When the Lights Go Down (book)
First edition cover | |
| Author | Pauline Kael |
|---|---|
| Genre | Film Review |
| Publisher | Henry Holt & Co. |
Publication date | 1980 |
| ISBN | 0030568420 |
When the Lights Go Down: Film Writings 1975–1980 (1980), is the sixth collection of movie reviews by the critic Pauline Kael.[1]
Background
All material in the book originally appeared in The New Yorker.[1] The collection begins with an appreciation of Cary Grant." Mae West's raucous invitation to him - 'Why don't you come up sometime and see me?' - was echoed thirty years later by Audrey Hepburn in Charade: 'Won't you come in for a minute? I don't bite, you know, unless it's called for.' And then, purringly, 'Do you know what's wrong with you? Nothing.' That might be a summary of Cary Grant, the finest romantic comedian of his era: there's nothing the matter with him." [1]. After the profile of Cary Grant the book contains reviews of movies of the second half of the 1970s - more than one hundred and fifty of them.
The book is out-of-print in the United States, but is still published by Marion Boyars Publishers in the United Kingdom.
Critical response
National Post reported that the volume "sold in impressive numbers".[2] Matthew Wilder of City Pages wrote of Kael and offered "Her peak can be seen in the masterly collection When the Lights Go Down".[3] Jim Emersonon of Sun Times wrote of Renata Adler's 7,646-word attack on Kael, "The Perils of Pauline," in the New York Review of Books, that it "...was ostensibly a review of Kael's 1980 collection When the Lights Go Down." Adler panned Kael's work on the volume, writing, "When the Lights Go Down, a collection of her reviews over the past five years, is out; and it is, to my surprise and without Kael- or Simon-like exaggeration, not simply, jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless. It turns out to embody something appalling and widespread in the culture."[4]
The volume has been archived in the National Library of Australia.[5]
Editions
- Henry Holt & Co., 1980, hardbound (ISBN 0030425115)
- Henry Holt & Co., 1980, paperback (ISBN 0030568420)
References
- ^ a b Pauline Kael; Will Brantley (1996). Will Brantley (ed.). Conversations with Pauline Kael. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 41–43, 50, 105. ISBN 0-87805-899-0. OCLC 34319309.
- ^ Fulford, Robert (15 July 2008). "Pauline Kael & trash cinema". National Post. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
- ^ Wilder, Matthew (12 September 2001). "When the Lights Go Down". City Pages. Archived from the original on 2011-06-05. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
- ^ Emersonon, Jim (21 February 2007). "Pauline and Renata Go Showboating". Jim Emersonon official blog. Sun Times. Archived from the original on 2010-12-08. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
- ^ "When the lights go down / Pauline Kael". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 24 April 2010.