Reeling and 5001 Nights at the Movies by Pauline Kael

Continuing a closer look at this...

I first read Pauline Kael's film criticism not long after finishing the paper that had led me to Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. Considering I was a burgeoning film buff, I'm sure I would have gotten around to reading her work on purpose, although I ended up discovering it by accident. Our neighbors across the street were renovating their basement, which they had been using to store all of their books and they offered to pay me to box them all up. I noticed that they had quite a few books of film criticism and while taking a break (it was a hot day - I needed to stay hydrated) I picked up a copy of Reeling and started skimming through it.

By this time, I was already familar with, if not the exact movies she was wiritng about in Reeling, many movies from that era. One of the "major events" in my cine-biography was moving from a rural New York town of 10,000 that had a good, solid video store (Village Video on Raymond Street in Malone) and a single screen theatre to Montreal, a genuine, world-class city with a number of great video stores, multiplexes, and (at the time) even a few rep houses. And given that I was a fan of Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, I had ended up watching quite a few movies from the "American New Wave". So, my brief look at the book was enough to get me hooked: passionate writing about the kind of movies that I was just beginning to get passionate about - a perfect match!

I went to the bookstore the next weekend to get my own copy, but, since I couldn't find Reeling, I bough 5001 Nights at the Movies, which replaced the Halliwell's Film Guide that I was contiually checking out of the library as my main source for movie recommendations. Over the years, my copy of 5001 Nights stayed with me, moving from house to dorm to various apartments, getting pretty beat up along the way from almost constant reference.

Over the years, I've come to agree with Michael Blowhard that Kael's criticism is more valuable as writing - for its humour, its voice, its passion - than as film criticism, per se. As a critic, Kael is perhaps too reliant on her immediate reaction: her wisecracking confidence doesn't leave any room for doubt or self-reflection. Too often she writes as if she's trying to have the last word rather than start a conversation. But the things she taught me to value in movies - mainly a sense of vitality and emotional truth - are still important to me today. And I still use too many em dashes.

Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan by Robin Wood

Beginning a step by step journey through this list...

My first steps towards cinephilia started with a love for action movies (especially those starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) and what my brothers and I called "epics" - i.e., movies that came on two VHS tapes (The Towering Inferno, The Right Stuff, The Great Escape), which we liked to rent because they gave us more bang for our (parents') buck.

After that I got into actors. My favorites were Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, and for my 14th birthday, my parents got me - appropriately enough - coffee table "The Films of..." books for each of them. If I were making a list of books that were important to "my life as a movie watcher", those two would have a place on it, but this list is about my life as an amateur critic.

I checked Robin Wood's Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan out of the Westmount library in order to research a Grade 10 English paper that I was writing on The Graduate. Though I didn't find much in it that directly related to my thesis ("Coming of Age in The Graduate"), I ended up reading through the whole book. I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it.

I had, at this point, learned about the basics of literary analysis in English class, but this was the first book length work of criticism that I had ever read, the first work of criticism that assumed the reader was familiar with the basics of Freudianism and Marxism, and my first exposure to close readings of movies. I can still remember reading Wood's Feudian take on Blow Out and being shocked by all of the phallic symbols he was able to find.

I'm not sure that I found him entirely convincing. Today, I still don't quite agree with his arguments and I value his Howard Hawks book (even though there's lots I'd argue with there, too) more than this one. But what was important to me was less Wood's specific approach, than the idea that I could approach a movie with a critical frameworks in place. And that, by doing so, I might be able to unlock deeper meanings, hidden under the surfaces of the films I loved.

Critical Influences

In approximate chronological order based on when I first encountered them, here are the works of criticism that, over the past 17 years, have most strongly shaped my approach to movies, comics, art, culture, criticism, etc.

Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan by Robin Wood
Reeling by Pauline Kael
5001 Nights at the Movies by Pauline Kael
The Western Canon and The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom
No Surprises Please by Steve Vineberg
Uncollected film criticism by Steve Vineberg
Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus
The Heart of Rock and Soul by Dave Marsh
Movies by Manny Farber
The Jim Hillier-edited Cahiers du cinema collections
Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye
Tom Spurgeon's comics criticism in The Comics Journal and elsewhere
Gary Groth's comics criticism and commentary in The Comics Journal
The American Cinema by Andrew Sarris
Where Dead Voices Gather by Nick Tosches
Various blog posts on movies, books, art, and culture by Michael Blowhard of 2blowhards.com
Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide
Beauty: The Value of Values and other works by Frederick Turner
Reading the Funnies by Donald Phelps
Sean T. Collins' film and comics criticism on his blog
Jonathan Rosenbaum's film criticism in the Chicago Reader
Bill Krohn's posts on the a_film_by discussion group
Michael Sicinski's film criticism on his Academic Hack website
Various comments and articles strewn all over the web by Adrian Martin
Physical Evidence by Kent Jones