Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic whose lively, combative reviews in The New Yorker helped shape film culture from 1968 to 1991.
The New Yorker: An American magazine of journalism, criticism, fiction, and cartoons, founded in 1925. Kael’s most influential reviews appeared in the magazine from 1968 to 1991.
Film criticism: The analysis and evaluation of films through writing, speech, or other forms of commentary. Kael’s reviews are a prominent example of criticism as both judgment and cultural argument.
Raising Kane: Pauline Kael’s 1971 essay arguing that Herman J. Mankiewicz deserved primary credit for Citizen Kane’s screenplay. The essay became her most famous and contested intervention in film authorship.
The New Hollywood: A period of American filmmaking, roughly from the late 1960s through the 1970s, marked by director-driven films and changing studio practices. Kael championed many filmmakers whose work defined this period and its emerging audiences.
Pauline Kael–Andrew Sarris feud: A prolonged critical dispute between Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris over film authorship, judgment, and the role of critics. Their exchanges made competing approaches to American film criticism unusually visible.
Andrew Sarris: An American film critic who helped introduce auteur theory to English-language film criticism. His more systematic auteurism became a prominent foil for Kael’s criticism.
Auteur theory: A theory of filmmaking that treats a director’s recurring style as evidence of personal authorship. Kael challenged auteurism when it elevated directorial reputation over a film’s actual effects.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967 film): A 1967 American crime film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Kael’s enthusiastic review helped the film gain critical and cultural momentum.
Film culture: The institutions, practices, and shared meanings through which films are made, discussed, and experienced. Her reviews helped turn movie criticism into a visible force within American cultural life.
Camp (aesthetic): An aesthetic sensibility that finds pleasure in artifice, exaggeration, theatricality, and excess. Kael’s taste for emotional immediacy often diverged from camp’s cultivated distance and irony.