"Pauline Kael Revealed a Plagiarist!"

[Glenn Anders]

Many here will be pleased to know that an uber-critic's biography: Pauline Kael, A life in the Dark by Brian Kellow, claims that Ms. Kael "ripped off" much of her research for "Raising Kane" from Howard Suber, later Chair of the UCLA Film Archive. Frank Rich, in next Sunday's New York Times Book Review, describes the rise of Ms. Kael from a Petaluma, California, chicken farmer's daughter to the doyen of the New York film critics (the person who made film critiques best sellers), then, her long, painful descent into oblivion. According to Rich, despite her brilliant zenith, which just prompted the Library of America to "canonize" her selected writings (The Age of Movies, Sanford Schwartz, ed.), she gradually fell victim to failings she often condemned in others: ". . . corruption, self-parody, first-person megalomania."

Rich crystalizes the beginning of Pauline Kael's decline with the following description of intellectual dishonesty that she displayed in pressing anti-auteurist arguments, using the example of Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE:

"The most serious brief against Kael’s professionalism, however, is Kellow’s discovery that she ripped off the research of a U.C.L.A. academic, Howard Suber, for “Raising Kane,” her lengthy 1971 essay about the making of “Citizen Kane.” Adding to that infraction, her piece contained many factual errors of her own, all undetected by New Yorker fact checkers and all contrived to reinforce her anti-auteurist argument that the screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, not Orson Welles, was the movie’s principal author. “Raising Kane” was omitted from the Library of America volume for reasons of space, according to [Editor] Schwartz’s introduction, but Kellow’s account suggests it should have been eliminated in any event for its ­improprieties."

Brian Kellow, it would appear, has handed The Knights of Wellesnet a new battle-axe against their favorite bete noir!

Glenn Anders

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn:

Given your admiration of Ms. Kael, I was shocked to see this post, which I agree with totally. Let us meet soon and bury the hachet at the Ha-Ra Club.

Basically Pauline Kael was wrong about almost everything she wrote about in THE CITIZEN KANE BOOK, and as you suggest, she was a probably a plagiarist. I must call Andrew Sarris and ask him what he thinks about these new revealations.

[Le Chiffre]

The Wall Street Journal has weighed in on the new Kael books too at

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 49266.html

Which offers a defense of Kael's RAISING KANE, with a little snipe at Welles defenders:

"The Age of Movies"...does contain a plausible sampling of Kael's reviews, with the stress on the young directors she championed. But...Too many crucial pieces have been omitted...

The biggest loss is that there's nothing from Kael's most sustained work, "Raising Kane" (1971). This is a brief book on the making of "Citizen Kane" that provoked a hurricane of furious denunciations in the film-geek world—she was accused of deliberately suppressing evidence of Orson Welles's contribution to the screenplay as part of an invidious attack on his genius. The counterattacks now seem wildly overstated. Whether or not she got some of the specifics wrong, she was clearly right on her larger point, which is that Welles was at his best when he had strong collaborators. In fact, reread now, the book proves to be a subtle, searching and brilliant meditation on authorship and collaboration in old Hollywood. It should be regarded as one of the few genuine masterpieces of American movie writing—and maybe it would be if readers had an easier time getting hold of a copy.

But...No matter what was chosen or left out, even at 800 pages, the book feels skimpy. Kael's own best-of selection, "For Keeps" (1994), which "The Age of Movies" is largely drawn from, is more than 1,200 pages of microscopic type. (It feels both skimpy and crushingly overweight.) Kael needs to be read the way she wrote: in bulk with all her crotchets, perversities and forgotten controversies intact. Her 10 books of collected reviews can be seen as a single, grandly catch-all chronicle of movies and American pop culture over four decades and an equally exhaustive record of one writer's intensely rich interior life—a work comparable in size and importance to the long shelf of Edmund Wilson's books.

I agree with the last paragraph.

