¡Kael, Pauline1919╨ film criticBorn in Petaluma, California, on June 19, 1919, Pauline Kael graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1940. For a number of years she made a precarious living with various minor jobs while pursuing interests in playwriting, filmmaking, and literature. She had been an avid fan of the movies since childhood, and in 1953 she published her first piece of film criticism in City Lights magazine in San Francisco. Other articles followed in Partisan Review, Moviegoer, Kulchur, and other journals and then appeared regularly in Film Quarterly. For several years from 1955 she broadcast film reviews over the radio stations of the Pacifica network, and during that time she also managed a pair of art film cinemas in Berkeley. Kael╒s reputation among film buffs and fellow critics for honest, lively, and penetrating criticism led to the publication in 1965 of a collection of her articles in book form under the characteristic title I Lost It at the Movies. The book was a best seller and won her assignments from such major general circulation magazines as Life, Holiday, Mademoiselle, and McCall╒s. She was the regular film reviewer for McCall╒s for some months in 1966 and for the New Republic in 1967, and in 1968 she joined the New Yorker, where her column appeared weekly for six months a year for the next 11 years. The intelligence and wit that marked Kael╒s reviews were rendered the more effective by her cool, clearsighted dismissal of both the overblown promotions on the one hand and the pretentious intellectualizing on the other that marked the poles of the world of film. She had, moreover, remarkable insight into the sociological import of the movies╤their meaning within contemporary culture, as understood by their audiences. The great success of her subsequent collections of reviews╤Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 1968, Going Steady, 1970, Deeper Into Movies, 1973, which won the National Book Award, and Reeling, 1976╤suggested that she was the preeminent American film critic of the day. In The Citizen Kane Book, 1971, she published the script of that classic film along with a lengthy introduction and voluminous notes. A popular speaker and television guest, she was widely honored for her work and in 1970 was chairman of the National Society of Film Critics. In 1979 she took leave of absence from the New Yorker to work as the executive consultant on film projects to Paramount Pictures. She returned to the New Yorker in 1980 where she remained until 1991. Her later collections of reviews include When the Lights Go Down, 1980, Nights at the Movies, 1982, Taking It All In, 1984, State of the Art, 1985, Hooked, 1989, and Movie Love, 1991. ╛styl ` < ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ % !I ¼ !I ╖ !I ∩ !I ■ !I !I !I !I !I F !I T !I 5¬ !I ▀ !I ≈ !I ] !I a !I c !I j !I l !I x !I } !I å !I » !I ╖ !I ▄ !I Φ !I !I !I i 5¬ j !I N !I a !I i !I u !I } !I Å !I ╛ !I ┼ !I !I , !I U !I _ !I ┴ !I ╦ !I
