35 replies to this topic

[ChristopherZ22]

Pauline Kael was the most influential film critic of the 20th century. Here is an interview of her in 1982 in which she discusses Bond. This segment of the interview is over 7 minutes, but the topic of Bond begins at precisely 4:59.

Edited by ChristopherZ22, 19 November 2009 - 04:50 AM.

[crheath]

That's very interesting hearing her talk about NSNA. When that movie came out in 83, she didn't review it and I have never seen her write a review of NSNA. I always wanted to hear what she had to say. My guess is that she didn't like it but didn't want to give it a bad review since she liked Connery, Kershner and Semple Jr. Thanks for posting.

[Safari Suit]

Her voice and demeanour are nothing like I expected.

[the other fellow]

Thanks for that link ChristopherZ22.

I'd always wondered what she looked like, and it was interesting to hear her opinions on Bond.

[DR76]

After listening to Pauline Kael's comments on the Bond films around the late 70s and early 80s, I have come to the conclusion that she was like any other film critic - someone to ignore.

[Safari Suit]

What in particular rankled you? I don't really hear much that objectional there; stuff I disagree with certainly, but nothing unfair.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

Good interview, thanks for the link. I don't have a problem with her opinions as given here to be honest. Looks like a well informed critic, who knows her stuff, that's for sure.

[crheath]

After listening to Pauline Kael's comments on the Bond films around the late 70s and early 80s, I have come to the conclusion that she was like any other film critic - someone to ignore.

If you want to ignore then why are you commenting?

[Turn]

I always found it curious that Kael once claimed Connery's best performance as Bond came in You Only Live Twice. Her comments on the Moore era weren't anything radical as her views were mostly in line with the majority of critics and reviewers during that time.

Though many view her as a high-brow snob, and I admittedly am not a big fan, I like that Kael didn't find herself above talking about action pictures and B films, some of which she was quite fond of.

[PrinceKamalKhan]

Interesting. Thanks for posting. I didn't always agree with Pauline Kael but I often found her reviews fascinating to read. It's interesting that Miss Kael was one of the few critics in 1969 who gave a positive review to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service which I believed she called "marvellous fun". I think You Only Live Twice was her favorite Connery film if I remember correctly. I think the last Bond film she reviewed was A View to a Kill. I would've like to know what she thought of Dalton's Bond and his films but I don't think she ever reviewed them.

[crheath]

I always found it curious that Kael once claimed Connery's best performance as Bond came in You Only Live Twice. Her comments on the Moore era weren't anything radical as her views were mostly in line with the majority of critics and reviewers during that time.

Though many view her as a high-brow snob, and I admittedly am not a big fan, I like that Kael didn't find herself above talking about action pictures and B films, some of which she was quite fond of.

I always disagreed with her review of Connery in YOLT. She claimed that he played Bond more like a man than in his previous films. I thought he was just bored. I think even Connery himself would disagree with her.

[Cruiserweight]

Critics are like everyone else. They have their own opinions.
In this case i disagree.

[DR76]

After listening to Pauline Kael's comments on the Bond films around the late 70s and early 80s, I have come to the conclusion that she was like any other film critic - someone to ignore.

If you want to ignore then why are you commenting?

Because I wanted to express my feelings about Pauline Kael. By the way, I'm not "rankled". I'm just wondering why her views were so highly regarded in the first place.

[Safari Suit]

For one thing it helped that she knew how to articulate them.

[DR76]

For one thing it helped that she knew how to articulate them.

Being able to articulate an opinion, doesn't mean any of us should consider them worth anything. Watching Pauline Kael spoke drove that home to me.

[Cabainus]

For one thing it helped that she knew how to articulate them.

Being able to articulate an opinion, doesn't mean any of us should consider them worth anything. Watching Pauline Kael spoke drove that home to me.

..and with that in mind I'll ignore this one.

I'm none to familiar with this critic, but having watched this link, her opinions seem kinda sensible and really rather interesting.

[Safari Suit]

For one thing it helped that she knew how to articulate them.

Being able to articulate an opinion, doesn't mean any of us should consider them worth anything. Watching Pauline Kael spoke drove that home to me.

You seem doggedly insistent on not saying what she actually said that offended you so, which would be the inreresting bit and also more likely to inspire others to agree with you.

Or are we to infer that all opinions are not worth paying attention to? If so becoming a member of a forum strikes me as having been a questionable decision.

[DR76]

You seem doggedly insistent on not saying what she actually said that offended you so, which would be the inreresting bit and also more likely to inspire others to agree with you.

You don't have to agree with my opinion of Pauline Kael. I was simply stating my feelings after watching that YOU TUBE clip.

