Posted on 06/12/2010 5:57:36 PM PDT by maggief
‘And as a writer he’s won the Pulitzer Prize.’
Yeah, he wrote “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”.
Can you cut down on the personal attacks in your posts? It would cut them in half. :)
There were exceptions but film critics in daily newspapers started getting bylines in the late 1960s. Before then most newspapers used a pen name for any old hack to write the reviews which were not considered important. It changed as the influence of the French New Wave critics reached American shores and cinema started to be taken seriously by the general public.
Dave Kehr helped revitalize American film criticsm in the 1970s. He is internationally known and is held in much higher regard by the Cahiers crowd than someone like Kael who was more of an American literary phenomenon. She’s the favorite critic of people like Quentin Tarantino who shares her love for exuberant trash. I like a critic who will disagree and teach me something, I simply didn’t find her criteria helpful.
I’m well aware of the Truffaut book. And post Psycho, Hichtcock made Marnie which as good as any film ever made by anyone.
Kael retired in early 1991 so she didn’t really watch too many of Spielberg’s post E.T. films. The mid to late 80s was a weak period for him. She also trashed directors like Preminger and Polanski at their best. She was impatient and unscholarly. Added to that she had some sort of vendetta against Citizen Kane and took potshots at it and Welles as often as she could.
Here is Kehr’s take on Marnie. Keep in mind I’m trained in Critical Theory at the Graduate level. This is critical writing as it taught to me.
“Marnie remains one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest and darkest achievements. The examination of sexual power plays surpasses Fassbinder’s films, which Marnie thematically resembles, going beyond a simple dichotomy of strength and weakness into a dense, shifting field of masochism, class antagonism, religious transgression, and the collective unconscious. The mise-en-scene tends toward a painterly abstraction, as Hitchcock employs powerful masses, blank colors, and studiously unreal, spatially distorted settings. Theme and technique meet on the highest level of film art.”
I was wondering when you'd start whining about "personal attacks"--most people who have no argument get to that soon enough, and point to criticism of their lack of knowledge about a topic as a "personal attack".
There were exceptions
What does any of this have to do with anything? Ebert got a byline--as I said, other critics did before him. Case closed.
Dave Kehr helped revitalize American film criticsm in the 1970s. He is internationally known and is held in much higher regard by the Cahiers crowd than someone like Kael who was more of an American literary phenomenon.
WHo cares?
Seriously, haven't you noticed by now that you care about what The Official Critics And Keepers Of Taste say, while I don't?
Some people need the backing of theory to create a kind of philosophical structure on which to rely. Kael is notable for NOT being about theory.
Some folks need to be able to point to Europeans to justify having old, boring, backward standards--it makes them feel continental and classy.
People like me don't give a damn what Europeans think.
She’s the favorite critic of people like Quentin Tarantino who shares her love for exuberant trash.
What a silly comment--pointing to someone's fan as "proof" of the quality of that person's work? Why are you so freaked out by what other people think of your favorites and those you dislike? Why don't you show some critial background, instead of 'Well, the guy I like has a Pulitzer, and, and EUROPEANS like him! The one YOU like, TARANTINO likes her, ha, what about that?!" It's so silly, and juvenile, and shows a total fear of stepping out on one's own and risking falling on your face (ala the last Tango review).
Seeing how Ebert practically oozes love for Tarantino, you really should stay off this path, don't you think?
I’m well aware of the Truffaut book.
NO one who made the comment you made when I furst brought it up would know the book. Sorry, but you've revealed yourself there.
And post Psycho, Hichtcock made Marnie which as good as any film ever made by anyone.
LOL! That's your opinion, and you're welcome to it, but just because THE FRENCH love it doesn't mean it's anything but a gawdawful crock of warmed-over Freud and tedious misogynistic swill. I like Herrmann's score, and Hedren is beautiful (I actually prefer Diana Baker but whatever), but this is another boring attempt at SIGNIFICANCE by a guy who (and Kael agrees, whether you're aware of it or not) made some of the greatest moveis ever.
But you go right ahead and claim Marnie and Topaz and the rest of the post-Psycho movies are great art--heck the Europeans say so, it must be true.
Kael retired in early 1991 so she didn’t really watch too many of Spielberg’s post E.T. films.
I have the reviews to prove otherwise--damn, man, you REALLY need to stop pretending to know things you simply don't. (She even commented on Schindler's--anyone who knows anything about Kael knows this stuff.)
The mid to late 80s was a weak period for him.
There you go again--I say she disliked his post-ET stuff, and you then say "it was a weak period for him"--so what? You're proving my point but aren't man enough to just admit it.
BTW, not everyone thinks Spielberg is the height of film awesomeness. He, like Ebert, is boring.
She also trashed directors like Preminger and Polanski at their best. She was impatient and unscholarly. Added to that she had some sort of vendetta against Citizen Kane and took potshots at it and Welles as often as she could.
Her "vendetta" against Kane amounted to her wanting all of those involved to get the credit due them--I guess calling it a classic is a vendetta.
