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Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark Paperback – October 30, 2012

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Brian Kellow (Author)
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4 out of 5 stars 31 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (October 30, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0143122207
  • ISBN-13: 978-0143122203
  • Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.2 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #951,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA book in quotation marks
By James M. Rawley on October 30, 2011
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
A fine show-biz biography, better than most because instead of just talking about Kael's top performances, Kellow can quote them.

Kael was unique in being able to write movie reviews which, collected, consistently became best sellers. She was lucky, too, because she did her most popular reviewing during a period, the seventies through the eighties, of some amazingly good American movies.

Most of all, she was an excellent writer who happened to have picked movies as her topic. She changed the way people looked at them, and made popular art as important to critics as so-called important art. Kellow covers it all, pretty much year by year, not leaving out scandalous stuff, like her conning a college professor into giving her all his research about CITIZEN KANE, promising him a co-author credit, and in the end giving him nothing. Kael survives the bad news he gives about her, mostly because his enthusiasm for her is so great.

Later I imagine there will be scholarly critical biographies of Kael. I'm not sure they'll be better.
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2.0 out of 5 starsEnjoyable, but Kael Deserves Better
By Jasun Horsley on September 28, 2012
Format: Hardcover
I'm flabbergasted to see all the rave reviews for this book. In almost 400 pages, Kellow reveals almost nothing about Kael's childhood, private life, or her relationships. Instead, the book is almost entirely devoted to a summary of her writings, her opinions about movies and filmmakers, all of which we already know from having read her reviews. There are very few revealing insider quotes here, most of them coming from Kael's reviews, and next to nothing at all from family members (eg, Kael's daughter Gina). It's an uninspired work that's sadly short on insight or originality. Kellow's style is non-existent, which I suppose is said to be a virtue for a biographer. But and what little enthusiasm he has for his subject fails to bring his prose to life.

I enjoyed reading the book, but only because Kael is such a fascinating subject and even Kellow's plodding, workmanlike compendium holds the attention. While Kellow did interview dozens of people, as his acknowledgements make clear, the results are disappointing, suggesting that he's not especially gifted at getting people to open up. But most of all what the book lacks is a penetrating psychological vision. When Kael reviewed a movie and wrote about directors and actors, she invariably offered fresh insights into the inner workings of her subjects. That's what a good biography does for its subject, and I find it saddening that Kael - one of the strongest, most lucid and authentic voices in the field of movies - didn't get better treatment than this.
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4.0 out of 5 starsA Genius of Her Own
By Andrew on December 9, 2011
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Pauline Kael's genius was obliterating the barrier between a writer's passionate inner voice and the reader. Her reviews had an immediacy, the way placing your palm on a hot skillet has an immediacy. If you dedicated 10 minutes to one of her reviews you could feel her eyes pleading, see her leaning forward in the seat to find the heartbeat of a film. She wanted all films to have a healthy heartbeat; but of course many didn't. That was a genuine disappointment for her. She was movies.

I haven't seen many of the films she reviewed during her heyday (though I've started to work my way through them on Netflix), so I can't compare critical opinions. But that doesn't matter too much. I know I disagree with her on some films. Because after all, Pauline had, as do we all, her own aesthetic idiosyncrasies. Streisand, Altman, De Palma, etc.

No, what matters is that her opinion MATTERS more than mine because she had the ability to see parts of the movie most of us never notice, let alone analyze. Her insight was staggering, and her dogmatic denouncements can even change your mind about opinions you thought were rock solid. (Ya know, Pauline, Meryl Streep DOES have something shallow going on! Like the perfectly calibrated actingbot.)

But really, it could've been anything----movies, art, architecture, music, politics, whatever. What mattered the most about Pauline's genius was her writing. Her words weren't just a beautiful cacophony of the high- and low-brow. It was a new paradigm, a new school of critical style. She defined a genre. If every writer was as good as Kael we'd never stop reading.

This book is just lovely. There's no big skeleton in the closet, there's no emotional sideshow hiding in Kael's past.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsWriting in the Moment
By A. Mcintyre on November 29, 2011
Format: Hardcover
Pailine Kael was probably the best film critic of the second half of the 20th century. The author, Brian Kellow, includes many quotes from her reviews in The New Yorker & before as well as larger pieces published usually in other magazines. Kael saw a film once, took plenty of notes, and rushed home to write the review almost immediately to best capture her (usually) strong feelings about each film in the moment.

Her style of reviewing worked well during her first years with The New Yorker when so many films were exciting and cutting edge. As the quality of films declined, Kael never really adjusted to the changes. Instead she over praised her favorite films ("The Last Tango in Paris" and "Nashville"), was blind to the merits of films that cut too close to her (largely ignored) Jewish background ("Shoah"), and retained a large bit of homophobia ("The Children's Hour" and "Rich & Famous") long after most writers of her status saw things diferently. Perhaps most damning was Kael's using research from a fairly low-level prof at UCLA on her famously long "Citizen Kane" article without giving him any credit, and very little money (about $300).

Kael was a larger than life figure. Yes, the book discusses her many friends and younger followers. All the battles are here (especially with Andrew Sarris of "The Village Voice") as well as her ill-fated decision to take a leave of absense from The New Yorker to work with Warren Beatty on producing and developing films. It's an interesting book about someone who concentrated so much of her life on only one thing: films. Her sex life was limited, and Kael did very little traveling outside the United States. Kael did read widely, and was unusally smart and often wise.

Brian Kellow's last book was about Broadway star Ethel Merman.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 starsAn unfair, sour portrayal of an iconic, brilliant woman

Pauline Kael is unquestionably one of my favorite writers, and thus I eagerly anticipated this biography, given the paucity of collected information available about one of the... Read more

Published 22 days ago by Steve Klemow
5.0 out of 5 starsAn Excellent Biography

Almost unbelievably well researched and full of the
atmospheric background of the times when she was
reviewing movies. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Wally Fay
2.0 out of 5 starsA Disappointment

"Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark" is less a biography than a lengthy recapitulation of Kael’s reviews and other writings. Read more

Published 8 months ago by r g stone
3.0 out of 5 starsAnd I Love Her

A little sad. There doesn't seem to have been anything going on in her life except movies. 😁 I was the recipient of her kindness. She agreed to read a script of mine. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Gerry Robinson
5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating...

Kellow does a great job constructing a critical biography of the late Pauline Kael, one of the most derided (and hopefully more so, loved) critics writing about the medium of film... Read more

Published 14 months ago by Leslie Karen Rigsbey
3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

Boring

Published 15 months ago by edythe darnell
5.0 out of 5 starsGood book, good subject

I really enjoyed this. A fine biography of an interesting subject.

Published 21 months ago by Turk Turon
3.0 out of 5 starsnowhere near as interesting as she

I feel strange writing a capsule review of this book. Karl's reviews were always do in depth.
I don't think I learned more about her here than I did through her writings. Read more

Published on December 6, 2013 by A. Lulu
4.0 out of 5 starsThe critic as artist

There are few critics who grew up in the 60s, 70s or 80s who unaware of the film critic Pauline Kael, who might have been the most influential cultural critic of the day. Read more

Published on August 22, 2013 by Jay Dickson
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Critic

In many ways Pauline Kael was the forerunner of talk radio in that the facts didn't matter as much as having an opinion. Read more

Published on January 17, 2013 by olingerstories

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