[Glenn Anders]

Hi, Mike: To my mind, the Wall Street Journal almost goes overboard on the other side in devaluating the new Pauline Kael biography. We certainly should praise you for giving us the URL, and for the fairness of your own remark.

Come to think of it, I should have offered the URL for Mr. Rich's review in the New York Times. Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/books ... updateema1

---------------------------------

Todd: I always try for fairness and balance, and I try to admit my mistakes, making amends where my errors are pointed out to me.

The fact that, in "Raising Kane," Pauline Kael fell victim to her weaknesses, as we all do, occasionally, does not detract from my admiration for the brilliance of many of her reviews in her prime years nor from her courageous championing of Orson Welles and his works at the beginning of her career.

I would imagine that Andrew Sarris would be much harsher on Ms. Kael than either Kerrow's new biography or the two reviews cited. Her major argument, which signaled the beginning of her decline, was against the "auteur theory," so admired by Mr. Sarris and the Nouvelle Vague French critics. I've always thought her on the wrong side of that argument, another sign of dwindling perceptions. Her most entertaining and perceptive work always was leveled on a case by case basis.

While I now prefer the Geary Club, Rye, or Whiskey Thieves to the Ha-Ra Club, now that Carl is leading a black ops team in the Himalayas, and Jerry has retired, I'm amenable to "burying the hatchet," Todd, so long as you understand that I'm broke, and things have grown much worse since we last met. As my beautiful ex/wife, Jef/Grace, used to say, "There's this wonderful new invention by Alexander Graham Bell, called the Telephone. Pick it up and use it." You and Mr. Sarris seem to know of its existence.

Use it, old friend.

Glenn

[tonyw]

Glenn, Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Coincidentally, I'm currently reading a doctoral dissertation on Monroe and Jerry Lewis that Suber cahired in the 1980s. Also, you do know that THE WALL STREET JOURNAL is owned by Rupert Murdoch? Hardly, a guarentee for objectivity!

[Glenn Anders]

For what it's worth, Tony, I absolutely agree.

Happy Halloween!

Don't go to Gregorie Arkadin's masquerade party.

Glenn

[tonyw]

Thnaks Glenn, I don't go to any Halloween events non-stop but have spent today watching two Jerry Lewis films on youtube and look forward to Jimmy Wang Yu's FAST FISTS (1973) later tonight.

[ToddBaesen]

I was talking to a friend of mine earlier this evening and I think I discovered what I find most hateful in both Pauline Kael and Richard Schickel's writings on Welles... besides their superior attitude, which I think comes across in all their reviews, which suggests, "If you don't like this film, you are an idiot," or "if I don't like this film, and you do, you are also an idiot."

Oh really! No wonder Orson Welles hated these critics. OF course Richard Schickel was too unimportant to even be on Welles radar in 1971, or later, when Richard Schickel's THE MEN WHO MEN THE MOVIES series was shown on PBS, which just happened to omit Orson Welles.

Are you kidding me?

How could any film historian do a series on only 8 directors and not include Orson Welles? On that basis alone Schickel should be considered as an extremely incompetent film historian, as we already know Pauline Kael was.

[tonyw]

Todd, I think the reason is, as Jonathan Rosenbaum has frequently pointed out, that Welles was never a part of the Hollywood system like the other directors selected for the season. Also, if you look closely at the AFI Award Ceremony, certain people at the front tables do not applaud and have dark looks on their faces as if angry that Welles was selected for this honor.

[Le Chiffre]

There’s not much question that Richard Schickel is staunchly anti-Welles, probably in large part because of OW’s leftist politics. In his biography of Clint Eastwood, Schickel couldn’t resist calling The Big Brass Ring screenplay “hopeless” when discussing Eastwood’s declining of the lead in it.

