John Cassavetes and the Shoes of Pauline Kael

"The acting that is so bad it's embarrassing sometimes seems also to have revealed something, so we're forced to reconsider our notions of good and bad acting. . . . Faces has the kind of seriousness that a serious artist couldn't take seriously – the kind of seriousness that rejects art as lies and superficiality. And this lumpen-artists' anti-intellectualism, this actors' unformulated attack on art may be what much of the public also believes – that there is a real thing that "art" hides. . . . Faces is being taken as a religious experience. It's almost a form of self-flagellation to go to a movie like this – "to see yourself," which, of course, means to see how awful you are." – Pauline Kael, Faces "[Cassavetes] replaces the exhausted artifices of conventional movies with a new set of pseudo-realistic ones, which are mostly instantaneous clichés. As a writer-director, he's so dedicated to revealing the pain under the laughter he's a regular Pagliacci." – Pauline Kael, Husbands "The romantic view of insanity is a perfect subject for Cassavetes to muck around with. Yet even in this season when victimization is the hottest thing in the movie market this scapegoat heroine doesn't do a damn thing for him. He's always on the verge of hitting the big time, but his writing and directing are gruelling, and he swathes his popular ideas in so many wet blankets that he is taken seriously – and flops. . . . Acute discomfort sets in, and though some in the audience will once again accept what is going on as raw, anguishing truth, most people will – rightly I think – take their embarrassment as evidence of Cassavetes' self-righteous ineptitude." – Pauline Kael, A Woman Under the Influence "The way I figure it, if Pauline Kael ever liked one of my movies, I'd give up." – John Cassavetes, to Frederick Elmes Ever since that rainy Friday in 1984, when I watched a triple-bill of Shadows, Faces, and Husbands, I've been a hardcore devotee of the films of John Cassavetes. I consider him one of the greatest American directors of all time – an opinion that was further solidified last year when I finally had the opportunity to see Love Streams. However, the reasons behind my veneration have changed tremendously over the years. What grabbed me back in the 80s was just how different his films were. Their sense of immediacy combined with a seemingly 'fuck you' attitude towards Hollywood was terribly exciting. The raw, naked passion in every frame, the naturalistic acting style (or lack thereof), and the unrelenting gaze into a world I couldn't even begin to imagine – all this was nothing short of mind-blowing. But now that I've reached the age of Archie, Harry and Gus (the infernal trio from Husbands), I find myself looking at Cassavetes' films through an entirely new set of eyes. The modes of behavior seem less foreign to me, as do the intricate subtleties of the various relationships – be it between friends, lovers, spouses, or parent and child. The desperation, the loneliness and longing, the inability to communicate, and the overall tragic nature of many of his characters speaks to me in a way not possible back then. Even more telling is that I have begun to experience a certain affinity with some of them. Like many great artists, Cassavetes' work wasn't fully appreciated during his lifetime, and his relationship with film critics was tumultuous at best. For every critic that praised him, there was a Vincent Canby, John Simon, or Stanley Kauffmann ready to cut him down. Yet the harshest of all his detractors was New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, whose distaste for Cassavetes was nearly as strong as her outright dismissal of Kubrick. Louis Menand summed it up best when he wrote, "she felt that [Cassavetes' films] showed contempt for the audience's desire to be entertained." If anyone is guilty of contempt, it's Kael herself. A recent re-read of her writings on Cassavetes reveals that she spends as much time rebuking the audience as she does the film itself. That the realism in Cassavetes' films is not her liking is acceptable, but her attitude towards those genuinely moved by them is nothing short of condescending – "I think embarrassment is not a quality of art but our reaction to failed art, yet many members of the audience apparently feel that embarrassment is a sign of flinching before the painful truth, and hence they accept what is going on as deeper and truer because they have been embarrassed by it." Kael believed that the privileged financial status of the characters in Faces should have been enough to ease their pain, and feelings of emptiness. When this argument failed to console a friend shaken by the film, Kael expressed deep concern that this type of reaction, which she likened to a liberal form of a Mea culpa, could have a serious impact on the future of movies. She needn't have worried. Cassavetes was no doubt bothered by Kael's opinion of him, and his various run-ins with the esteemed critic certainly didn't help matters any. He tried to ban her from a screening of Husbands, but Ben Gazzara intervened on her behalf. In his excellent biography, Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the American Independent Film (thanks again, Girish!), Marshall Fine relays the following anecdote, which plays like a scene from one of Cassavetes' films: Cassel recalled a taxi ride to a bar after a screening that he had been to with Cassavetes and Kael. Kael was talking about the film they'd just seen and Cassavetes looked at her with a suspicious grin. "Pauline, you don't know what you're saying," he said. Before she knew what was happening, he reached down and snatched the shoes off her feet. Even as she squawked in protest, Cassavetes hurled the shoes out the taxi window. Once they arrived at the bar, Cassavetes and Cassel chivalrously offered to carry the diminutive Kael into the bar. She walked in her stocking feet instead. An immature gesture, yes, but one that seems so in character for Cassavetes. I've always been curious if the Paulettes toed the party line on Cassavetes. As far as I know, über-Paulette Armond White hasn't reviewed any of his films, but references to Cassavetes in other reviews have always been positive. I'm not sure what Denby, Edelstein, Powers, et al. think about him. Regardless, Kael's scorn towards the films of John Cassavetes has always been a bitter pill to swallow, for she was the first critic I read religiously, and who opened my eyes to so much about cinema. But as my opinion of Cassavetes continues to grow, so does my assertion that Kael just didn't get it.

