Blissing Out (Again)

Pauline Kael’s idiosyncratic mode of film criticism stands out for its Romantic sensibility. While it may not have constituted a school or movement, it was a body of criticism rooted in the appreciation of values such as subjectivity, emotion, intuition, innocence, and transcendence. As a test case for examining those values, Kael’s account of Steven Spielberg’s Romanticism is almost necessarily an account of her own, in which she was searching for the “bliss-out.” This essay discusses Kael’s background and influences that shaped her approach to film criticism. It draws on reviews that she published in The New Yorker, along with interviews, to analyse her reception of Spielberg’s films through the lens of a late Romanticism. Finally, it touches on the influence exerted by Kael, particularly on the so-called Paulettes. The question of Kael’s Romanticism is important because it illuminates a mode of film criticism that became prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, under her influence.