How Finland’s Jews Fought Alongside the Nazis, We need better ways to speak to each other about campus antisemitism and Israel, Dear Mandy: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group, Dear Abda: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group, West Side Story. Underpinning the Roman epic was an individual who had refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who penned the script Spartacus under the pseudonym Sam Jackson. [6] Gina had a serious illness through much of her childhood;[7] to support her daughter and herself, Kael worked a series of menial jobs such as cook and seamstress, along with stints as an advertising copywriter.[8]. West Side Story doesn’t aim to communicate through such standard filmmaking techniques as story or plotting.The beats and emotions are all communicated through dancing and song. Pauline Kael showed us how to talk about popular art and fall in love with movies. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra is put together of the stuff of legend that the director experienced as personal reality, and he filmed the story as if he had been there. . Kael had intended to go on to law school, but fell in with a group of artists[5] and moved to New York City with the poet Robert Horan. [88], Though he began directing films after she retired, Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by Kael. In this version, an Irish Catholic boy falls in love with a Jewish girl who is a recent immigrant and a Holocaust survivor. "[66] Similarly, her criticism of the 1961 British film Victim was that the film sought to treat gay people "with sympathy and respect—like Negroes and Jews." Given these deep Jewish roots, it is only appropriate that West Side Story is being remade by Steven Spielberg for release in late 2021. Where they are I don't know. Robert Wise co-directed it with Robbins. In his preface to a 1983 interview with Kael for the gay magazine Mandate, Sam Staggs wrote that "she has always carried on a love/hate affair with her gay legions. She was not especially cruel to some films that had been deplored by many critics—such as the 1972 Man of La Mancha, in which she praised Sophia Loren's performance. And I don't mean that facetiously. (West Side Story. [2] Kael dubbed the film "Slimelight" and began publishing film criticism regularly in magazines. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. B roadly speaking, Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort ... and the Movies,” Pauline Kael noted in passing, ... An American in Paris, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and West Side Story, apparently threw Kael off the track. The person who got the role was Richard Beymer who had earlier appeared as Peter van Daan in the The Diary of Anne Frank in 1959. I don't know anyone who voted for him. The movie’s release also had Jewish connections. Working for Robbins was, by all accounts, a sadistic experience. McDonald, Dwight, On Movies , New Jersey, 1969. "[44], In 1979, Kael accepted an offer from Warren Beatty to be a consultant to Paramount Pictures, but left the position after only a few months to return to writing criticism. [83] It was repeatedly alleged that, after her retirement, Kael's "most ardent devotees deliberate[d] with each other [to] forge a common School of Pauline position" before their reviews were written. Kael, Pauline, I Lost It at the Movies , Boston, 1965. [60], However, Kael responded negatively to some action films that she felt pushed what she described as "right wing" or "fascist" agendas. [39] Other than sporadic confrontations with Shawn, Kael said she spent most of her work time at home, writing. "[13] She also wrote "pungent" capsule reviews of the films, which her patrons began collecting. The stage version was originally planned as a story about a Catholic boy falling in love with a Jewish girl. I Lost it at the Movies is vintage Kael on such classics of post-War cinema as On the Waterfront, Smiles of a Summer Night, West Side Story, The Seven Samurai, Lolita, Jules et Jim etc. Why Is There Resistance to A Working Definition of Antisemitism? Life, as Shoeshine demonstrates, is too complex for facile endings. The earlier comparison to Spartacus was apt (for which Saul Bass also designed the title sequences). What was so incredibly appalling and shocking is how she printed outright lies about my movie. George Segal was ‘too old’. [2] In 1948, Kael and the filmmaker James Broughton had a daughter, Gina, whom Kael would raise alone. I think I have". The Jets, the Sharks, and the making of a classic, Richard Barrios describes West Side Story as ‘a musical epic’ that took a big approach like other movies of its time such as Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960). Born in 1919, she was a San Francisco area native who ran a Berkeley repertory house in the later 1950s while raising a daughter