Jewish International Film Festival - John Snadden catches up with WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL (Rob Garver, USA, 2018)

WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL is one for the cinephiles. A 2018 documentary on the life of New York writer Pauline Kael, who in the 1970s was the most read film critic in the Western world. Her nearly 25 year tenure at the New Yorker magazine was during a time when movies were taken seriously by media owners and the public. As the film says, she had a finely tuned "bullshit detector" and wasn't interested in a film's marketing, gossip or production. It was all about the final product - and if it was any good!

In New York in the late 1960s, Pauline Kael was the right person in the right place at the right time, and her writing on the films of the late 1960s and 70s was something to behold. Her long form reviews (and occasional essays) always reflected a quicksilver mind and an implacable enthusiasm for the art form of cinema. Her tastes ran high and low (much to the chagrin of some fellow critics), from art house to exploitation. 

In her final years, she was dogged by the twin torments of poor physical health but with a mind still as sharp as a tack. The film closes with her daughter Gina's eulogy to her in 2001.