Reverse Weather Vane: Pauline Kael and "Film Quarterly"
by J. M. Tyree, editor-in-chief, FIlm Quarterly
Starting in the early 1960s, Pauline Kael was one of Film Quarterly’s powerful critical voices, prior to her epic and often tumultuous tenure as a critic at The New Yorker. It was a pleasure for me and the journal to revisit her criticism with Adrian Schober’s feature in the current issue. The article charts her early admiration for, and ultimately, her deep disappointment in, the films of Steven Spielberg. Schober also revisits Kael’s battles with Andrew Sarris and his version of Auteur Theory in the pages of FQ, starting with her opening salvo, 1963’s classic “Circles and Squares” (FQ 16:3), one of the journal’s most frequently taught articles. Schober argues that Kael’s tastes—she wrote strongly against 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977), but argued in favor of of E.T. (1982)—represent not merely her contrarianism, but also reflect a Romantic critical stance grounded in ideas about the sublime, wonder, and pleasure in cinema as a popular artform. With this article, FQ revisits one of its most controversial writers, giving the journal the opportunity to offer pages from our past by way of illustration. Kael’s articles for FQ during the 1960s included “Circles and Squares” and over a dozen other contributions, from what today would be called “think pieces” to reviews and articles on “Films of the Quarter” and “Films of the Year,” covering The Innocents (1961) to One, Two, Three (1961), Billy Budd (1962), Hud (1963), and Cat Ballou (1965).
I’m equally relieved to report that, as far as I’m aware, FQ bears no responsibility for publishing Kael’s writings on Maysles Films, John Cassavetes, Barbara Loden, and the Coen brothers. For me, and, I suspect, many writers of my generation, Kael and her New Yorker disciples were rear-guard, reverse weather-vanes telling me to explore in the direction of the films they hated. (Just read this New Yorker review of Blood Simple [1984] to see Kael’s overheated take on this “Hollywood by-product” that included a debut performance that has now led to four Oscars for Frances McDormand as an actor and producer.) But revisiting Kael’s criticism for FQ renewed my appreciation not only for Paul’s polemical style, but also for a critical consistency, if that is the right word, that Schober finds in her Romantic sensibility. Kael made complex ideas readable, a goal of this journal since its inception, and one that FQ continues to honor by publishing readable public-facing scholarship like Schober’s that is intended to be accessible to educated general readers. Thank you for joining FQ in this shared adventure in film criticism!
We invite you to read Adrian Schober's "Blissing Out (Again): Pauline Kael, Steven Spielberg, and a Romantic Film Criticism" in Film Quarterly's current issue for free online for a limited time. We have also temporarily removed the paywall from the archival criticism mentioned above that Pauline Kael published in FQ's pages.
Print copies of FQ's current Fall 2025 issue (issue 79.1), in which Adrian Schober's article appears, as well as other individual issues of FQ, can be purchased on the journal’s site.
For ongoing access to PHR, please ask your librarian to subscribe and/or purchase an individual subscription.
About the Author
J. M. Tyree is an associate professor in the Cinema Program at VCUarts and the editor-in-chief of Film Quarterly. His research spans criticism and critical-creative writing, including the monograph BFI Film Classics: Salesman (Bloomsbury) and Our Secret Life in the Movies (with Michael McGriff, Deep Vellum), a coauthored short story collection which was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition and was named an NPR Best Book of 2014.