[Safari Suit]

I better stop here. Everybody's gotta learn sometime.

[mccartney007]

Hey, let's all get into an argument about CRITICS on the INTERNET. I bet we'll all be bigger and better people for it. LAWL

[Safari Suit]

Yeah, I post here to make myself a bigger and better person obviously.

[JimmyBond]

People at work fear me because I post on an internet message board.

"Uh oh here comes Tony...he posts on an internet message board." Is what they say while they are cowering down as I walk by.

[O.H.M.S.S.]

Interesting, does anyone have some links to her Bond reviews, or know where to find them? Thanks.

[crheath]

Interesting, does anyone have some links to her Bond reviews, or know where to find them? Thanks.

There was a link that I kept going to but that no longer exists. The only ones she didn't review that I know of were:

Dr. No
Goldfinger (though she referred to it's merit in her YOLT review)
Live and Let Die
Never Say Never Again

She stopped reviewing them after View to a Kill, which she called the worst in the series.

I'd say just Google her name and the Bond title. You can also look up her 5001 Nights at the Movies book in Google books.

[Revelator]

Kael is one of the greatest American film critics, along with James Agee, Andrew Sarris, and Manny Farber. And out of the latter three she was definitely the biggest James Bond fan, though she rarely wrote at length on the series. A site used to host all of her capsule reviews, but it disappeared after geocities closed down. Some reviews are still floating around the web however. Here's her take on DAF:

Diamonds Are Forever starts with a full head of steam, and one expects a luxuriant, mock-sadistic good time. But a few minutes later Sean Connery, as Bond, and a villain are in a tiny elevator, lunging at each other and pounding at each other with excruciatingly amplified blows; the sequence goes on and on, and the movie loses its insolent cool. The Bond pictures depend on the comic pørnography of brutality; the violence has to be witty. When people are just slugging each other, as in any movie fight, the point of the picture is blunted. This movie never recovers for long. The script (by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz) involves diamond smuggling and old Blofeld; it's a wilted affair with deep-in-the-closet bitch-fag villains. The one new character with possibilities, a billionaire Las Vegas recluse modelled on Howard Hughes, is dimly written, and played--shall we say rustically?--by Jimmy Dean. (He acts as if someone had just suggested to him that he turn actor but hadn't told him how.) The picture isn't bad; it's merely tired, and it's often noisy when it means to be exciting. Guy Hamilton directs more or less adequately, but he isn't precise enough for nonchalance--for the right, perfectly careless throwaway-joke tone. Hamilton doesn't parody urbanity and flippancy, because he's still struggling to achieve them. The Ken Adam sets just sit there, and the film doesn't have anything like those flamboyant sequences in the snow--the ski chase and the bobsled run--that were quite literally dazzling in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. What's missing may be linked to the absence of Peter Hunt, who worked on the action sequences of all the earlier Bonds, and who directed the last one; perhaps it was he who gave the series its distinctive quality of aestheticized thrills. The daring seemed beautiful in the earlier films--precariously glorified. This time, even when a sequence works (that is, both daring and funny) such as the car chase, and the battle between Connery and the black and white Amazons, it lacks elegance and visual opulence; it looks like sequnces of the same kind in Bond imitations. No doubt those of us who love the Bond pictures are spoiled, but really we've come to expect more than a comic car chase.

Customers may, however, be happy enough with what they get. Diamonds Are Forever has opened just at the moment when people long for the familiar, stable, unalienated hero with a capacity for enjoyment; the timing could not be better for Sean Connery to come back as Bond. He no longer wears the waxy deadpan of a sex-fantasy stud dummy; over the years he has turned the robot-matinee-idol Bond into a man--himself. The foppery and gadgetry have diminished, and the sexual conquests, too. Almost imperceptively, Bond has lost his upper-class snobbery along with the toiletries; it's as if that snotty, enigmatic Bond disgusted Connery. His instinct was right: it's better this way, because Connery's mock-heroic presence incarnates the appeal of the series without need of the commodity accoutrements of a modern pasha--without need even of a harem. Bond doesn't seem a phony anymore.

Obviously many Bond fans would disagree with her view of Connery's performance, but the role of a good critic is not to enforce orthodox opinions; instead they use their individual judgment to make observations that might challenge or encourage us to re-examine our own opinions. It seems very silly that so many people automatically decry a critic who's voiced an opinion contrary to their own, when part of the pleasure of reading criticism is engaging a dialectic with someone else's opinion.

