Conversations with Pauline Kael

by Will Brantley (Editor), Pauline Kael

Conversations with Pauline Kael brings together roughly half of Kael's published interviews along with a lively debate between Kael and Jean-Luc Godard. Collectively, the interviews provide rewarding perspectives on Kael's aesthetics, her politics, and her perceptions about what it is she does as a critic. They also contain discussions of films that Kael did not have the chance to review or that were released after her retirement in 1991.

This collection of her interviews will provide new and renewed pleasures for readers who have valued Kael's critical voice and her challenges to consensus during the second half of the twentieth century.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Criticism

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

Reviews

[Blakepatterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-considered chronological collection of fascinating interviews with (arguably) the greatest film critic of all time. It was exciting to read Pauline Kael’s thoughts through these interviews. Some pieces I had read before, but it was nice to refresh myself. For some readers, the pieces regarding Kael’s debate with Jean-Luc Godard and her public conversation with Jonathan Demme will be a draw. One intriguing characteristic about Kael’s perspective is how she frequently prefers the early work of auteurs rather than their later efforts. While some talented people have valid complaints about Kael’s writing, I cannot say their writing has left as much of an impact as Kael’s criticism. I will always cherish Kael’s writing about Altman, Godard, and De Palma.

Full disclosure: the editor of this collection was my professor last semester. Will Brantley is a wonderful person, and I fondly remember my conversations with him about Kael and films.

[Prathyush Parasuraman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels odd to write a review of one of the most notorious and eloquent reviewers of our time. For anyone in any nation who harbours a passion for cultural criticism, I think this book might give you a perspective (not THE perspective) of what your job should entail. Most of the films referenced I had no clue of, most of the name dropping flew over my head but the underlying thoughts help frame how one should see and critique cinema. (She hates it calling it cinema, she would rather call it the movies; sounds less pretentious.) A lot of repetition through the conversations gives a sense of what and whom Kael was fixating on, and the thoughts and opinions that were a fixture over the time she was reviewing (early '50s to '92) She speaks about the freedom that comes with film criticism, why her brief stint in Hollywood as a consultant didn't excite her, and how the movies have changed and cheapened over time. There's love for a popular art form, and this love comes through in her articulation and despair.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably should have started by reading some of PK's film reviews rather than a book that talks about her reviews....She is a critic both revered and reviled for her bold,acerbic writing. Imagine a woman in 1971 taking on the legend of Orson Welles, as she did in her essay Raising Kane, and positing that the cinematic innovations of that great film should be credited to screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz and cameraman Gregg Toland. She famously bashed The Sound of Music and consistently stated that most movies are not good...( and she is right. sometimes the truth hurts)

[David Sheward · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Borrowed from Lincoln Center Public Library) At a current exhibition celebrating the New Yorker magazine at the New York Public Library, there is no mention of Pauline Kael. This is surprising since she was probably their most influential critic and perhaps the most influential American movie critic ever. This collection of profiles and interviews forms a mini-biography and offers several of her insights on the state of the movies--both the art and the business aspects--from the 1960s to the time of her retirement in the 1990s. There is some repetition but numerous interesting observations on the shifting national cultural scene. According to Kael, the 1970s were the real Golden Age of American moviemaking. Blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars ruined the creative landscape created by Coppola, Scorsese, De Palma and Altman. Along with Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael, this volume offers a glimpse of her tastes and how mind worked. As a result of reading this book, I went back to some of her reviews in my battered paperback editions of Deeper Into Movies and Reeling. I find I can only read a few at a time. Her tastes are not mine. I don't always agree with her, but she always had something arresting to say and expressed it in an off-kilter, intriguing way.

[Ethan Rosenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chronological collection of interviews or profiles of America’s most irascible and indulgent (that’s praise) film critic—reading Kael opens me up to write from my own perspective, to evaluate my lived experience of a movie and share it with the full arsenal my vocabulary affords me. Peaks with a rollicking exchanging of barbs between Kael and JL Godard; even though the conversation never really goes anywhere it’s a delight to read these two giant intellects go at it. Wheels start spinning in place following that discussion, but further insights start to emerge again following her retirement from the New Yorker. She adopts a loose-never aloof-posture in the post 1991 interviews and shows no fear in describing the process of aging. Finishing the book felt Iike saying goodbye to a new friend—fortunately I have a lot of her actual writing waiting for me.

[Kali Koba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read! Kael is witty, and the voices of the various interviewers help to steer the conversation into new and exciting places. Packed with comments that hold much more meaning than even Kael seems to realize, and full of commentary about the trajectory of American film that is more relevant today than ever before. An easy, must-read for film enthusiasts.

Only problem is with repetition, the standard interview questions, which isn't too distracting.