---
title: 'Pauline Kael'
type: 'critic-profile'
canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/critics/pauline-kael'
updated: '2026-07-31'
publisher: 'CinePixo'
---

# Pauline Kael

A critic followed by the CinePixo community. This is a profile, not a byline:
Pauline Kael does not write for CinePixo, and no opinion on this site
should be attributed to this critic.

## About

The New Yorker's film critic from 1968 to 1991, and the most argued-with voice American criticism has produced. Kael wrote in the first person and from the body — what the film did to you in the dark was the datum, and respectability was a smell. Her collections (I Lost It at the Movies, For Keeps) read as one long case that vitality beats polish, and a generation of critics — the 'Paulettes' — formed inside her orbit, for better and worse.

## Elsewhere

- [The New Yorker archive](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/pauline-kael)

## Photograph

Photo: Rollins Maxwell · Public domain · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pauline_Kael_(1968).jpg

Source: https://cinepixo.com/critics/pauline-kael
Profile written for CinePixo.