80/80 - That Kael woman

There's a scene in the final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool in which a female film critic is brutally slain. Clint was thinking of Pauline Kael, his harshest critic - It was Kale who, when critiquing the first Dirty Harry (1971) film, accused Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood of making a "fascist" and "racist" film. The critic in this film is made up to resemble Kale as she appeared during this film's release as an in-joke.

Pauline Kael was a critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991.

'Dirty Harry is a remarkably single minded attack on liberal values, with each prejudicial detail in place. When you're making a film with Clint Eastwood you want things to be simple, and the basic concept of good versus evil is as simple as you can get. This film is more primitive than most, more primitive and dreamlike; fascist medievalism." - On Dirty Harry.

"Clint Eastwood isn't offensive; he isn't an actor, so one could hardly call him a bad actor. One would have to do something before he could be considered an actor at all." On Magnum Force.

Harsh words indeed - but then Kael also lambasted The Outlaw Josey Wales, so perhaps she wasn't the best person to be judging these movies. However that didn't stop her detesting The Enforcer though giving Tyne Daley some grudging praise.

"Daley's performance is very warm and makes Eastwood's holy cool seem more aberrant than ever."

These days the Oscar winning actor can laugh off these old review, but Eastwood was known to get upset by Kale's reviews,

bemoaning to friend that she didn't understand what he was doing. And it's true - Josey Wales in particular is a beautiful elegiac movie with bags of heart, but Kael just saw an over violent western with no humour. Maybe she slipped into the wrong screening by mistake.

"The opposite of sophisticated movie-making. Clint seems to be trying to blast through his own lack of courage as an actor." On Tightrope.

The critic in her famous speech at a festival in 1976 link Eastwood to what she called, The Veitnamization of American movies. Later that year Dr Ronald Lowell presented an article in the Los Angeles Times in which he attacked Kael and actually said she thought the opposite of what she actually said. And Clint also fired back, stating that Kael used cynical times to label him simplistic. 'She found an avenue that was going to make her a star,' Eastwood said in an interview. 'I was just one of many subjects who helped her along the way.'

"Excruciatingly bad. Clint is a perfectly atrocious director." On Bird

"A psychopathic version of the old Saturday Morning Serials." On Sudden Impact.

Even after retirement Kael continued to hit out at Eastwood, saying that the Museum of Modern Art should be ashamed for showing retrospectives in his honour. She also said critics had been hogwashed on The Unforgiven and that it was another western where you were a pacifist until you had to start shooting. After that not much more was heard from the critic who had now fully retired but she would continue to bemoan the state of cinema privately until her death in 2001.