I’m not convinced that Kael was anti-Welles, though. True, RAISING KANE contained pretty damaging misinformation, but then, even such Welles scholars as Jonathon Rosenbaum at the time bought into Houseman’s assertion that Welles had written very little of the KANE screenplay, an assertion Houseman continued to make up until his death in the late 1980’s. Kael offered a retraction of sorts in 5001 NIGHTS AT THE MOVIES when she listed the Kane screenplay as being by Mankewicz and Welles.

I haven’t read or revisited Kael much in recent years, but I’ve always considered her one of the few critics worth reading. Her 1967 article, ORSON WELLES: THERE AIN’T NO WAY is one of the best and most sympathetic essays on Welles, IMO. And she was quite positive towards most of his movies, which would have been a nice stamp of approval when she was at her peak in the 70’s. Nowadays of course, there is no film critic with her clout or stature. Rotten Tomatoes is today’s Pauline Kael.

[tonyw]

There’s not much question that Richard Schickel is staunchly anti-Welles, probably in large part because of OW’s leftist politics. In his biography of . Rotten Tomatoes is today’s Pauline Kael.

You've put it well here. But Kael was very vindictive. Look at her diatribes against Susan Clark.

[Le Chiffre]

I'm not familiar with those, but I think Kael's vindictiveness (along with her powers of insight) was probably a major reason why she was so widely read. People were curious to see who was gonna get trashed next.

[tonyw]

Since she was widely read for the reasons you state, this makes her little better than a gossip columnist or a prototype of Ann Coulter and Murdoch's FOX NEWS Valkyries.

[Le Chiffre]

Kael and Coulter; that's actually a very interesting comparison, even though their politics are very different. But I think Coulter, like Kael, recognizes the amibiguous line between being an entertainer and being a pundit.

[JasonH]

Forgive my thread necromancy. Taking the time to re-read the infamous RAISING KANE essay, if that’s even the right term for a 50,000-word work, left me with some thoughts.

It’s ironic that Kael should have labored so hard to guarantee herself as a villain in the story of Welles’ career considering that she was more supportive of his work in Europe than was seemingly true of most contemporary American critics. She was pretty complimentary toward THE TRIAL and outright raved about CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT in what was something of a riposte to the notorious Bosley Crowther review that destroyed the movie’s U.S. run. Her only reservation about CHIMES was the fact that it was hampered by a low budget, but she mostly points this out to bemoan that a talent like Welles had to scratch around for pennies to make his raggedy and unjustly treated masterpiece when lesser directors were routinely and uncritically handed millions.

While it doesn’t diminish the negative impact it had on him, I think taking Welles down a peg was more byproduct than motive with RAISING KANE. I believe that more often than not, Kael’s “hot takes” were sincere, but I do think she could be guilty of going in with the desire of being the dissenting view or having an opposing angle on the established narrative. When she stumbled upon the idea that Herman Mankiewicz may have been responsible for a lot more of what she liked about certain 30s movies than had been previously understood, I think she became infatuated with the idea of “breaking the story” about his being this unsung underdog, and took her conclusion to unsupportable extremes where the authorship of KANE is concerned. The other factor is that Welles was always a useful battlefield for the hoary auteur theory debate, and I can't help but think he was more collateral damage of Kael’s dubious narrative rather than someone she set out to take apart. It’s kind of too bad that the rather entertaining essay as a whole is remembered only for the correctly discredited aspects of Kael’s “research” about the screenplay’s development (representing only a fraction of the content), but of course she had only herself to blame for that.

Welles' consequent antipathy toward Kael, at least as essayed in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, is interestingly messy as well. If Kael had lived to see WIND completed, she would have been well within her rights to be flattered by her beautiful Susan Strasberg alter-ego. In addition to being substantially younger than Kael was in the early 70s, the character of Julia Rich is for all her probing pushiness allowed to be essentially correct in her assessment of Hannaford. Really, Strasberg doesn’t resemble Kael much at all; we only know who she’s a stand-in for because “feisty female critic” as an abstract really only meant one person in context, which is probably commentary unto itself.