Raising Kane

by Pauline Kael

Raising Kane and other Essays offers the best of Pauline Kael's more extended meditations on the movies, including the full text of her controversial account of the making of Citizen Kane, still considered by many to be the greatest motion picture ever made. Her sympathetic and insightful study of the career of Cary Grant, 'The Man From Dream City' appears alongside such prophetic analyses as 'Movies on Television', Fantasies of the Art-House Audience' and the classic 'Trash, Art and the Movies'. This volume also contains the most complete version to date of her landmark dissection of the film industry, 'The Making of The Group'.

Genres: Film, Media Tie In, Nonfiction

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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

[Nick H · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, this is a review of RAISING KANE only. I figure this is fair game on Goodreads to be considered a book (despite its not having a listing of its own) because Wikipedia describes it as ‘book length,’ and the work itself has been published in different collections before.

The writing is gorgeous here. I’ve never read anything in full by Kael, though I’ve appreciated many snippets of hers, and I’m disarmed by the depth of her love for the craft. You can see it in every little breathless aside, every personal anecdote, and every unselfconscious backing of the mass market elements of cinema. This isn’t a ‘film writer’ so much as a writer who happens to love film- an important distinction, as its not necessarily a requirement in most film writers I’ve read to really show their love for movies. Most feel obligated to keep the form at arm’s length, maintaining a healthy amount of irony for anything they like and disdain for anything that goes against the larger community of ‘art appreciation.’

I love how willing Kael is here to actually explore CITIZEN KANE as a film, not treating it like a china doll whose fragility might shatter at any moment (as most critics do), but openly (and at great length) exploring its biggest flaws. She contextualizes the movie in such a way as to explain why it was actually considered a masterpiece in its time, and why most viewers are probably appreciating the elements that aren’t even considered to be its strengths. I’m always of the school that “the art does not belong to the artist,” and that nobody, not even the film’s director (or a critic), can invalidate anyone else’s interpretation of the work. But I also have very little patience for those who appreciate something according to a larger societal ‘company line’ - specifically, those who first hear THAT the film is good, so then must rationalize to themselves WHY the film is good. Kael does not treat the film like something sacred, but rather like any other movie. She appreciates its many virtues as well as its (very real) flaws. And most importantly, knows (as so many of the internet age do not) that flaws do not necessarily make a movie bad, nor are masterpieces without flaws. To limit one’s critiques of masterpieces to only their positive elements, while rationalizing away any potential issues, is to ruin the conversation.

I read this immediately after watching Fincher’s MANK, and this acts as a great companion piece to the movie. It’s clear where pieces of this have shaped the film itself, and I loved hearing even more stories about the man. But what that film can’t necessarily capture is the far-reaching contextual deep-dives that Kael establishes here. She doesn’t just settle for looking into Mankiewicz’s career or accomplishments, but the entire paradigm which created him, as well as the surrounding paradigms that both created its need and felt its creative loss when it was gone.

Anyway, this is really damned good writing. I can’t wait to watch KANE again, and someday hopefully get my hands on that first screenplay draft.

[Paulina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just lost in another city. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. If somewhere in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn't all corruption. The movie doesn't have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. An actor‘s scowl, a small subversive gesture, a dirty remark that someone tosses off with a mock-innocent face, and the world makes a little bit of sense. Sitting there alone or painfully alone because those with you do not react as you do, you know there must be others perhaps in this very theatre or in this city, surely in other theatres in other cities, now, in the past or future, who react as you do. And because movies are the most total and encompassing art form we have, these reactions can seem the most personal and, maybe the most important, imaginable. The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you've seen. You do meet them, of course, and you know each other at once because you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

'there, but for the grace of God, goes God." Hermann ("Mank") Mankewietz on Orson Wells. CITIZEN KANE is "the movie that launched more film careers than any other". (Francois Truffaut). Pauline Kael, la diva of American film critics here dissects the origins and impact of the film, and includes the original screenplay, which is quite different than the shooting script that made it to the screen. Her controversial assertion that Mank wrote the bulk of the script is still inflammatory (and offensive to those of us who worship Wells). If you've never seen the film, well, shame on you and if you have you can play judge to determine how the #1 film of all time even got made.

[Blakepatterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since 2020, I have had more complicated feelings about Kael’s view of Welles and Mankiewicz. However, it is a wonderfully written piece and never drags in its development. The fact that Raising Kane continues to challenge scholars and provoke conversations is significant to consider.

[Sara]

mostly anecdotal, with Kael at times making assumptions that seem rooted only in her own speculation and thus feeling at times kind of baseless. (a lot of this reads like: source? trust me). and listen, i actually believe the premise that Welles did not singlehandedly carry out the creative vision of Citizen Kane, but this just kind of reads like a documentation of her having a "bitch eating crackers" moment with Welles.