The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael

About this book

"Film criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply " Pauline Kael once observed "just because you must use everything you are and everything you know." Between 1968 and 1991 as regular film reviewer for The New Yorker Kael used those formidable tools to shape the tastes of a generation enthralling readers with her gift for capturing with force and fluency the essence of an actors gesture or the full implication of a cinematic image. Kael called movies "the most total and encompassing art form we have " and she made her reviews a platform for considering both film and the worlds it engages crafting in the process a prose style of extraordinary wit precision and improvisatory grace. To read The Age of Movies the first new selection in more than a generation is to be swept up into an endlessly revealing and entertaining dialogue with Kael at her witty exhilarating and opinionated best. Her ability to evoke the essence of a great artist-an Orson Welles or a Robert Altman-or to celebrate the way even seeming trash could tap deeply into our emotions was matched by her unwavering eye for the scams and self-deceptions of a corrupt movie industry. Here in this career spanning collection are her appraisals of the films that defined an era-among them Breathless Bonnie and Clyde The Leopard The Godfather Last Tango in Paris Nashville-along with many others some awaiting rediscovery all providing the occasion for masterpieces of observation and insight alive on every page.