Pauline Kael, an auteurist or no?
I am sure that the Paulettes, the acolytes of the late film critic Pauline Kael, will yell and scream at the suggestion in Jay A. Fernandez’s Scriptland column that Kael was an auteurist [“Scary Tale Has a Scarier Subtext,” Jan. 3].
After all, it was Kael who first condemned auteurism in her seminal 1963 essay “Circles and Squares.” She followed that up with a 1967 essay on the writers of “Bonnie and Clyde” and her famous 1971 essay on Herman Mankiewicz as the writer of “Citizen Kane.”
However, after that she never wrote substantially again about screenwriters, either in essays or her film reviewing for the New Yorker. In her adoration for her pet directors like Robert Altman and Brian De Palma, she seemed to become more auteurist than [critic Andrew] Sarris.
TOM STEMPEL
Los Angeles
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