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Quotes from Going Steady — Pauline Kael

1919–2001 United States

← All quotes by Pauline Kael

8 quotes

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Going Steady (1969)

The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new.

Going Steady (1969)

Kicked in the ribs, the press says "art" when "ouch" would be more appropriate.

Going Steady (1969)

Men are now beginning their careers as directors by working on commercials — which, if one cares to speculate on it, may be almost a one-sentence résumé of the future of American motion pictures.

Going Steady (1969)

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

Going Steady (1969)

When you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The wellspring of their art, their greatness, is in not being respectable.

Going Steady (1969)

People who are just getting "seriously interested" in film always ask a critic, "Why don’t you talk about technique and 'the visuals' more?" The answer is that American movie technique is generally more like technology and it usually isn’t very interesting.

Going Steady (1969)

The craftsmanship that Hollywood has always used as a selling point not only doesn’t have much to do with art — the expressive use of techniques — it probably doesn’t have very much to do with actual box-office appeal, either.

Going Steady (1969)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Pauline Kael (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.