Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [222]
The lights went down, and Scenes from a Mall began. It was abysmal—a shocking comedown from a director she had always believed in, a director who had continued to deepen his craft and vision over more than twenty years.
She was seventy-one, and she was tired and in failing health—and the movies weren’t worth the time and effort anymore. She notified The New Yorker of her decision: Her review of the Steve Martin comedy L.A. Story, in the magazine’s February 11, 1991, issue, would be her last. A reviewing career that had begun at the magazine with Bonnie and Clyde would end with L.A. Story.
By March the news of her retirement had been made public. It received major coverage in many leading newspapers and magazines, where it was viewed as the end of a spectacular era. “For a brief, golden time in the ’70s . . . it must have seemed as if the movies themselves had caught up with her vision of what they ought to be: subversive and supple, erotic and multilayered and alive,” wrote David Ansen in Newsweek. “But the passionate cinematic ‘energy’ she sought became increasingly supplanted by a crass, bludgeoning energy that was like a cruel parody of the kinds of movies she fought for. Kael may have changed the face of criticism, but she’s always been playing a bigger, more impossible game—to change the movies themselves, and us with them.” “At worst, she wasn’t far from a film-world version of Walter Winchell, conducting vendettas and boosting intimates,” wrote Tom Carson in L.A. Weekly. “These habits are unseemly; they detract from Kael’s greatness. They don’t change the fact that greatness is the right word.” Pauline herself put a much lighter spin on it, telling the press that she would still write occasionally for The New Yorker. As far as giving up regular reviewing was concerned, she insisted that no should be sorry on her behalf—after all, now she wouldn’t ever have to sit through another Oliver Stone movie.
In fact, she had occupied the spotlight for so long, in a more vital and ongoing way than any other movie critic ever had, that stepping out of it was not easy. On May 2, 1991, she was awarded the Mel Novikoff Award at the San Francisco Film Society, for a body of work that “enhanced and expanded the filmgoing public’s knowledge and appreciation of world cinema.” (She wasn’t feeling well enough to fly to California, and her friend Michael Sragow accepted on her behalf.) Journalists still telephoned her for quotes, young filmmakers still showed up on her doorstep in Great Barrington seeking her advice, film companies still inundated her with video copies of their latest releases. She continued to keep up with everything, weighing in with her younger critic friends about new movies, still trying to have an influence on what was being written about them—and in many cases, succeeding.
In the fall of 1991 Movie Love, a collection of her last three years of New Yorker reviews, was brought out by Dutton. The Los Angeles Times Book Review said that it provided “welcome reading at a time when film criticism seems to have been reduced to ‘a 10!’ and ‘Two Thumbs up.’ ” A few months after the book’s release, her hometown honored her by proclaiming a Pauline Kael Day during Petaluma History Week. By now Petaluma had become a gentrified community with more than a little of Ye Olde Country Village atmosphere—far too precious for Pauline’s taste. She again offered the genuine excuse of ill health and declined to show up to celebrate her honor.
Life for the Paulettes had become quite different, in many cases, now that Pauline was in retirement. For one thing, they lacked the advantage of attending screenings with her and going out afterward to a restaurant to talk over the movie they had just seen, sparking thoughts and ideas in many directions. For another, the world at large didn’t seem as welcoming to them without Pauline as their mentor. People who had branded them—unfairly, in some cases—as imitators now felt the freedom to dismiss them. Without