The New York Times eulogizes Pauline Kael, 1919-2001. “Provocative and Widely Imitated Film Critic, Dies at 82. Whether dismissing auteur theory,

reviewing Robert Altman’s Nashville

(1975) before it was finished, questioning

the extent of Orson Welles’s contribution to

Citizen Kane (1941) or proclaiming

Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris

(1973) as a cultural event comparable to

the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s Sacre

du Printemps, Ms. Kael was always provocative. Her seductive writing

style bred a legion of acolytes, known as Paulettes.”

…the most quotable critic writing; but what is important and bracing is that

she relates movies to other experiences, to ideas and attitudes, to

ambition, books, money, other movies, to politics and the evolving culture,

to moods of the audience, to our sense of ourselves — to what movies do

to us, the acute and self- scrutinizing awareness of which is always at the

core of her judgment.

–Eliot Fremont-Smith