Comments

[colinr0380]

I only discovered Cassavetes just over a year ago with the Criterion boxset and thought many of his films were excellent (my favourites would be Woman Under The Influence and Killing Of A Chinese Bookie). In some ways that can be a problem with criticism if it is of something that is so different and yet superficially can be seen as being just bad acting, poor editing and a lack of direction that appears to have no control over the action.

I think critics like to be able to group films together with their like, and I think one of the great (and perhaps frustrating for Kael) things about Cassavetes was that he was able to take subjects or genres and twist them or focus on more than just the killing of the Chinese bookie. In a classical film Mabel being taken to the asylum would be the climax, with a happy coda of her eventual sane return, yet woman Under The Influence refuses to be that since the audience is pushed into a first rather than third person perspective sharing Mabel's pain at being betrayed by her husband, Nick being unsure of his own actions and torn up seeing his wife this way, and the children not fully understanding what is happening but knowing it is bad. No one is sure of themselves in the films - they are all making it up - and that is what makes them so painful, powerful and probably frustrating for people who want the characters to act with a certainty only a script motivating their reactions can give.

I like the way that Cassavetes films keep presenting their characters with dilemmas, and a lot of them are 'classical' film dilemmas, but their reactions are often wildly unpredictable, from Leila in Shadows saying that she didn't realise having sex for the first time could be so bad; the way the wife in Faces would normally just have to deal with whether or not to sleep with the gigolo, but here has to also contend with 'winning' him from other, even more desperate women; or how the death of a fan affects Gena Rowlands character deeply in Opening Night, but nobody else cares - and the way Opening Night flirts with ghost film and seance conventions but never missteps outside of it being Myrtle's struggle with herself, that only she can deal with.

I would be very interested to find out what Kael or the other critics you mention thought of A Child Is Waiting, since that was the film that was taken away and changed into the type of film that I'd suppose Kael was looking for?

Another question: was this criticism of Cassavete's work perhaps responsible for an equally strong backlash from his supporters, such as Ray Carney, being very possessive of his work - they do not want to see his films attacked again?

Final question: Did Cassavetes acting work in Hollywood films impact how the films he directed were seen? Would slick but sometimes shallow films and TV series that he acted in just for the money make critics think that the films he made were similarly shallow?

