Andrew Sarris v. Pauline Kael OR Auteurism v. Love

Andrew Sarris v. Pauline Kael OR:
Auteurism v. Love

Alright, I'll concede that my title is unfair. The analogy drawn is not only asymmetrical (person to theory & person to emotion), even further, it is a simplification. Worse, I'm not particularly well-read on either Sarris or Kael (rival heavy-weight champions of American film criticism past). Nonetheless, I hope to propose several questions in my title alone (hopefully questions which are sufficiently endearing; I don't intend to write that much): Does the introduction of theory minimize visceral experience? Does the preference of elastic non-theory minimize extended awareness? How do we watch movies? How should we watch movies?

The auteur theory was at once reinterpreted, translated, and transposed, by Andrew Sarris, from the French periodical Cahiers du cinéma in the 1962 essay "Notes on the Auteur Theory" (Film Culture, Winter 62/63). This development inarguably changed American criticism. Suddenly, the sexiest thing a writer could do, especially a young one, was to celebrate a film as if it were penned by a singular author, or auteur, and that that premise was a critical starting point above any other. However, the celebration was not, according to Sarris, without serious scholastic concern. Sarris 'academianized' film by attempting to make criticism the part of a scientific method: Notes is defined by its many tiers and rankings. This theoretical approach would dominate film journals and magazines all over the nation.

Although, Sarris and his giant swinging mace of an auteur theory could not, for all the violence of it, coerce every person - in specific, the witty, sardonic, and many-other-things-of-marvel (no sarcasm there) Pauline Kael. Sarris' infamously opinionated colleague (of whom I have already quoted) could not be seduced by the mechanized model of Sarris. In the following year, after Sarris had published the notes of his model, Kael printed a biting and absolutely condemning rebuttal entitled "Circles and Squares" (Film Quarterly, Vol. 16, Spring, 1963, pp. 12-26) This entry into the debate would secure what could be the greatest rivalry in all of American film criticism.

As I myself could not do the rivalry justice, nor could I detail either side of the argument comprehensively (both of which, I feel, have proved true and useful), I will, instead, leave you with a recording of a lectured near verbatim reading of "Circles and Squares" by Pauline Kael herself (which I graciously found here, thank you!*). The talk takes place sometime in 1963 at the San Fernando Valley State College in California. Kael delivers the speech with her nose taped up to her forehead, possibly holding a glass of elegant, but not too expensive, wine, and taking each moment of pause as an opportunity to smugly grin. Her snideness most profound when she transparently chastises Sarris, "I do not understand what goes on in the mind of the critic who thinks that a theory is what his colleagues need because they are not great critics." The passive aggressive brutality alone makes this worth lending your ear. Though, a sense of stubbornness and a high note of hypocrisy might have you hearing no evil.


Nonetheless, Kael's movie talk is exciting. It demonstrates a passion and a love, outside of the bounds of theory. Further, it is a beacon of impassioned and intelligent filmic discourse. I mean, there is a reason this woman, who, according to David Lean himself, "kept me from making a movie for 14 years," [1] is so influential, so remembered. Her attack does not leave her frothing at the mouth. Somehow, despite all its nastiness, Kael's argument leaves her saintly and majestic (which is, even from her own admission, far from the truth). And, really, I'm just left wondering why today's popular critics can't (or won't) talk this way.


"Circles and Squares" lecture at San Fernando Valley State College (Pauline Kael, 1963)

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*Thanks to all the fantastic contributors at the amazing "Gunslinger." If you haven't checked out this collage of extra-media culture yet, you simply must. (http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/)

I Really Know Very Little

I, much unlike most cinephiles and snobs, was born after the war was waged, by competing media and technology giants, for the video market. In the early 1970's home video cassette recorders (VCRs) first became available. On April 16, 1975 the first consumer-popular video format was introduced: Sony's Betamax. A year later, in an act formerly considered market-suicide, The Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan, Limited (JVC) denied the dominance and popularity of Sony's Betamax by inventing a videotape format of their own, VHS. Thus began the long-winded and bloody market battle that became known as "the videotape format war." It wasn't until a decade later that a clear victor in the battle had emerged, and that victor stood in contradiction of technological superiority (aside from running time, Betamax was superior to VHS in every way). I was forced into this world in 1988; it was the same year that Sony conceded defeat and began to produce VHS cassettes. [1]

In 1975 Opening Soon at a Theater Near You premiered on WTTW (PBS Chicago). The show starred print-critics Gene Siskel and (now) jawless-celebrity-status Roger Ebert. In '78 the show was retitled to Sneak Previews. In '82 the two critics left the relatively popular public broadcast in order to create their own show under Tribune Entertainment called At The Movies. Four years later the thumb-wagging duo signed under Buena Vista Entertainment (Disney's television division) and became the hosts of Siskel & Ebert & the Movies. In 1989, when I was nearly a year old, the series' title would change for the last time before Gene Siskel's death; "The Movies," was taken out of the title, "Siskel & Ebert" was all that remained. That same year the phrase "two thumbs up" was trademarked. This coincided with the show's immense success. It was becoming increasingly lauded and integrated into the public conscious. Arguably, this also coincided with a disheartening decrease in academic or scholarly film criticism. [2] American film critic Pauline Kael, who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991, was once asked by a prideful Ebert if she had seen his show. She responded scornfully, “If I want a layman’s opinion on movies, I don’t have to watch TV.”[3]

All this serves to inform me of the commercial and consumer orgy of video-media I was born into. Intelligent criticism had been replaced with thumbs, film was being seen merely as a "fun" time-wasting entertainment only academically considered by smelly eccentric hoarders, and "Blockbuster" was becoming a household name. I'm lucky though, really. I was born into the first wave of the information age. I have a world of knowledge at my disposal: this is actualized autodidacticism. Without any of this, I wouldn't even have my passion for cinema, let alone the ability to communicate it to you (anyone want to start a tape trade?).

In my small room, my mother's small apartment, the small town I live in, I am a sort of film aficionado, a real "cinephile": I know who Jess Franco, Frederick Wiseman, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dušan Makavejev, and Andrzej Zulawski are. However, this is not to say that I truly know anything about them - because, essentially, I don't. Despite the fact that I have been gifted with the rare opportunity to see some of the work of each of these artists, all of those instances have occurred in the last year, were dependent on some sort of (more or less) freak accessibility, and have only served to marginally ascend myself towards any degree of so-called snobbery. In my little town I'm a particularly knowledgeable and well-viewed movie-goer. However, in the perverted and exceedingly expansive terrain of underground network cables - the world-wide-web - I'm somewhat of a foolish, infantile, and half-blind insect. I'm small and insignificant in comparison to the verbose, well-read, and projection-absorbed elite who live inside of the corners of the most obscure world-cinema.

Despite all this, I have my own aspirations and that is what moves me to start this blog. I truly do have a love for film and a passion to dedicate myself to its study. Film has transformed, defined, brightened, and devastated my life - it is a force and power that I could not, for anything, oppose. Because of this, I have resolved to watch at least one movie a day. I have the hopes of genuinely expanding my knowledge of cinema and I not only want to catalog this journey for myself, but possibly give others insight into the process and the procedures it entails (finding some of these movies is impossibly stupid). Further, I need something - I have a deficiency in discipline - to keep me anchored and on task... I'm watching a movie a day.

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[3]. What we Don't Talk About When we Talk About Movies by Armond White