Pauline Kael

(76 votes)   Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to see them; we drop in on them because they're so close. If it took some effort to see old movies, we might try to find out which were the good ones, and if people saw only the good ones maybe they would still respect old movies. As it is, people sit and watch movies that audiences walked out on thirty years ago. Like Lot's wife, we are tempted to take another look, attracted not by evil but by something that seems much more shameful -- our own innocence.

Pauline Kael
1919-, American Film Critic

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(48 votes)   Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Pauline Kael
1919-, American Film Critic

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(36 votes)   The words ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,'' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.

Pauline Kael
1919-, American Film Critic

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(20 votes)   Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head. The Indians should have called him 'Plays with Camera.'

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(19 votes)   A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(19 votes)   In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(19 votes)   This movie is a toupee made up to look like honest baldness.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(18 votes)   I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(17 votes)   A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(17 votes)   The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(16 votes)   Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(16 votes)   The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(15 votes)   Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(15 votes)   Trash has given us an appetite for art.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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(12 votes)   It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists, but simply announce that they are, don't have the patience to make art.

Pauline Kael
American, Critic Quotes

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