Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kaelwas an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth19 June 1919
CountryUnited States of America
stupid believe dirty
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.
movie art expression
Movies are our cheap and easy expression, the sullen art of displaced persons.
hero loner definitions
Protagonists are always loners, almost by definition.
art want-something minorities
The problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions fulfilled again.
persons knows
I am mystified. I know only one person who voted for Nixon.
mean san-francisco invasion
In San Francisco, vulgarity, "bad taste," ostentation are regarded as a kind of alien blight, an invasion or encroachment from outside. In Los Angeles, there is so much money and power connected with ostentation that is no longer ludicrous: it commands a kind of respect. For if the mighty behave like this, then quiet good taste means that you can't afford the conspicuous expenditures, and you become a little ashamed of your modesty and propriety.
doors feet want
Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.
tvs television program
There is something spurious about the very term 'a movie made for TV,' because what you make for TV is a TV program.
art twenties substitutes
For a while in the twenties and thirties, art was talked about as a substitute for religion; now B movies are a substitute for religion.
life-affirming avoided affirming
Movies that are consciously life-affirming are to be consciously avoided ...
people tasks critical
The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new
television knees this-generation
What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism.
movie baby couple
When a picture can't make it on its own, the producers pull in a 'controversial' message - the way a couple whose marriage is falling apart decide to have a baby.
tests virtuous feels
If there is any test that can be applied to movies, it's that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.