Other than mentions of “Braveheart,” Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers and Mel Gibson’s “Hamlet,” in my previous 107 Substack posts, I haven’t written much about the movies. Or, if I’m putting on my Critical Hat, “film.”
There are so many movies, uh, films that are worth writing about, that’s for sure. And probably three times as many NOT worth writing about - or even seeing.
It is the job of the critic - music, film, plays, restaurants, books - to tell us about all these things. And on the surface, being a critic seems like a helluva gig. While working in Framingham, Mass. at the Middlesex News (we called it “The Little Sex News” because we worked so many hours) I had a chance to be the Record Critic for a bit and yeah, it was cool. I got some free albums and all I had to do was listen to them and write a few lines. Like I wrote about one really awful rap record M.C. Shan, I think it was. In rap.
“Some rap’s good but not this here. Words and beats without an idea…”
I used to read lots of music critics, loved Robert Christgau, who did a Consumer Guide for the Village Voice, short capsule summaries that could be hilarious. “Waylon lets you know he has balls by singing as though someone is twisting them.”
There was even a TV critic for the Boston Phoenix I remember: Cliff Garboden, who would write smartass comments about that week’s TV listings. I remember one: “Billy The Kid meets Frankenstein’s Daughter:” - His comment: “Small world, isn’t it?”
At the News, I also got to do music reviews for one whole glorious summer for shows in the area - U2 (twice), Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler, Bryan Ferry, Bruce Springsteen (twice). Even wrote some Sunday preview music stories. It was fantastic.
I also got a chance to review performance artist Karen Finley who, at one point in her very strange show, took off her top and showed the audience that she could hold No. 2 pencils underneath her breasts. Not sure if she put that on her resume.
One thing I never got to do was review movies, which seems like a phenomenal gig. You get to see the latest releases for free, sometimes in screenings so you don’t have to listen to someone on their phone or a couple arguing or farting. Without an audience or much of one, it may be difficult to anticipate how they’ll react but couldn’t we all do it? We know a good movie from a bad one, don’t we?
Well, it’s one thing to make that sort of judgment, it’s another to write and have to justify it. Last night, I watched a terrific documentary on the career of revolutionary film critic Pauline Kael called “What She Said.” In writing for lots of publications, most famously for The New Yorker, Kael was THE WORD on movies for quite a long time. Her reviews had a tremendous impact on the film community for a lot of years and reading them again, you can immediately see why.
A lot of people in the business absolutely hated her, lived in fear of a bad review. Others swore by her insightful, remarkably detailed, highly observant reviews, which often read more like an essay than a movie review. And when she didn’t like something, well, there was no equivocating or hesitation in her reviews. They could be savage, sometimes having a major impact on the career of the film maker.
These days, with internet sites galore (like this one!) it’s hard to believe one person’s words could have the power to do that but Kael had that kind of clout. Check some of them out and you’ll see why.
Two of her most famous and celebrated reviews were about Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” and “Godfather II” (the latter is attached at the end of this) and even now, after I’ve watched both films dozens of times - every time it’s on, it seems - her review offers revelations and reveals an eye that didn’t miss much.
Describing the final scene of “Godfather II” where you see the door closing on Michael Corleone, sitting with his henchmen to deal with that day’s dark business, she takes you into the heart of the film.
“By a single image, Francis Ford Coppola has plunged us back into the sensuality and terror of the first film. And, with the relentlessness of a master, he goes farther and farther. The daring of Part II is that it enlarges the scope and deepens the meaning of the first film; The Godfather was the greatest gangster picture ever made, and had metaphorical overtones that took it far beyond the gangster genre. In Part II, the wider themes are no longer merely implied. The second film shows the consequences of the actions in the first; it’s all one movie, in two great big pieces, and it comes together in your head while you watch. Coppola might almost have a pact with the audience; we’re already so engrossed in the Corleones that now he can go on to give us a more interior view of the characters at the same time that he shows their spreading social influence. The completed work is an epic about the seeds of destruction that the immigrants brought to the new land, with Sicilians, Wasps, and Jews separate socially but joined together in crime and political bribery. This is a bicentennial picture that doesn’t insult the intelligence. It’s an epic vision of the corruption of America.”
I mean, wow. The documentary makes the point that through much of her career she faced the same obstacles many gifted women did, trying to find their place in what was then a man’s world. As remarkably talented and insightful as she was, it was a genuine struggle for much of her career and seeing the documentary and re-reading some of her work again this morning, you marvel at how right she often was.
The work of the filmmakers she championed - Martin Scorcese, Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, Brian DePalma - have stood the test of time, her critical eye dead on. And I’m not sure, even with her “power” in her field, she ever felt as appreciated as maybe she should have been, steering America to some of the best films we’ve seen and away from some others that we could have done without.
I can’t speak for all my readers but for me, after seeing that documentary, knowing that she saw many of the same movies I did, now I’m curious to see what she said about them.
The movies, sad to say, are in a sorry state now. Everybody just stays home and watches on their TV in their own house. Movies aren’t designed for that, are they?
For me, the last three movies I saw in a theater were “Elvis” (which I insisted on seeing in a theater and it was great), Bruce Springsteen’s “Western Stars” - also great and should be seen in a theater - and before that, the James Bond film “No Time To Die,” which I thought at the time was just the film’s title.
Right now, looks like it might have broader implications.
(If you’re interested, here’s the Kael documentary “What She Said)
(Here’s a link to her classic review of “Godfather II”) https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/the-godfather-part-ii-fathers-and-sons-review-by-pauline-kael/