Going Steady

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Going Steady: Film Writings 1968-1969 is the third collection of movie reviews by the critic Pauline Kael, comprising the years 1968-1969, when she first began her film-reviewing duties at The New Yorker.

The collection for the most part consists of reviews of individual films, but includes one long essay entitled "Trash, Art, and the Movies", perhaps the closest Kael comes to a manifesto defining her personal aesthetics in regards to movies. In the essay, Kael dissects, compares, and contrasts the merits of "trash" films that are nevertheless entertaining, as well as "art" films that are uninteresting. In doing so, Kael lambastes "art" movies such as Kubrick's 2001, concluding her treatment of that particular film by declaring: "If big film directors are to get credit for doing badly what others have been doing brilliantly for years with no money, just because they've put it on a big screen, then businessmen are greater than poets and theft is art." The essay is divided into ten parts, ranging from discussions of The Thomas Crown Affair to Petulia. Kael's overriding theme is to dismantle the intellectual pretences of those who deride movies deemed to be "trash" on the basis of dubious aesthetic concerns, notwithstanding the entertainment appeal a particular "trash" film might possess.

Other notable reviews include Kael's treatment of the Norman Mailer film Wild 90, its relation to cinéma vérité, and the implications of that particular film-making technique.

This book is out-of-print in the United States, but is still published by Marion Boyars Publishers of the United Kingdom.

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Pauline Kael
Books by Pauline Kael:  For Keeps  - Movie Love  - Hooked  - Taking It All In  - State of the Art   - When The Lights Go Down  - Reeling  - Deeper Into Movies   - Going Steady   - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang   - I Lost It at the Movies   - 5001 Nights at the Movies   - Raising Kane, and other essays   - Books about Pauline Kael:  Conversations with Pauline Kael   - Afterglow: A Last Conversation With Pauline Kael   - Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me


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