Pauline Kael

Pauline Kael (June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated, and sharply focused" movie reviews. She approached movies emotionally, with a strongly colloquial writing style. She is often regarded as the most influential American film critic of her day and left a lasting impression on many major critics including Armond White and Roger Ebert, who has said that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades." Kael was born on a chicken farm in Petaluma, California, to Isaac Paul Kael and Judith Friedman Kael, two Jewish immigrants from Poland. Affected by the Great Depression, her family lost their farm when Kael was eight and moved to San Francisco, California. She began attending college in 1936 at UC Berkeley, where she studied philosophy, literature and the arts before... full article at wikipedia