No one sufficiently interested in film to read on beyond this point needs to be told what a new collection of Pauline Kael’s reviews from The New Yorker is all about or reassured that it is worth reading. At the risk of redundancy, I will nevertheless say that Deeper into Movies is worth rereading even if one enjoyed the pieces as they came out; Miss Kael’s zest, wit, sharpness, knowledgeableness, and juicy idiosyncrasies shine on unabated. Miss Kael has become so much of a mythic phenomenon and household commodity, a still voice lurking at the back of many an unconscious and thundering critical avalanche gathering adherents as it rampages on, that it is time to assess the manifestation itself. Who is Pauline Kael really, and what can be done with, or about, her?
It is possible to get the essence of this collection, and therewith the essence of Pauline Kael, by reading the last two pieces in it: “Alchemy,” which is a panegyric to The Godfather, and “Collaboration and Resistance,” which begins with a list of films that opened between March ’71 and March ’72 and made this, for her, “a legendary period in the movies.” We must ask ourselves then why so astute a critic would proffer as summit achievements The Conformist, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Last Picture Show, Fiddler on the Roof, Murmur of the Heart, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Cabaret, and The Godfather? To be sure,
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