Sorry for the long post - I'm still getting a grip on Cassavetes myself, so I've no idea whether my post hits on important issues or, like Pauline Kael, completely misses the point! I would suggest though that even bad criticism of a film can be helpful in forcing us to figure out and try to articulate what we find so interesting about the work!

[colinr0380]

Sorry, by "the characters to act with a certainty only a script motivating their reactions can give" I meant that there are some styles of acting and performance that give a certainty to what they are doing when in a real situation the character would have no idea of the consequences of their actions - it looks like the characters have read the script of their story beforehand.

The characters in Cassavetes films are not played that way. The actors capture that sense of not knowing what they have to do or contend with next - I didn't mean to suggest that Cassavetes didn't work with a script!

[scot]

Great post, filmbrain and one that makes me finally want to overcome my intimidation, i guess, and jump into some Cssavetes. I've yet to see any of his films, embarssingly enough. Where is a good place to start?

[girish]

Thank you, Filmbrain, for that unforgettably lavish Korean meal and Im Kwon-Taek's Sopyonje, which I love. And thank you for this post.

[IA]

If I recall correctly, Kael said on a couple of occasions that she did like Shadows. Since Cassavetes didn't give up, I guess he didn't hear about that.

[Derek]

Kael's summary dismissal of Badlands continues to be a factor in my vacillation over Malick. I don't need to agree with her; I disagree with her about many films/filmmakers (for instance, the films of Hal Ashby). But her firm judgement nags at my misgivings....

[Filmbrain]

IA -

Did she have good things to say about Shadows? She references it in her Faces review -- "it reveals a good deal about what actors think is the content of drama (and what they think life is)" -- but I've not read her saying she actually liked it.

Scot --

As much I'd love to suggest starting from the beginning, Shadows can be a bit off-putting, especially if you've never seen any of his films. Try Minnie and Moskowitz and A Woman Under the Influence.

Final question: Did Cassavetes acting work in Hollywood films impact how the films he directed were seen? Would slick but sometimes shallow films and TV series that he acted in just for the money make critics think that the films he made were similarly shallow?

That's a good question Colin. I somehow doubt it, for even Kael had good words to say about Cassavetes the actor. Even his work in poorly reviewed B-pictures received a certain amount of positive critical notice.

[gcgiles]

I just can't resist: I know she's an institution of the film review, an early champion of some powerful directors, a great polemicist who ignited many productive debates regarding the movies, BUT I think Pauline Kael grafted a criteria devoted to the nineteenth-century novel upon the film medium, and as a result, demanded a novelistic "sense" from a film's plot; strict causality, emotional grounding, naturalism. (Although, curiously, she relaxed these rigid standards when it came to satire.) But the ways in which these illusions of "sense" are pieced together in a film seem to me to be as much artifice as what is more commonly considered "avant-garde." (Just as they were in nineteenth century novels.) She had forgotten that "classical" film narrative was just a strangely cogent way of telling a story that had exploded and shrunk from a theatrical setting. We haven't even scratched the surface of how these conventions function, and she wrote as if the movies had some hallowed narrative tradition that belied it's short history. What's more, she seemed to deplore ambiguity and heaviness to the point that the mere existence of these qualities in a film invoked her contempt. Finally, whenever her guard dropped, and she tried to write in a mode that wasn't polemical, her writing, I think, was dull.
Perhaps I'm unnecessarily adding a lambasting to a lambasting. I wouldn't be such a hard ass about Pauline Kael except that she has been frequently lionized posthumously, and yet I think it's fair to consider her writing as good or bad (I think it was mediocre) just as she summarily judged thousands of films with an awfully narrow criteria.
As for Cassavetes, I would advise newcomers not to begin with Gloria. Because then you would have to deal with the guilt incurred by wishing death upon a child actor.

[Goran]

I've come to adore Kael's writing so much that it's becoming more and more painful as I'm gradually forced to realise that on (many an) occasion, she was really just vitally wrong.

