A master film critic is at her witty, exhilarating, and opinionated best in this career-spanning collection featuring pieces on Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, and other modern movie classics “Film criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply,” Pauline Kael once observed, “just because you must use everything you are and everything you know.” Between 1968 and 1991, as regular film reviewer for The New Yorker, Kael used those formidable tools to shape the tastes of a generation. She had a gift for capturing, with force and fluency, the essence of an actor’s gesture or the full implication of a cinematic image. Kael called movies “the most total and encompassing art form we have,” and her reviews became a platform for considering both film and the worlds it engages, crafting in the process a prose style of extraordinary wit, precision, and improvisatory grace. Her ability to evoke the essence of a great artist—an Orson Welles or a Robert Altman—or to celebrate the way even seeming trash could tap deeply into our emotions was matched by her unwavering eye for the scams and self-deceptions of a corrupt movie industry. Here are her appraisals of era-defining films such as Breathless, Bonnie and Clyde, The Leopard, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, Nashville, along with many others, some awaiting rediscovery—all providing the occasion for masterpieces of observation and insight, alive on every page.

“A smart and eminently readable examination of the life and career of one of the twentieth century’s most influential movie critics.”—Los Angeles Times “Engrossing and thoroughly researched.”—Entertainment Weekly • A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2011 • The first major biography of the most influential, powerful, and controversial film critic of the twentieth century Pauline Kael was, in the words of Entertainment Weekly's movie reviewer Owen Gleiberman, "the Elvis or Beatles of film criticism." During her tenure at The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991, she was the most widely read and, often enough, the most provocative critic in America. In this first full-length biography of the legend who changed the face of film criticism, acclaimed author Brian Kellow (author of Can I Go Now?: The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood's First Superagent) gives readers a richly detailed view of Kael's remarkable life—from her youth in rural California to her early struggles to establish her writing career to her peak years at The New Yorker.

We at Penguin Putnam mourn the death of Pauline Kael, a singularly unique voice in American letters. She will be sorely missed.In her decades-long career, Pauline Kael established herself as the most renowned and respected movie reviewer in the field. The breadth of her knowledge of film history and technique, her insight into the arts of acting and directing, and her unfailing wit and candor endeared her to movie lovers everywhere.For Keeps offers the best of Kael's reviews and other writings on movies from the collections that have marked her matchless career, starting with I Lost it at the Movies (1965), through Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Deeper into Movies (a National Book Award winner), The Citizen Kane Book ("Raising Kane", the full text on the making of the movie, is included here), and all the others in a glorious run concluding with Movie Love in 1991. Once Kael retired from regular reviewing, her reputation only increased, and for the inimitable real thing, readers must turn to this volume to sample her perspicacity, fluency, and style. More than 275 reviews are arranged chronologically -in effect, a history of 30 years of movies. This ultimate compendium from America's most eloquent, passionate, and provocative critic is a boon to serious moviegoers and an indispensible companion to film in the age of technological and pop culture overload.

Interviews with Pauline Kael, movie critic for the New Yorker from 1968 to 1991.