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Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael: the Duel for the Soul of American Film Criticism

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Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael: the Duel for the Soul of American Film Criticism 1 Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael: The Duel For the Soul of American Film Criticism By Inge Fossen Høgskolen i Lillehammer / Lillehammer University College Avdeling for TV-utdanning og Filmvitenskap / Department of Television and Film Studies (TVF) Spring 2009 1 2 For My Parents 2 3 ”When we think about art and how it is thought about […] we refer both to the practice of art and the deliberations of criticism.” ―Charles Harrison & Paul Wood “[H]abits of liking and disliking are lodged in the mind.” ―Bernard Berenson “The motion picture is unique […] it is the one medium of expression where America has influenced the rest of the world” ―Iris Barry “[I]f you want to practice something that isn’t a mass art, heaven knows there are plenty of other ways of expressing yourself.” ―Jean Renoir “If it's all in the script, why shoot the film?” ―Nicholas Ray “Author + Subject = Work” ―Andrè Bazin 3 4 Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgements p. 6. Introduction p. 8. Defining Art in Relation to Criticism p. 14. The Popular As a Common Ground– And an Outline of Study p. 19. Career Overview – Andrew Sarris p. 29. Career Overview – Pauline Kael p. 32. American Film Criticism From its Beginnings to the 1950s – And a Note on Present Challenges p. 35. Notes on Axiological Criticism, With Sarris and Kael as Examples p. 41. Movies: The Desperate Art p. 72. Auteurism – French and American p. 82. Notes on the Auteur Theory 1962 p. 87. "Circles and Squares: Joys and Sarris" – Kael's Rebuttal p. 93. 4 5 Raising Kane: Kael As Film Historian p. 112. Sarris As Film Historian: Directors and Directions Part One :The Rankings. p. 125. Directors and Directions Part Two: Toward a Theory of Film History p. 135. Final Thoughts p. 153. Conlusion – What Has Been Done? p. 165. Bibliography p. 168. 5 6 Preface and Acknowledgements A while back, my undertaking to write this thesis seemed permanently stalled. I am grateful to my supervisor Søren Birkvad, who essentially gave me the same advice that Andrew Sarris had been given by his editor while he was writing his last book: “One can never finish. One can only stop.” The twin subject of Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael had been in the back of mind long before I put pen to paper. In my late teens, I saved up to buy a Laserdisc-player. (It is a nostalgic reminder of my advanced years that I came of age cinematically in an era before DVD, VOD and High Definition.) My friends and I would devour the films of the New Hollywood filmmakers and discuss performances, sequences, camera placement, and themes. I guess in some ways I owe this thesis to Ole Jacob Rosten, Jarle Øverland and Trond Ola Wiigen, with whom I have shared so many movies and discussed so many stylistic epiphanies—to use a phrase Sarris is fond of. I can still remember vividly the elation I felt the first time I saw Mean Streets, in a widescreen Laserdisc transfer. I did not realize it at the time, but my friends and I were actually applying Sarris’s critical methods to the films Kael adored and fought for. Not only that, we were responding to what she saw as the particular greatness of movies. As a freshman, I discovered not only the writings of Sarris and Kael, but also fell in love with the old Hollywood movies to which Sarris has dedicated his career. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Many people have shaped this thesis in profound ways. I would like to thank Kristin Sandvik for going above and beyond the call of duty to get the source material I needed, or in some cases, simply thought I needed. I also extend my heartfelt thanks to Geir Neverdal and Kari Bjølgerud Hansen, without whom I could have never written a text of this magnitude and complexity in what is for me a second language. Thanking your therapist strikes me as a uniquely American thing to do, but since this is a thesis about American film criticism, it seems appropriate. So, thank you, Hilde Johanne Aafoss. Our discussions of everything in my life during the past few years (including this thesis) have been an inspirational factor in simply getting the thing done. On a similar note, I also thank my brother Roald Fossen for technical assistance when it seemed my computer was about to give in. Ane Faugstad Aarø and David M. Smith have served me well as proof-readers. 