The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael
by Pauline Kael, edited by Sanford Schwartz
Library of America, 828 pp., $40.00
Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark
by Brian Kellow
Viking, 417 pp., $27.95
When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade
by Dave Kehr
University of Chicago Press, 290 pp., $22.50 (paper)
It’s not hard to see why Pauline Kael loved Barbara Stanwyck, calling her “an amazing vernacular actress,” a phrase that might just as aptly describe Kael’s style on the page. She was drawn to comedy because it always finds shortcuts to the awful truth. Most heroines of the screwball Thirties radiate a brashness and candor that can seem a blueprint for Kael’s critical persona.
