Gangsters, cowboys, escaped slaves, martial arts killers, stuntmen and… a film critic? The working title of Quentin Tarantino’s next film suggests that. The movie is called The Movie Critic and will be set in Los Angeles in the late 1970s.
Not much is known about the plot of the new Tarantino film other than the timeline and a female protagonist. Both aspects could indicate that Tarantino is making a film about a great critic. But who is Pauline Kael, why is she such a controversial figure and what could the film be about in detail?
Let’s tackle one question at a time…
Pauline Kael had an enormous influence as a critic – also on Quentin Tarantino
Pauline Kael was one of the most influential film critics of the 20th century. The Californian, born in 1919 and who died in 2001, distinguished herself in her reviews and essays with her biting, witty and profound writing. Above all, she didn’t shy away from pushing the darlings of the masses or revered auteur filmmakers off their pedestals. Kael’s slating is legendary, but so is her classification of films in larger social contexts.
AbeBooks
Pauline Kael
According to legend, she was fired from women’s magazine McCall’s after a negative review of the hit musical The Sound of Music. On the other hand, she celebrated the brutal gangster film Bonnie and Clyde, which fell flat with the critics. Her essay on the film in the New Yorker played a significant role in Bonny and Clyde being re-evaluated by her peers. Today it is considered one of the most important films from the early days of so-called New Hollywood cinema.
Kael was revered, feared and hated. Steven Spielberg once wrote to her that she was the only critic who got Jaws right. George Lucas, on the other hand, named the evil General Kael in Willow after the author. Your own guild split into pro and contra camps. Kael had many students who were derogatorily referred to by the opposition as “the Paulettes”. Even if you didn’t follow her example, you had to at least have an opinion about Pauline Kael’s opinions.
What Kael meant to young Quentin Tarantino
Kael’s reviews made a big impression on young Quentin Tarantino. In his book Cinema Speculation, Tarantino downright pays homage to the critic. Tarantino described first seeing her on television in a 1994 Time magazine article:
I thought, ‘who is this wild old woman?’ And immediately went to a library to find one of their books. She was just as influential as a director in helping me develop my own style. I never studied film at university, but she was the professor at the film university in my imagination.
The Movie Critic could be about a difficult period in Kael’s life
The Movie Critic doesn’t appear to be a conventional biopic, but neither was Tarantino’s. The fact that the film could be about Pauline Kael (which has not been confirmed!) is attributed to the setting in LA at the end of the 70s and the bit of information that The Movie Critic is supposed to have a female main character.
Pauline Kael went to Hollywood for a short time in 1979. She landed a position as a consultant at the Paramount Pictures studio through the agency of Bonnie and Clyde star Warren Beatty. After a few months, however, it was over and the studio did not extend their contract. Kael returned home and although she continued to write for the New Yorker for several years, her relevance faded.
Books by Pauline Kael worth reading:
However, The Movie Critic could also delve into other figures from this period that Tarantino adored. Among them is film critic Kevin Thomas. In Cinema Speculation, Tarantino dedicates a separate chapter entitled “Second-String Samurai” to the proponent of low-budget and exploitation films.
When is The Movie Critic in cinemas?
Quentin Tarantino’s 10th film has not yet been released in cinemas. Should he quickly come to an agreement with a studio a start at the end of 2024 or mid-2025 would be conceivable, at least if we go by his last film. In 2017, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was announced and two years later it was released in cinemas.
*. . .