6 7 My friend and fellow student Håvard Berstad has read the manuscript throughout and has been unstinting with his perceptive comments. I should go on record to thank Pauline Ann Hoath at the University of Bergen for her insights on pop art and the cultural climate in the 1960s. Most of all, I would like to thank Stèfan Snævarr. Although his direct involvement in this project has been less than nominal, his intellectual keenness and unwavering generosity have influenced it in more ways than I can remember, much less mention. You have all made this work possible. Its faults are of course entirely my own doing. Inge Fossen, April 2009, Uppsala 7 8 Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael: Analogies and Contrasts in the Duel for the Soul of American Film Criticism Introduction In his book, The Function of Criticism (1984), Terry Eagleton makes the following statement, which I find rather depressing because substantially true: [C]riticism today lacks all substantive social function. It is either part of the public relations branch of the literary industry, or a matter wholly internal to the academies. […] The contradiction in which criticism finally runs aground is one between inchoate amateurism and socially marginal professionalism. 1 It would not be unfair to say that this polarisation of criticism has become increasingly pronounced in writing about film—even more so than in writing about literature. On the one hand, there are those instantly quotable, nearly subliterate exclamation blurbs (the WOW being the extreme, but far from unheard-of case) by more or less nondescript general interest reviewers diffused through the various and ever-expanding channels of mass media that serve merely to prop up massive ad campaigns. 2 At the other extreme are the various branches of scholarly criticism, laden with highly specialized jargon and totally unconcerned with issues of artistic merit. The latter has been the case in most of what is usually labelled film theory since the mid- sixties. At present, a somewhat similar trend is making itself strongly felt in the field of academic film history, which is becoming less concerned with detailing the genesis of masterpieces, seminal turning points of the medium and other canon-related questions, shifting instead to more holistic and empirical approach—no doubt to bring film history closer in line with other branches of hyphenate history like social and cultural history, which are older and more prestigious disciplines. I believe 1 Terry Eagleton (1984) The Function of Criticism: From The Spectator to Post-Structuralism London: Verso Books. p.7ff 2 The internet and the spread of blogging may also be the ultimate step towards making film criticism democratic in the banal sense of being a “free for all” genre for the millions who have access. This development also raises disconcerting questions of editorial responsibility, which, admittedly, are more pressing in other areas of journalism. 8 9 the very broad distinctions outlined above to be, on the whole, a quite adequate summary of the present situation. Sceptical and historically-minded readers may object to my thinly-veiled implication that film theory and film history are concomitant with criticism, or even special branches of criticism at large. I stand by this implication, which cannot be entirely original, since it is also present in the quotation from Terry Eagleton presented in the opening paragraph of this thesis. Regarding film history, it is my firm conviction that the only truly relevant difference between aesthetic film history and film criticism is that the historian by definition has to deal with the tension between change and stasis over time, whereas the mere critic may potentially disregard the temporal aspect. Still, this a minority view, and for practical purposes I shall modify it somewhat. It is expedient for analytical purposes to distinguish between critical film historyy and empirical or contextual film history, and I shall do so in this thesis. I shall give a much fuller account of the relationship between film history and film criticism in my examination of our protagonists’ sharply divergent efforts as film historians. Returning to Eagleton's lament and taking it at face value, I wish to compare two film critics, Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, whose bodies of work are neither socially marginal nor amateurish. On the contrary, I believe these two to be socially substantial as well as aesthetically significant. While Susan Sontag should probably be regarded as prima inter pares among American critics and cultural commentators in the second half of 20 th century, Sarris and Kael belong in her company, at least, as distinctive critical essayists and accomplished belletrists. Unlike Sontag, however, they must be counted as “dedicated no bones about it film critics.” 3 They broke into print at a very pregnant moment in the mid-fifties, a decade or so before the rising tide irrevocably broke the dam of resistance against film scholarship in America. In that cultural climate, film critics and reviewers working the journalistic beat in general interest magazines and specialized, almost underground film magazines could, if they were smart enough and bullish enough and witty enough, become instrumental in defining film as an academic field that exploded in the culturally volatile sixties—and matter to moviegoers at the same time.
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