That said, each critic has their own predilections and specific tastes. Kael once wrote that "with the glorious exceptions of Brando and Olivier, there's no screen actor I'd rather watch than Sean Connery. His vitality may make him the most richly masculine of all English-speaking actors." She praised his performance in YOLT, explaining that "Sean Connery's James Bond isn't the sleek, greasy-lipped dummy of the earlier films; playing the super-hero as a paunchy, rather bemused spectator, Connery gives him more character than he's ever had before. This casual, human Bond is rather tender in his sex relationships--one might almost call them love relationships this time."

By contrast she found Lazenby "quite a dull fellow" and wasn't impressed with OHMSS's script, but called Hunt "a wizard at action sequences, particularly an ethereal ski chase that you know is a classic while you're goggling at it, and a mean, fast bob-sled chase that is shot and edited like nothing I've ever seen before." She wasn't particularly keen on Roger Moore first two pictures but gave TSWLM a rave. She considered both MR and FYEO let-downs but liked Octopussy somewhat:

This is probably the most casual of the JAMES BOND series, and in some ways it's more like the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road comedies than it is like the Bonds...And among the disguises that BOND-Roger Moore-uses are a gorilla suit and an alligator outfit that doubles as a boat...It's not the latest-model Cadillac; it's a beat-out old Cadillac, kept running with junkyard parts. But it rattles along agreeably, even though the director, John Glen, seems to lose track of the story, and neither he nor the writers (George MacDonald Fraser, with Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson) appear to have thought out the women's roles...As Octopussy, the beautiful amazon Maud Adams is disappointingly warm and maternal--she's rather mooshy. (At one moment, she's a leader, and the next moment she's a dupe who doesn't know what's going on around her.)

Like everyone else she disliked AVTAK. She didn't review the Dalton films (they were released during times when she was away from The New Yorker) but I suspect, based on her personality, that she wasn't crazy about them, since her own favorite seems to have been YOLT.

Edited by Revelator, 25 November 2009 - 10:31 PM.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

Thanks for that post Revelator. Very informative and good to read her opinions on Bond.

[crheath]

Like everyone else she disliked AVTAK. She didn't review the Dalton films (they were released during times when she was away from The New Yorker) but I suspect, based on her personality, that she wasn't crazy about them, since her own favorite seems to have been YOLT.

Ever find out why she didn't review NSNA? She reviewed every one from 74 to 85 except that one and in the You Tube clip she said she was really looking forward to it.

[glidrose]

Like everyone else she disliked AVTAK.

Speak for yourself!

She didn't review the Dalton films (they were released during times when she was away from The New Yorker)

Not true! She was still with the New Yorker.

but I suspect, based on her personality, that she wasn't crazy about them, since her own favorite seems to have been YOLT.

Your speculation is wide of the mark. Kael loved Dalton the actor. She gave him many favorable notices in the '70s and early '80s - q.v. her reviews of "Agatha" and "Flash Gordon". So I was really surprised when she didn't review either Dalton Bond film. I suspect she hated both Bond films.

[ChristopherZ22]

 

Like everyone else she disliked AVTAK.

Speak for yourself!

She didn't review the Dalton films (they were released during times when she was away from The New Yorker)

Not true! She was still with the New Yorker.

but I suspect, based on her personality, that she wasn't crazy about them, since her own favorite seems to have been YOLT.

Your speculation is wide of the mark. Kael loved Dalton the actor. She gave him many favorable notices in the '70s and early '80s - q.v. her reviews of "Agatha" and "Flash Gordon". So I was really surprised when she didn't review either Dalton Bond film. I suspect she hated both Bond films.

 


Critics of The New Yorker had alternating schedules each year. Pauline Kael would alternate with other critics during months of the year. I imagine the two Dalton films were released when Kael was not working, and other critics were writing reviews during those particular months. Kael officially retired in 1991 due to Parkinson's Disease.

[glidrose]

 

 

Like everyone else she disliked AVTAK.

Speak for yourself!

>

She didn't review the Dalton films (they were released during times when she was away from The New Yorker)

Not true! She was still with the New Yorker.

>

but I suspect, based on her personality, that she wasn't crazy about them, since her own favorite seems to have been YOLT.

Your speculation is wide of the mark. Kael loved Dalton the actor. She gave him many favorable notices in the '70s and early '80s - q.v. her reviews of "Agatha" and "Flash Gordon". So I was really surprised when she didn't review either Dalton Bond film. I suspect she hated both Bond films.

 


Critics of The New Yorker had alternating schedules each year. Pauline Kael would alternate with other critics during months of the year. I imagine the two Dalton films were released when Kael was not working, and other critics were writing reviews during those particular months. Kael officially retired in 1991 due to Parkinson's Disease.

 

 

Not entirely correct. The alternating schedules only happened during the 1970s. By 1987 Kael was the only film critic at The New Yorker. Terrence Rafferty didn't join until the 1988 tho' I don't think he started review movies until the 1990s.