Here's her review of Chimes of Midnight--wow, most directors would kill for someone to take such potshots at them!
http://books.google.com/books?id=b5EFCGu8MsQC&pg=PA298&lpg=PA298&dq=Pauline+Kael+Chimes+at+Midnight&source=bl&ots=j1IwNiwGIC&sig=0Vu-BBCzSlHKkL4Y6WUQrJUy4X0&hl=en&ei=7M4mTIHwKcGblgeemJG1Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CB8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Pauline%20Kael%20Chimes%20at%20Midnight&f=false
I get so tired of pointing out that you're just repeating back cliches of the critical establishment.
As for daring to criticize the directors of "Pirates" and "Skidoo", why would anyone care if a critic trashes anyone? You have this narrow idea that a critic has to be safe and like all the Right Directors--who thinks this way and actually loves film, and not just those the Elites choose as great? So she trashed certain films--so what? I read a critic for their reactions, to see what they're thinking and what they can detect in a film. Ebert watches a film and blabbers on in cliches about all the routine ideas, routine points, routine reasons. Kael always surprised. I didn't always (or even mostly) agree with her final judgments--you seem to think that means she 'fails" while I think it shows she's an original, and makes me think. Ebert is anti-critical in that he merely looks at a film and says "See it!" or "Don't see it!" And the robots follow his word.
Sorry, I've got my own mind, I can make it up by myself.
As for her "trashing", again, you really need to do some research before you pretend to know what you're talking about:
Kael on Rosemary's Baby: "an unusually clever commingling of comedy and terror, the sacred and the profane... It’s genuinely funny, yet it’s also scary, especially for young women: it plays on their paranoid vulnerabilities. The queasy and the grisly are mixed with its entertaining hipness. (It’s probably more fun for women who are past their childbearing years.) Mia Farrow is enchanting in her fragility: she’s just about perfect for her role. And the darkly handsome Cassavetes is ideal as the narcissist who makes the deal for a cloven-hoofed infant."
Kael on Chinatown:""The success of Chinatown -- with its beautifully structured script and draggy, overdeliberate direction -- represents something dialectically new: nostalgia (for the thirties) openly turned to rot, and the celebration of rot."
Here is Kehr’s take on Marnie. Keep in mind I’m trained in Critical Theory at the Graduate level. This is critical writing as it taught to me.
Flashing your credentials means nothing online, and if I'm looking at what you've been posting--the evasions, the backtracking, the constantly picking out "bad" reviews here and there--as if Ebert has never made a "bad" call!--shows you rely on the opinions of the establishment as a shield against your fear of going out on a limb and being mocked as you and the rest of the frightened critics do Kael.
Let's put it this way: Kael wrote a bad review of Last Tango, but Ebert WROTE "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls". (Now tell me how BTVOTD is a brilliant send-up...but then, Tarantino liked it, so...)
And really, isn't it kind of telling that while you're bashing Kael and showing how she doesn't compare to Ebert, you don't even QUOTE Ebert?
,i>“Marnie remains one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest and darkest achievements.
This guy can't open a piece without a cliche! LOL
The examination of sexual power plays surpasses Fassbinder’s films,
More needy referencing of Europeans!
which Marnie thematically resembles, going beyond a simple dichotomy of strength and weakness into a dense, shifting field of masochism, class antagonism, religious transgression, and the collective unconscious. The mise-en-scene tends toward a painterly abstraction, as Hitchcock employs powerful masses, blank colors, and studiously unreal, spatially distorted settings. Theme and technique meet on the highest level of film art.”
The process shots were horrible--oh, but he MEANT for them to be horrible! The shot of the horse's leg on the fake wall is laughable--oh, but he MEANT it to be! The backdrop at the end of the mother's street is fake--oh, but he MEANT it to be!
Kael hated pretention. So do I. Ebert and Kehr and the rest groove on this museum-piece junk that has no relationship to life and/or genuine human responses.
I actually prefer Jorge Luis Borges' film writings.
If your own only standard is “What I think” then what’s the point? Citing expert opinion is pretty standard argumentative style. BTW I did indeed know that Truffaut interviewed Hitchcock and wrote a book. The interview was filmed and the clips from it are shown in most biographical films about the man. Truffaut introduced himself by writing Hitchcock a fawning letter and Hitch was moved by it.
Only the last 15 minutes of Marnie are the Freudian part. Hitch always had a weakness for that sort of thing. The rest of it is fascinating for the reasons Kehr gives. British critic Robin Wood said that anyone who doesn’t love Marnie doesn’t love cinema.
Pauline Kael retired from the New Yorker in 1991. Before her death in 2001, she would occasionally give interviews and be asked about various current films. Those weren’t reviews just comments.
I didn’t say Ebert was superior to Kael but that Kael had a bad influence on film criticism taking it from the cold, hard analysis of a Kehr to “How much actual fun is this thing to watch?” which is completely subjective and unscholarly.
If your own only standard is “What I think” then what’s the point? Citing expert opinion is pretty standard argumentative style. BTW I did indeed know that Truffaut interviewed Hitchcock and wrote a book. The interview was filmed and the clips from it are shown in most biographical films about the man. Truffaut introduced himself by writing Hitchcock a fawning letter and Hitch was moved by it.
