Involuntary shaking, difficulty moving and short term memory loss all characteristics of Parkinson’s disease. Pauline Kael was feeling all of these side effects during her interview and many of them in her last few years of work. Yet we see a wonderfully optimistic woman in the interview. This shows how truly special Pauline was. The book Afterglow does a great job telling the story of her amazing life.
Francis Davis does a great job of catching her great love of movies. He talks about her passion since she was a young child, not understanding why her siblings did not see them as more than entertainment. Francis also does a great job catching her unique descriptiveness. When describing Franklin Pangborn she said, “What a delicious character.” He also touched on her want to write more provocative reviews by discussing a movie called, Deep Throat.
In many instances Pauline was ahead of her time, that is why she pioneered movie reviewing as it is known today, Francis made this clear. After reading Afterglow one misses Pauline, even if they had never heard of her or read any of her reviews. It is safe to say after reading Afterglow reading some of her old reviews will be on the to-do-list.
1 comment:
Yeah, it would be really interesting to read one of her reviews. By the way, do you really feel like you've been told the story of her life?
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