Quotes from Pauline Kael

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

Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head. The Indians should have called him 'Plays with Camera.'

Television represents what happens to a medium when the artists have no power and the businessmen are in full, unquestioned control.

Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.

For a while in the twenties and thirties, art was talked about as a substitute for religion; now B movies are a substitute for religion.

The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like "American Beauty." We've become a heavy-handed society.

Movies that are consciously life-affirming are to be consciously avoided.

All our advertising is propaganda, of course, but it has become so much a part of our life, is so pervasive, that we just don't know what it is propaganda for.

A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.

A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

Trash has given us an appetite for art.

Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.

When I see those ads with the quote 'You'll have to see this picture twice,' I know it's the kind of picture I don't want to see once.

Imagining [The Wizard of Oz] without Judy Garland is a bit like dancing on wet cement: you can do it, but why would you want to?

Writers who go to Hollywood still follow the classic pattern: either you get disgusted by 'them' and you leave or you want the money and you become them.

Reality, like God and History, tends to direct people to wherever they want to go.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.

What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism.

When a picture can't make it on its own, the producers pull in a 'controversial' message - the way a couple whose marriage is falling apart decide to have a baby.

Moviemaking is so male-dominated now that they think they're being pro-feminine when they have women punching each other out.