Pauline Kael Quotes
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The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
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Moviegoers like to believe that those they have made stars are great actors. People used to say that Gary Cooper was a fine actor - probably because when they looked in his face they were ready to give him their power of attorney.
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One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.
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This movie is a toupee made up to look like honest baldness.
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A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.
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I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
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The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.
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In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.
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Goodman: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.Kael: I hate it. It is very creepy being imitated.
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Object to the Hollywood film and you’re an intellectual snob, object to the avant-garde films and you’re a Philistine. But, while in Hollywood, one must often be a snob; in avant-garde circles one must often be a Philistine.
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Picasso has a volatile, explosive presence. He seems to take art back to an earlier function, before the centuries of museums and masterpieces; he is the artist as clown, as conjurer, as master funmaker.
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Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.
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I loved writing about things when I was excited about them. It's not fun writing about bad movies. I used to think it was bad for my skin. It's painful writing about the bad things in an art form, particularly when young kids are going to be enthusiastic about those things, because they haven't seen anything better, or anything different.
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When you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The wellspring of their art, their greatness, is in not being respectable.
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For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like 'American Beauty.' We've become a heavy-handed society.
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It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he's a hack.
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De Mille's bang-them-on-the-head-with-wild-orgies-and-imperilled-virginity style is at its ripest; the film is just about irresistible.
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A book might be written on the injustice of the just.
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Kicked in the ribs, the press says 'art' when 'ouch' would be more appropriate.
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I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.
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The action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it surfaces in this movie.
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Moviemaking is so male-dominated now that they think they’re being pro-feminine when they have women punching each other out.
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The slender, swift Bruce Lee was the Fred Astaire of martial arts, and many of the fights that could be merely brutal come across as lightning-fast choreography.
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Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head. The Indians should have called him 'Plays with Camera.'