Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [194]
During the creative and social upheaval of the 1960s and ’70s, Pauline’s tough-mindedness and intellectual daring had been a perfect match for what was taking place in the movies. But times had changed. Ronald Reagan had been elected on a platform that effectively included a war on liberalism, and the economic downturn and perceived lack of leadership in the Jimmy Carter administration had helped create an enormous swing to the right in U.S. politics. The protection of corporate interests was paramount on Reagan’s list of concerns, and Pauline constantly fretted that the new, money-driven culture ushered in by his election was having a devastating effect on the movies.
Yet, while what wound up on the screen was becoming blander and safer, society was, paradoxically, becoming more polarized, and many people were becoming much more militant about the issues that concerned them. The days when a mainstream publication such as Time could characterize homosexuality as an affliction were long gone. With the impending AIDS crisis, which would devastate the world in the 1980s and ’90s, many publications would find it a delicate matter to criticize gay subject matter or sensibility on any level. The zeitgeist was changing—and the reaction to Pauline’s review of Rich and Famous was an indication that it was changing in ways that were alien to her values.
For her part, Pauline made no effort to moderate her use of astringent language just because some of her readers objected to it. In a November review of Milos Forman’s Ragtime, she stunned some readers with her description of the director’s concept of the Gibson girl Evelyn Nesbit, played by Elizabeth McGovern: “Forman appears to see Evelyn as some sort of open-mouthed retard.” Again she was drawing from ordinary American speech—“retard” was a common expression for anyone who engaged in dull, stupid behavior—and therefore considered the term acceptable.
At the end of 1981 she surprised everyone with an ecstatic review for Herbert Ross’s Pennies from Heaven, calling it “the most emotional movie musical I’ve ever seen.” Based on the BBC TV series, Pennies from Heaven was an emotionally jarring look at the quietly desperate life of an Illinois sheet-music salesman, played by the comedian Steve Martin. The novelty of the movie, which captured in amazing detail the sadly evocative paintings of Edward Hopper, was that the characters lip-synched to popular recordings from the ’30s to express themselves. “Despite its use of Brechtian devices,” Pauline wrote, “Pennies from Heaven doesn’t allow you to distance yourself. You’re thrust into the characters’ emotional extremes; you’re right in front of the light that’s shining from their eyes. And you see the hell they go through for sex and money.” Herbert Ross was not a director for whom she ever had much regard, but this time she thought he had surpassed himself: “There’s something new going on—something thrilling—when the characters in a musical are archetypes yet are intensely alive.... This picture shows that the talent to make great movie musicals is out there, waiting.” She pushed hard for the movie in her review, because she had a strong sense that the studio, MGM, wouldn’t know what to do with it, and she was right: Pennies from Heaven suffered from a halfhearted marketing campaign and failed completely at the box office.
The movie on which her fans were most eager to read her verdict was Warren Beatty’s Reds, which had a splashy opening in December. She did not recant her opinion that it