as a single mother. Roger Ebert argued in an obituary that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades." But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." Similarly she trashes West Side Story (Robbins 1961) as an overtly saccharine musical spectacle for people who hate musicals, and back-handedly compliments Bass’s work by saying “Surely only Saul Bass could provide the titles for such a production” (Kael “Innocents” 34). To find a movie title, click on a letter. I teach film studies at Bangor University in north Wales where I live. [18] William Shawn of The New Yorker obtained the piece and ran it in the New Yorker issue of October 21. [2][3], She left a lasting impression on several prominent film critics. ... Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. Rob Garver's documentary entitled What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael was released in 2018. By contrast, co-director of West Side Story, Jerome Robbins, had named names before the committee, resulting in the blacklisting of seven of his associates. [58], Kael had a taste for antihero films that violated taboos involving sex and violence; this reportedly alienated some of her readers. He said his fear was motivated less than being exposed as an ex-Communist than as being outted as gay. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact de-sensitizing us. [63] In the early 1980s, however, and largely in response to her review of the 1981 drama Rich and Famous, Kael faced notable accusations of homophobia. In October 1967, Kael wrote a lengthy essay on Bonnie and Clyde, which the magazine declined to publish. The film West Side Story is based on the 1950s Broadway stage play, from an idea inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . If we don't use this critical freedom, we are implicitly saying that no brutality is too much for us—that only squares and people who believe in censorship are concerned with brutality. Kael responded, "Tough shit, Bill," and her review was printed unchanged. With the voice of Sarah Jessica Parker narrating for Kael, the film is a portrait of the work of the film critic and her influence on the male-dominated worlds of cinema and film criticism. Referred to derisively as the "Paulettes," they came to dominate national film criticism in the 1990s. and Paul Newman (who had starred in Exodus, the other movie that Dalton Trumbo had penned in 1960). Kirk Douglas (producer of and lead in Spartacus) was one of the Jewish stars in attendance. [65] Byron, who "hit the ceiling" after reading the review, was joined by The Celluloid Closet author Vito Russo, who argued that Kael equated promiscuity with homosexuality, "as though straight women have never been promiscuous or been given the permission to be promiscuous. (For context, more homosexuals were fired from government employment in the McCarthy period than communists.). Andrew Sarris, a key proponent of the theory, debated it with Kael in the pages of The New Yorker and various film magazines. Production design was done by Boris Leven, costume design by Irene Sharaff, the titles by Saul Bass. His fellow astronaut Gary Lockwood (also not Jewish) was felt to be too inexperienced. She called it … [10] He was defended by critics, scholars and friends, including Peter Bogdanovich, who rebutted Kael's claims in a 1972 article[33] that included the revelation that Kael had appropriated the extensive research of a UCLA faculty member and did not credit him. Pauline Kael (/keɪl/; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Spartacus was based on a Howard Fast novel with an explicitly Jewish character, David the Jew, but whose Jewishness was progressively erased as the production developed. Mirisch Pictures financed it. It’s telling that the opening of West Side Story is not a monologue or a dump of exposition, but an extended dance number. [14], Kael continued to juggle writing with other work until she received an offer to publish a book of her criticism. Even though the protagonists were changed to Latinos and Anglos, and switched to the West Side of Manhattan, the Jewish traces remained. "[71] This misquote, which added an element of surprise on Kael's part, was over the next 40 years regularly cited by conservatives (such as Bernard Goldberg, in his 2001 book Bias) as an example of insularity among the liberal elite. