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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 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968)

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Film

More quotes by Pauline Kael

If there is any test that can be applied to movies, it's that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.

Hooked (1989)

The action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it surfaces in this movie.

Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction.

Hooked (1989)

It's as if Brian de Palma were saying, "What is getting older if it isn't learning more ways that you're vulnerable?"

Movie Love (1991)

De Mille's bang-them-on-the-head-with-wild-orgies-and-imperilled-virginity style is at its ripest; the film is just about irresistible.

All Pauline Kael quotes →

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A motion picture must be true to life. If a picture portrays a false emotion it train people seeing it to react abnormally.

William Moulton Marston

Not even the church is so powerfully equipped to serve the public psychologically as is the motion picture company.

William Moulton Marston

It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery.

George Orwell

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

Jean Cocteau

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Pauline Kael (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.