JONATHAN BAUMACH
451
Kael tries hard to stay on top of things, but the old-fashioned moralist
in her queers the act. For all her talk of "turn on" and "dig," all her
with-it-ness, Kael's criteria for film art, when not improvised for the
sake of justifying a particular judgment, seem to come out of some
fifties high school textbook. All that talk of credibility and inhabiting a
character and making us feel human emotions (as if there were other
kinds available to us) seems inadequate to the sophistication of her
perceptions. One suspects that she's not so much writing down
to
her
audience (though that too), as giving her intuitive judgments some
kind of academic respectability.
Although
Reeling
represents only about half of the films of more
than routine interest released in the U.S. between 1972 and 1975-Kael
does her
New Yorker
column six months out of the year-it is
nevertheless a sad reminder of the thinness of the period. The older
masters are dying off or out of work. Eccentric European films-the
two dazzling Rivettes of the '75 New York Film Festival, (or example–
are no longer getting distributed here. There is no Godard reviewed in
this collection, no Antonioni or Bresson (although
Four Nights of a
Dreamer
had its quiet release in this period), no Ford or Hawks, no
Chabrol or Losey, no Bellochio or Olmi, no Rossellini, no Hitchcock,
no Welles, the last and least of De Sica, a minor Fellini, no Kurosawa
or Ozu, a mixed bag of Truffauts. There is a masterwork by Bunuel,
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,
which Kael admires though feels no
need to overpraise (consequently, it seems in context less considerable
than the super-kitsch of Altman and Coppola), and a wonderful
Satyajit Ray film,
Days and Nights in the Forest,
which is the occasion
here of Kael's most luminous and sensitive piece. The emergence of the
work of Altman, Scorsese, and Coppola (and De Palma, Malick and
Peckinpah), among the general run of inflated Hollywood trash (what
a vulgar trifle
Shampoo
really is) seems insufficient compensation for
what's been lost. Does Kael really think we've gone through a marve–
lous period of movies or is that the publicist in her hyping the talent in
the room?
Kael says with characteristic inflation about the heroine of
Thieves
Like Us:
"She seems to be herself on the screen in a way nobody has
ever been before." With some minor adjustment, the remark holds true
for Kael in the pages of
The New Yorker.
The remark-it has that kind
of elasticity-also (with adjustment) holds true about the rest of us
wherever.
If
Reeling
is about anything, it is a book about vicarious
world records that Kael and the rest of us share with the stars.