I can't defend Cassavetes, since the only film of his that I've seen is A Woman Under the Influence (which I did appreciate despite its many many flaws). But if I had the time, I would feel obliged to defend Malick - by now obviously one of the great filmmakers - and Badlands, which I consider superior to every single thing that Robert Altman ever did (with the possible exception of Thieves Like Us, which I'd say is roughly on the same level).

Also, while Kael did indeed worship causality, unambiguousness and her classical Hollywood traditions, she did passionately embrace L'Avventura, which in turn embraced none of the above.

[mike fried]

i have always enjoyed Cassavettes as an actor more than as a director. He had a really good tough guy persona. I will however treasure Big Trouble among my favorites (I work in insurance) of his directorial ouevre.

[Filmbrain]

Wow, Mike -- I am impressed!

I've not yet mustered up the courage to re-watch Big Trouble, for it saddens me to think that is how he ended his career. I haven't seen the film since its (brief) theatrical release, but my memories of it are far from fond.

[mike]

Not a great effort to be sure, just one of my favorites. Peter Falk pretending to be dead while Charles Durning does the old Sig Ruman-Fortune Cookie- bit of tickling Falk's foot causing Falk to start laughing and Arkin to start the "It's A Miracle" bit sets me off on paroxsysms of laughter. The movie is not even close to "The In-Laws" of whose charm and wit which it was intended to repeat (let's face it - Cassavettes is not a comedy director) but it is still a pretty fair riff on "Double Indemnity." (tempered of course by the fact that I do work in insurance as previously stated). For me, he will always be Victor Franko in The Dirty Dozen, a great movie, despite what my friend Sal says.

[angelo]

It is always interesting to me how much veneration has gone Pauline Kael's way. As a writer, yes, she had ability. As a perceptive critic of film I think she was blinded by her own frustrations and self-hatred. I remember one director, I forget who, once making the comment that Kael was frustrated because her own scripts had been rejected by so many directors - how true that is I have no idea. This is what I learned from reading Kael - she seemed to have no regard for directors like Cassevetes and John Sayles who truly were mavericks in their approach to making films and truly gutsy in the risks they took to get the films made. She idolizes such directors as Brian DePalma whose claim to originality is in the variant forms of his "homages" to his betters refusing to notice that, beyond a certain technical expertise, none of his films have anything truly original about them either in style or substance. She despised directors like Billy Wilder for their supposed contempt and vulgarity and, as you have so well pointed out, seemed not to notice her own contempt for that very same audience when they didn't respond to the work the way she thought they should. In all I have found her to be petty, mean-spirited and banal. When I have had differences with what was said by such critics as Sarris, Kauffman or Canby I could always at least respect where they were coming from. They seemed more honest in their dislike of something. Kael's dislike always had the quality of a too loud protest. There is more honesty in any one single frame of Cassevetes than all of Kael's writing.

[andre]

I'm no Pauline Kael fan, but I'm totally on her side when it comes to John Cassavetes's films. I've always found his "naturalism" artificial, his "depth" shallow, and his "brilliance" faded.

I remember reading that Richard Schickel -- hardly one my favorite film or book reviewers, to put it mildly -- wanted "Faces" to win the New York Film Critics Award in 1968. Schickel went ballistic when some of the more traditional voters (mostly older women, if I remember it correctly) opted for the conventional "The Lion in Winter." (Personally, I'd have voted for "2001," but that's just me.)

By the way, I'm also with Kael when it comes to another much-revered director, Clint Eastwood...

[Michael Blowhard]

Eh, no one "gets" everything. Pauline didn't get Cassavetes, but she also didn't get Sirk, or have much patience for the German New Wave either. So what? The best way to judge a critic may not be whether you think they were always right -- no one is, and what's "right" anyway in matters of taste. It may make more sense to judge them according to whether you've enjoyed having a yak with them.

Incidentally, Angelo's free to dislike her writing, of course. But he's way off when he talks about her "frustrations" and "self-loathings." She was one of the cheeriest and most generous people imaginable. Isn't it possible that she just didn't enjoy Cassavetes' films?