Pauline Kael Was Not a Film Critic. She Was an Autobiographer.
She Also Found It at the Movies
An essay argues that Pauline Kael's movie reviews, long considered arbitrary and high-handed, are better understood as chapters in a vast, unconventional autobiography. Drawing on observations from Richard Schickel and Sanford Schwartz, the author contends that Kael's writing centered on mixed emotions and used movies as occasions to explore the American experience. Decades after her death, her true achievement emerges not as criticism but as a singular form of self-portraiture.
She didn’t write reviews, or even essays; rather, each of her “reviews” was a chapter in her autobiography—an autobiography written over decades and built not on a narrative arc but rather a long series of occasions.