He [Bernardo Bertolucci] has the kind of talent that breaks one's heart: where can it go, what will happen to it? In this country we encourage 'creativity' among the mediocre, but real bursting creativity appalls us. We put it down… — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
Being creative is having something to sell, or knowing how to sell something, or having sold something. It has taken over what we used to mean by being "wised up" knowing the tricks, the shortcuts. — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
The worst thing about movie-making is that it's like life: nobody can go back to correct the mistakes. — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
Movies have been doing so much of the same thing - in slightly different ways - for so long that few of the possibilities… — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising. — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a… — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
The movies have been so rank the last couple of years that when I see people lining up to buy tickets I sometimes think… — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them. — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
If you use Hollywood as the test tissue for mankind, what could the prognosis be? — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to… — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism. — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image
Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way… — Pauline Kael Copy Share Image