15 of Pauline Kael’s Greatest Takes

Pauline Kael, perhaps the most passionate and formative of all American film critics, was able to transform 20th century cinema with just the power of her typewriter. Singular and uncompromising, Kael first established herself as a major voice when she went against consensus and authored a revelatory 7,000-word rave of “Bonnie and Clyde” for The New Yorker in the fall of 1967; she was hired to the staff of the magazine the following year, and spent the next decade exerting her will on a medium that wasn’t yet sure what to make of itself.
Kael died in 2001, but her legacy continues to live on. In honor of what would have been the critic’s 100th birthday, New York’s Quad Cinema has programmed a massive, 25-film celebration of her life and work. “Losing It at the Moives: Pauline Kael at 100,” which runs from June 7 to June 20, consists of some of the movies that Kael helped elevate into the canon (“Nashville,” “The Story of Adele H.”) as well as some of the movies that made their way there despite Kael’s best efforts to bring them down to Earth (“Chloe in the Afternoon”). The lineup spans Kael’s entire career, from her writing in The New Yorker to the books she wrote as a free agent following her brief stint in Hollywood.
Click through this gallery to read Kael’s most striking quotes on 15 of the films she helped to shape.