Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me

Sontag has lived in her own head, but in the larger political panorama, too. Yes, she has written about a few current things, notably Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and his 1978 film Our Hitler, but her real subjects are matters of eternal intellectual debate. She said rock-and-roll changed her, but who could feel that? Kael, on the other hand, spurned by fate for so long, hit a lucky streak beyond show more equal in that she came to The New Yorker just as adult, tough, new films were being made in America. She was there for Coppola, Altman, Scorsese, and so on—but they were there for her too. It was also the moment when film education took off in America, when suddenly millions of kids were ready to read film criticism that had the smack of good sportswriting.

Seligman dotes on that Kael, and rightly so. His book ends with a touching flash of memoir as he recalls where he was (and how he was) as he read different Kael reviews. That experience is shared by many, and it captures why Kael is still being read decades after the immediate impact has gone from "her" movies: that immediacy wowed her. It was why she started writing the reviews as she watched the films, and it was the reason behind her dotty habit of seeing a film only once. show less