September 20, 2025

A Documentary on Film Critic Pauline Kael Along with Four Interviews

Pauline Kael was an influential American film critic who wrote during a renaissance period in American cinema and championed many of the films that today we recognize as classics. She wrote 13 books featuring her reviews and gave many interviews throughout her life. In 2018, a documentary called
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael was made on her life, highlighting many of her most famous movie reviews. Below, we’re featuring a review of that documentary, along with four interviews she gave over the years that you can listen to. The documentary is free to watch on YouTube and Tubi TV.

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018) Documentary

Watch this enjoyable documentary on the life and film criticism of Pauline Kael. Through interviews with her friends and family and countless movie clips, Kael’s life is told in chronological order as her opinions on movies are interspersed throughout. From her early life growing up on silent cinema and the films of the 1930s to her death in 2001, Kael enjoyed a lifelong love affair with the movies. This documentary covers her rise as a critic from San Francisco to her eventual arrival at The New Yorker in 1968, where she wrote reviews for 24 years.

You’ll get some of her most famous takes on movies from The Sound of Music (1965) (which got her fired from McCall’s magazine) to the American New Wave movies like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Godfather (1972), and Mean Streets (1973). Through interviews in the documentary and excerpts read from her writings, she championed filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Brian De Palma, and many other film directors. At times her writing clashed with popular tastes, and she received much criticism herself, which is covered throughout the documentary. Ultimately, she loved to get people thinking and talking about movies which is apparent throughout her life and writing.

And here are four interviews she gave over the years. Two with Studs Terkel and two with Terry Gross of Fresh Air.

1. Pauline Kael on the Movie Business in 1968

In 1968, film critic Pauline Kael weighed in on the state of the movie business in this interview with Studs Terkel. Kael had just published her second collection of reviews with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and discussed many of the opinions that she put forth in that book. At this time in film history, filmmaking was about to be revolutionized in the United States by the New Hollywood filmmakers who made their mark in the 1970s. You can tell by Kael’s attitude toward the stodgy old studio system that she and the audience were ready for something new. She rips into the “creative” producers who judge a film’s artistic merits based on its box office receipts. She talks about her essay in the book on the frustrating making of the movie The Group (1966), directed by Sidney Lumet. She also talks about her infamous review of The Sound of Music from the book, which got her fired at McCall’s magazine. And she makes fun of that year’s Academy Awards. Towards the end of the interview, Kael laments that, at the time, there were no working female directors in Hollywood. It’s an exciting hour of movie opinions with one of America’s best and most influential movie critics.

On the Studs Terkel Radio Archive website, it states that the year of the interview is 1966, but from the movies talked about, it is clear this was recorded in 1968. The interview is broken up into two parts, and you can listen to them each here: Part 1 and Part 2.

2. Pauline Kael on Stanley Kubrick and More in 1972

Pauline Kael sits down with Studs Terkel for an hour-long conversation about movies in the year 1972. She pans many beloved films of the time including Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971), which she denounces for their coldness. Kael talks about the new popularity of violence in movies which she feels is often portrayed as a sensual pleasure absent of pain. She also has harsh words for The Graduate (1967), Straw Dogs (1971), The French Connection (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and more. She praises the works of Jean Renoir and Vittorio De Sica as directors who have feelings and love for all of their characters. In general, Studs agrees with her throughout. Note: The Studs Terkel Radio Archive says this is from 1980, but it’s from 1972 according to the films discussed.

3. Pauline Kael on Film in the Eighties (1986)

Film critic Pauline Kael is interviewed about the state of movies in the mid-1980s and her book State of the Art (1985). She bemoans the state of movies in the 80s, lamenting that many of the directors she was interested in in the 1970s were no longer making interesting work. She talks about how she came to be a film critic in her mid-40s after working odd jobs both related to cinema and otherwise. And she describes her eclectic method of analyzing films from all of the arts that go into it, along with placing them in a social and political context.

4. Pauline Kael Says Good Movies Never Make You Feel Virtuous (1988)

Pauline Kael weighs in on many films from the 1980s in this interview from Fresh Air. At the time she was championing smaller films and genre pictures that she felt were better than the big blockbuster movies of the 1980s. She comments on all the hate mail she receives for panning movies that most other critics liked. Kael loved to take the air out of pompous, important cinema and she does so in this interview. She also pokes fun at the virtuous, feel-good, life-affirming films out there that have been made forever but were popular in the 1980s. She points out that in the 1980s movie audiences were starting to fragment with most people attending the blockbuster movies, while smaller audiences found the niche of arthouse cinema. This fragmentation of the audience would increasingly accelerate into the 1990s and beyond.

Enjoy, and feel free to disagree with, the many cinematic opinions of Pauline Kael!