Only the last 15 minutes of Marnie are the Freudian part. Hitch always had a weakness for that sort of thing. The rest of it is fascinating for the reasons Kehr gives. British critic Robin Wood said that anyone who doesn’t love Marnie doesn’t love cinema.
Pauline Kael retired from the New Yorker in 1991. Before her death in 2001, she would occasionally give interviews and be asked about various current films. Those weren’t reviews just comments.
I didn’t say Ebert was superior to Kael but that Kael had a bad influence on film criticism taking it from the cold, hard analysis of a Kehr to “How much actual fun is this thing to watch?” which is completely subjective and unscholarly.
If your only standard is "What someone else thinks" then what's the point?
Citing expert opinion is pretty standard argumentative style.
"Expert opinion" works when dealing with art is ridiculous, and no, I don't care how many European critics think otherwise.
BTW I did indeed know that Truffaut interviewed Hitchcock and wrote a book. The interview was filmed and the clips from it are shown in most biographical films about the man. Truffaut introduced himself by writing Hitchcock a fawning letter and Hitch was moved by it.
All of which you could easily look up, yet when I first brought it up you made a boner no one who actually knows the history fo the book--WHEN it came out, and how it is seen as a signpost in Hitchcock's career--would have made.
Only the last 15 minutes of Marnie are the Freudian part.
That's like saying only one part of the Mona Lisa is the smiling part. The "Freudian part" is part of the entire subtext. That's something anyone with a basic knowledge of film, literature or art would know.
Hitch always had a weakness for that sort of thing.
Yes, but after Truffaut/Hitchcock he was consciously trying to impress critics, which is why the David Kehrs of this world love those aeful, tedious movies.
The rest of it is fascinating for the reasons Kehr gives.
So let me get this straight--you only love movies if some critic tells you to? That's the saddest comment I've ever read on a supposed film fan.
British critic Robin Wood said that anyone who doesn’t love Marnie doesn’t love cinema.
Robin Wood also thought Howard Hawk's racecar movie was one of his best. And there you go again, not able to discuss these topics with your own voice, your own thoughts, simply copying and pasting others' thoughts.
I've been paid for literature and film criticism--does that impress you anymore than your quoting of your background impresses me? Of course it doesn't. Yet I didn't flash that badge as if it gave me some kind of street credit, didn't offer to photocopy the articles and send them. Because none of that garbage matters, what matters is one's own relationship to art. What could possibly be more important than that--constantly running to critics to verify what is in the end a matter of taste? Informed by a knowledge and love of movies, yes--Kael had both in spades--but in the end what the critics and academics get furious over is that art is NOT engineering or science. I can look at a movie and dislike it, and it is just as valid an opinion as David Kehr's boring, accepted-wisdom yap-yap is TO ME. (If that were NOT the case then his and other critics' opinions would outlast the movies' initial runs. Kehr's do only to those who need them to back up their opinions which they can't articulate themselves.)
Pauline Kael retired from the New Yorker in 1991. Before her death in 2001, she would occasionally give interviews and be asked about various current films. Those weren’t reviews just comments.
Whatever, man, you're so stuck up on this boring formalism. She gave an opinion and it was as accurate and dead-on an analysis as reams of Eberts' foolishness--you as much agree with me, but can't admit it, because to counter Kael you didn't even quote Ebert!
I didn’t say Ebert was superior to Kael
LOL Awright, man, whatever.
but that Kael had a bad influence on film criticism taking it from the cold, hard analysis of a Kehr to “How much actual fun is this thing to watch?” which is completely subjective and unscholarly.
That's not what she did. But you've revealed yourself way too much to bother arguing with you.
Damn, and I used to really enjoy reading your posts, no lie. Oh, well.
I knew of Truffaut’s work on Hitchcock whether you believe it or not. I think he met him while on the French Riviera filming To Catch a Thief. Do you really think his late 50s films are weak? The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds...? It’s his most revered (and popular period).
I’ve buttressed my quotes with my own opinions throughout. Kehr was actually quite eccentric in his tastes. Look at his Best of Year lists...
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/kehr.html
As Kehr’s brief blurb about Marnie hinted at...there is much more to the film than the Freudian aspect. That was certainly Hitchcock’s intention but a work of Art is a lot more thna the artist’s intentions. There are all sorts of things in Marnie which Hitchcock may not have evern imagined.
Speaking of which, appeals to authority are pretty standard in the Arts. People still look to Dr. Johnson to gain insight into Shakespeare.
What prompted this discussion was your comment that Ebert has damaged the culture with his critical work. Not any disregard I have for Kael. Believe it or not, I grew up devouring his arious book collections of her reviews at the library. Based on my knowledge of critical history, I think the fact that so many critics chose to imitate her was a shame. Incidentally, when she retired even she was dismayed by how trashy films were getting. I think even she was starting to double back.
BTW what do you have against Spielberg as a whole anyway? His best latter day films, A.I., Schindler’s List etc...are as artful as big studio filmmaking gets aren’t they?
Note: this topic is from 6/12/2010. This is to BTTT so defenders of that late leftist POS have something to think about. Thanks maggief.
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