> That's odd. I'm not contradicting, but I remember she
treated Last Tango more as a monument than a movie.
Seems inconsistent with what you say.
She called it the most erotic movie ever made. She never talked about it as a work of art. To engage aesthetics was not Pauline's style.
Here is the link to an essay with Pauline at her best (which means worst for anyone who has a serious love of film as aesthetic expression).
http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/trashartandthemovies.html
For those with weak constiutions or better things to do like cataloging their collection of bird droppings, here are a few highlights:
"There is so much talk now about the art of the film that we may be in danger of forgetting that most of the movies we enjoy are not works of art."
"Movies make hash of the schoolmarm's approach of how well the artist fulfilled his intentions. Whatever the original intention of the writers and director, it is usually supplanted, as the production gets under way, by the intention to make money."
Notice the anti-intellectualism -- to worry about an artist's intentions is a schoolmarm approach. Hitchcock and Hawks and Capra and Ford and Welles just made films willy-nilly. But if these directors were never able to fuilfill their intentions, how is it so easy to know which of them made a particular film even without seeing the credits?
"People who are just getting 'seriously interested' in film always ask a critic, "Why don't you talk about technique and 'the visuals' more?" The answer is that American movie technique is generally more like technology and it usually isn't very interesting."
A personal favorite of mine. I am sure that if Pauline were reviewing an opera, she would avoid talking about the music since it isn't very interesting.
And here is the key to Pauline:
"Simply to be enjoyable, movies don't need a very high level of craftsmanship: wit, imagination, fresh subject matter, skillful performers, a good idea-either alone or in any combination-can more than compensate for lack of technical knowledge or a big budget."
She was about having a good time. Now I believe that art does give pleasure, but that it also requires a high level of craftsmanship to be art -- in fact that is one of the hallmarks of art -- the fact that it is well-made.
But if Pauline had to admit this, then her dismissal of artistic intention goes out the window since craftsmanship betrays intent, and would require investigation on the part of a critic.
Further on:
"We generally become interested in movies because we enjoy them and what we enjoy them for has little to do with what we think of as art."
Again, Pauline must separate the aesthetic from what is pleasurable.
A last example:
"There is talk now about von Sternberg's technique-his use of light and décor and detail-and he is, of course, a kitsch master in these areas, a master of studied artfulness and pretty excess. Unfortunately, some students take this technique as proof that his films are works of art, once again, I think, falsifying what they really respond to-the satisfying romantic glamour of his very pretty trash. "Morocco" is great trash, and movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them."
And here is Pauline's problem. Her aesthetic response is limited. She can only respond to trash, and out of this limitation comes the idiocy that movies
are rarely great art. She loves movies, but does not want to engage them on the level of art, so she solves the problem by claiming that they rarely are art and must be antagonistic to those critics (mostly, but not exclusively auteurists) who see film differently. Her battle with Andrew Sarris was epic (at least in film culture LOL).
This also led to her hostility to those filmmakers she once championed who were taken up by other critics who regarded film as art. She felt that these directors had betrayed her and her trash aesthetic.
Brian