made a lasting impression on other major critics including Armond White and Roger Ebert, who has said that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades."

Reviews

[Andrew]

This is about the highest compliment I can pay a critic -- even when I vociferously disagree with Pauline Kael, even when I'm wondering how she could be so wrong-headed and idiotic, her wrong-headedness is so articulate and bitchy and witty that I still listen to what she has to say. This is a woman who was willing to champion The Warriors at a time when a lot of genre films that are now considered classics were dismissed as teenage schlock, and a woman who also had the courage to point out the nudity of the emperor on some of the sillier relics of the 1970s European avant-garde. She stepped on everyone who was anyone's toes, publicly pie-fighting with people like William Shawn and Renata Adler in what were essentially Twitter feuds avant la lettre, and I'm sure if she was alive today she would be one of the most psychotic posters out there. As it stands, she will be remembered as one of history's all-time great sandy vaginas, and bless her for it.

[Paul Dinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her reviews of Jaws, The Eyes of Laura Mars, and Taxi Driver under the heading of an essay on the Fear of movies is what makes this volumne one of her best and for Pauline Kael that is saying a lot. She is the lone voice to hate Star Wars and yet praise Jaws. She was a great author.

[Rene Bard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pauline Kael was a talented writer whom I read, even though I don't think I have anything in common with her. We are all products of our time, I suppose, so maybe there is that similarity. But in her time, virile men had hairy chests like peacock plumage, and left-wing dreams of communism and sexual freedom were part of the universal belief system of an erudite urban intellectual.

I don't have a hairy chest nor do I think hairy chests are particularly desirable for a man or a woman. But somehow PK found Jeff Bridges's "hairless chest" a letdown on page 451, and it is little gems like that that I find enjoyable about her writing. Her movie reviews were all over the place, almost a string of random non sequiturs much like this review, but she was never boring. She was a master of the backhanded compliment and the upfront brutal putdown. I'm sure she would've been a star in the USSR or in the back seat of Marlon Brando's car.

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't always agree, but she was very writer and had certainly given a lot of thought to film. I think sometimes she is a bit anti-art film but maybe that is not such a bad thing--keeps us all in check. A good story is, after all, a good story.

[Randy Stapilus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the first Kael book I got and read. And I've gotten and read most of them since, partly for the insight into the movies, and partly because I really came to like her writing style. I can recognize elements of it in my own, after all these years.

[Neil Pasricha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pauline Kael was the ‘witty, biting, highly opinionated’ movie critic for The New Yorker from the late 60s to the early 90s. This book is a dense 600-page collection of all her reviews from 1975 to 1980. (She’s got a pile of other books with her other reviews.) When Quentin Tarantino was a little kid he’d go to the movies by himself and then head to the B. Dalton’s bookstore to flip open The New Yorker and see what she thought. “At the end of the day Pauline Kael is my favorite writer,” he told me. “I find her voice completely captivating … I kind of adopted her view as my own.” In an obituary for Pauline Kael (she died in 2001), Roger Ebert wrote that she "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades." There is something addictive about her reviews and many of them made me want to rush out to watch or rewatch classics from forty years ago. Hundreds of movies are reviewed in this book including biggies like Carrie, Rocky, Taxi Driver, Jaws, and Star Wars.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides a few reviews of hers I've read over the years, this was my first major introduction into Kael's work as a film critic. Not all reviews are masterpieces and I don't agree with all of her opinions but it's undeniable that she treats film criticism as an art of its own. Her writing is so fluid and propulsive and oftentimes hilarious.

I had to create a note of all the films I need to watch or re-watch with the intention of re-reading her review beforehand for added context.

[Adam Shafer · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Many people resist quality; they're afraid of being outclassed.“ –Pauline Kael

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is when things started to go south. In 1975, Kael was 55 years old, and no longer the scrappy underdog trying to make a name for herself. She was the Grand Dame of Film Criticism, and becoming too big for even William Shawn to edit.

And so all her tendencies toward verbosity, inconsistency, favoritism, and quirkiness were given free rein. I also think she getting tired of writing reviews and hoping she could move on to a career in Hollywood. It doesn't help that the films of 1975-1980 were a cut below the previous 70s films. And the early 70s were a cut below the 60s. A lot of her favorites: Brando, Altman, Peckinpah, Striesand, Godard, were on a downward slope.

You can see why she's become almost forgotten.