THE GALLERY
The FILM/ART Gallery section features a rotating selection of posters devoted to a different actor, director or theme. Currently, we're celebrating the life and career of Pauline Kael, who is the subject of a new biography, "A Life in the Dark" - said to be the first major book devoted to the life of a film critic. A collection of her reviews and essays, "Pauline Kael: The Age of Movies" has also just been published.
Kael's style - deeply personal, fiercely intelligent, jazzy, provocative, combative - was unique and influential, and her tenure at The New Yorker coincided with an extraordinary era of American filmmaking. A new generation of directors and stars had the freedom to tell new stories in fresh, exciting ways, and there was a passionate new audience as well - eager to see, study and debate what they saw. Film-going became a new kind of religion, and Kael was its high priestess and queen bee. She was widely read and debated, and some of her reviews (BONNIE AND CLYDE, LAST TANGO IN PARIS, NASHVILLE) became legendary.
Here are posters for films that inspired some of Kael's best writing. She was a famous champion of some directors (including Altman, DePalma, Spielberg and Peckinpah) and was amazingly adept at analyzing actors and celebrated great performances, even when the star outshone the material (FUNNY GIRL, MOMMIE DEAREST). She was a contrarian and went out on a lot of limbs, but she did it all with such conviction, intelligence and style that you don't have to agree with her to enjoy what she wrote.
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