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Pauline Kael, I Lost it at the Movies: Film Writings, 1954-1965 (Random House, 1964) Reissued in paperback by Marion Boyars Publishers in 1994. Pauline Kael's zingy, frequently acerbic classic I Lost It at the Movies (originally published in 1954, but reprinted many times after that) earned her a place as one of America's defining film critics and later, a longstanding job as film critic for the New Yorker. It also earned her a few foes and detractors. Reading the book now, it's easy to see why Kael quickly developed a reputation for being tough-minded and tough-mouthed. At times, she's not even likeable. Her review of the classic, now yellowing musical West Side Story criticizes it as a slick, technologically overproduced piece of schlock. She jeers the film from its first symphonic overture to its last heartbroken number. At times, unless one is a committed aficionado, it's hard to understand quite what she's taking aim at: Many of the other movies she skewers have not withstood the test of time. But despite the decades, Kael's criticism remains. She's sometimes witty, often sharp, and she makes it clear what she wants out of a movie: Story, story, story. She's as likely to pan an overmade, high falutin' arthouse flick as she is a senseless B genre pick. She takes equal aim at Fellini and Fred Astaire. And her main point, that she wants movies whose form and content make sense, movies whose effects subtly butress, rather than overpower (or stand in for) the film itself, has only grown more important in an age when Hollywood increasingly turns out overhyped, underwritten technological drivel. If Kael has shot down many an unworthy film, it's worth noting that plenty of the movies she praises are little gems: The Earrings of Madame De, for example, or, Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy, or, still later, Say Anything. MORE: Pauline Kael: A Gift for Effrontery Cinemazine's Compilation of Crucial Kael Writings |
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