Influential film critic Pauline Kael (1919–2001) celebrated artistic quality in movies and wrote with passion and brilliance.

“Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again,” she said.

Born in Petaluma, California, she studied philosophy and law at UC Berkeley, then published her first review in 1953, boldly panning Charlie Chaplin’s performance in Limelight.

“I regard criticism as an art,” she declared, and cultivated a unique, often polarizing voice for The New Yorker’s Current Cinema column from 1968 to 1991.

She fiercely defended creative integrity, dismissing The Sound of Music as “a sugarcoated lie” and Fatal Attraction as “a hostile version of feminism.”

Kael’s reviews made or broke careers. She championed Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, and Marlon Brando early on.

“What she said seemed to matter,” noted critic Leonard Maltin. “She provoked response, discussion, arguments. She was so passionate.”

For Kael, writing was more than analysis—it was art. “If you think being a critic is easy and poetry hard—try both. You may discover why there are so few critics and so many poets.”

She gave us permission to love art loudly.