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. By this measure, West Side Story is one of the best of all movie musicals. Rita Moreno (Anita) later played a Jewish mother in the sitcom Happily Divorced (2011-2013). Kael had often reviewed Lucas's work without enthusiasm; in her own (negative) review of Willow, she described the character as an "hommage à moi". She also panned films that had elsewhere attracted critical admiration, such as A Woman Under the Influence,[50] The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Lawrence of Arabia,[51] most experimental cinema[52] (calling it "a creature of publicity and mutual congratulations on artistry"), most student films ("freshmen compositions"),[53] It's a Wonderful Life, Shoah, Dances with Wolves[54] and 2001: A Space Odyssey, the last of which Kael dubbed a "monumentally unimaginative movie." Yet our tears for each other, and for Shoeshine did not bring us together. [2] In 1936 she matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied philosophy, literature, and art, but dropped out in 1940. The West Coast premiere was held in the cause of the Women’s Guild of Cedars-Mount Sinai Hospitals. "[60] She also called it "fascist medievalism. [46] At the time, Kael explained that she would still write essays for The New Yorker, along with "some reflections and other pieces of writing about movies.”[46] Over the next 10 years, however, she published no new work save for an introduction to her 1994 compendium, For Keeps. For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Taking It All In. West Side Story (1961) Famously and scathingly panned by The New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, West Side Story has not only outdistanced her wrath, it transcends all criticism. Pauline Kael Reviews A-Z. [90], In January 2000, filmmaker Michael Moore posted a recollection of Kael's response[91] to his documentary film Roger & Me (1989). They're outside my ken. ... like the bitchiest queen in gay mythology, she has a sharp remark about everything". The working title was "East Side Story". [69][70], The quote quickly turned into an urban legend that Kael had instead stated something like "I can't believe Nixon won. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counterbalance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films—the freedom to analyze their implications. After a boom of Puerto Rican immigration to New York in the late 1940s and 1950s, the story was changed, and the show opened on Broadway in 1957 as "West Side Story". The film also shows several of Kael's appearances on PBS, including one alongside Woody Allen. Diverging from mainstream tastes, she would pan popularly acclaimed films such as The Sound of Music, Lawrence of Arabia and West Side Story, thereby enraging high … He read her criticism voraciously growing up and said that Kael was "as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic". Three years later, Kael returned to Berkeley and "led a bohemian life," writing plays, and working in experimental film. [10] Alternately, Kael was said to have had the power to prevent filmmakers from working; David Lean claimed that her criticism of his work "kept him from making a movie for 14 years"[86] (referring to the 14-year break between Ryan's Daughter in 1970 and A Passage to India in 1984). As Barrios writes, ‘both were driven men from the East, regarded as species of “genius,” being compelled to play Hollywood games of budget and schedules’. A basic shofar call, the Tekiah, provides the musical motif that many of the show’s most important songs are based on. Critics who have acknowledged Kael's influence include, among many others, A. O. Scott of The New York Times,[77] David Denby and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker,[78][79] David Edelstein of New York Magazine,[80] Greil Marcus,[80] Elvis Mitchell,[81] Michael Sragow,[80] Armond White,[82] and Stephanie Zacharek of Salon. I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. Review: Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse Is a Triumph of Production Over Performance. Indeed, between takes, they could be found doing chariot races on the Goldwyn backlot and shouting ‘I’m Spartacus’ much to the annoyance of other directors like Billy Wilder. Occasionally, she championed films that were considered critical failures, such as The Warriors and Last Tango in Paris. [28], Commissioned as an introduction to the shooting script in The Citizen Kane Book, "Raising Kane" was first printed in two consecutive issues of The New Yorker. The originality of her opinions, as well as the forceful way in which she expressed them, won her ardent supporters as well as angry critics and fans.[55]. Although "West Side Story" was named the best picture of 1961 and won 10 Academy Awards, it is not much mentioned by movie fans these days, and the old warhorse "Singin' in the Rain" is probably more seen and certainly better loved. [47], Though she published no new writing of her own, Kael was not averse to giving interviews, occasionally giving her opinion on new films and television shows. Similarly, in the tentatively titled East Side Story, the original idea was to update Romeo and Juliet but with feuding Jews (Emeralds) and Irish Catholics (Jets) living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at Passover/Easter. 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