Circles and Squares
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Can we conclude that, in England and the United States, the auteur theory is an attempt by adult males to justify staying inside the small range of experience of their boyhood and adolescence-that period when masculinity looked so great and important but art was something talked about by poseurs and phonies and sensitive-feminine types? And is it perhaps also their way of making a comment on our civilization by the suggestion that trash is the true film art? I ask; I do not know."--"Circles and Squares" (1963) by Pauline Kael |
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"Circles and Squares" (1963) is an essay by Pauline Kael published in he the spring 1963 issue of Film Quarterly and collected in I Lost It at the Movies.
The essay denounced Andrew Sarris's defense of the auteur theory put forward in "Notes on the Auteur Theory" in 1962. Sarris's reaction was a negative review of I Lost It at the Movies and, in later years, occasional jabs at Kael's work. Examples of his critical observations are available in his books, e.g., The Primal Screen and Politics and Cinema.
With the exception of "Circles and Squares", Kael has rarely responded. Notwithstanding Kael's unresponsive silence, this has gone down in film lore as the Sarris-Kael feud.
Sarris responded once more with "The Auteur Theory and the Perils of Pauline" (1963).
