V I D E O • A G E MA Y 2 0 1 2 8 AmericanauthorBrianKellow, whose past credits include biographies of singer-actress Ethel Merman and CBS radio soprano Eileen Farrel, tackles the life of esteemed and controversial American film critic Pauline Kael in Pauline Kael: Life in the Dark (Viking Adult, 432 pages, $27.95). Kael made a name for herself reviewing films in Berkeley, California, for a full decade before being snatched up by weekly magazine The New Yorker. At The New Yorker, she played an integral part in the magazine’s transformation from a decoration atop grandmotherly coffee tables to the modern magazine of record for the East Coast’s left-wing elite. Just how much of the magazine’s characteristic highbrow sarcasm and biting social commentary can be traced back to Kael’s highly personal, take-no-prisoners style of review is difficult to measure. After a brief introduction to Kael’s family roots (Jewish, originally from Poland), we learn of her upbringing in Petaluma, California, where her father managed an industrial-sized chicken farm. We learn of her energetic paterfamilias and his active involvement in the cultural life of the large Jewish community, taking particular interest in the neighborhood widows. In a less-thansubtle hint at infidelity, Kellow speculates that it may have contributed to his wife’s cold and unforgiving demeanor. Kael attended the University of California at Berkeley, but didn’t graduate for reasons she never made clear. Straight out of college, she wrote poems and short stories, but achieved little success, and moved to New York with her boyfriend in the early ’40s. There, increasingly dependent on her partner for cash and friends of friends for room and board, she developed a curious apathy for the city she would later permanently live and work in — as well as a clear distaste for its intellectual circles. But it was also in New York that she consolidated her long love of cinema. Upon returning toCalifornia a few years later, Kael found herself pregnant. From then on, her bohemian lifestyle, although far from expunged, took a backseat. Her big break came in 1955 when a friend and local radio personality, Weldon Kees, invited her to be a semi-regular guest at local radio station KPFA-FM. After Kees’s mysterious disappearance, she stepped in more frequently, and through her involvement with the radio show, met Edward Landberg, who owned two local movie theaters. They soon married, albeit briefly and unhappily. Kael’s film critiques were often well out of line with the consensus among other critics, both on mainstream, bigbudget blockbusters, and art house cinema imported from Europe (she despised the “art for art’s sake” feel of many of those films). In 1965, Kael published a collection of film reviews titled I Lost it at the Movies to much critical acclaim. The book’s success earned her an offer to write regularly for McCall’s, where she was often at odds with her editors because she regularly panned big-budget blockbusters (her review of The Sound of Music was particularly harsh). In 1966, she moved to The New Republic, where her writing was subject to constant editorial changes, often unbeknownst to her, and she left the job after just one year. Kael’s style was often unforgiving and harsh, perhaps exaggeratedly so — in the ’60s, she criticized almost every bigbudget Hollywood film she saw, fromDr. Zhivago to Lawrence of Arabia. However, some decades later, she praised similar bigbudget films, particularly the serial and commercialized James Bond franchise. After The New Republic didn’t publish her review of 1967’s controversial film Bonnie and Clyde, it was picked up by The New Yorker, and she joined the writing staff on a permanent basis a few months later. Although her brash writing style placed her immediately at odds with fellow writers at The New Yorker, Kael’s impact at the magazine was nearly immediate, and her collaboration with the magazine earned her a George Polk Award in 1970. She continued to push the envelope with regards to what is and is not acceptable for a critic to do. (One example is her insistence that she review the pornographic film Deep Throat.) And although she argued occasionally with the very editor who hired her — William Sean —most of her pieces were published unchanged. Fellowwriters at themagazine, however, were less than friendly, especially when reviewing her books (fellow New Yorker writer Renata Adler called one of her books, “without interruption, worthless”). In spite of this, her 1973 title, Deeper Into Movies, won the National Book Award. Toward the end of the decade, she served on the judge’s panel at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. In 1979, she worked as a consultant at Paramount Studios, but left the position within five months after clashing with a director. As it turns out, Kael was very much out of touch with many aspects of the production process, specifically, the various changes a script goes through, even as the movie is filming. When she was moved from producer to “creative production executive,” her disagreements with studio executives replaced her clashes with the director. She was notably incompatible with Donald Simpson, Paramount’s senior vice president of Worldwide Production, who tended to favor pitches he felt the marketing department could sell — an idea in clear contrast with Kael’s more artistic aspirations. Kellow emphasizes Simpson’s frustration with working with Kael. But the author falls short of truly expressing how the industry responded to her (aside from the occasional not-so-favorable quote from Woody Allen). We do learn, however, what she thought about Hollywood: Kael felt that a major flaw in the system was the large amount of work heaped on the director. Miscast actors or disregarded rewrites were, in her view, problems caused by the producer failing to perform his share of the work. She returned to The New Yorker in 1980. In the ’80s, Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and her opinion of contemporary American cinema declined in tandem with her health. She felt that her experience with a major studio gave her an edge other critics didn’t have, and this was reflected in her writing, which became increasingly cynical. She finally retired from reviewing in 1991, but continued to write essays for The New Yorker sporadically. She died in 2001, at the age of 82. Much of Kellow’s biographical notes are taken directly from Kael’s writing. Kael was very much a product of so-called “new journalism,” a school where writing is deeply affected by personal experience and opinion. As such, Kael’s personal characteristics are well known to anyone who is familiar with her work. What is truly interesting is the story of her life before she became established. In keeping with her bizarre, impulsive, and bohemian demeanor, the manner in which she became a critic almost seems born of circumstance. Perhaps Kellow could have been a little less adoring and a little more poignant in his writing, as he is clearly a fan of her work. For better or worse, Pauline Kael was a bizarre character, fascinating beyond her role as a film critic. If only we could have learned more. YS Kael: A Film Critic’s Life Gets the Critique B o o k R e v i e w
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