“Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.”

— Pauline Kael , book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested i…" by Pauline Kael?

Pauline Kael 72

American film critic 1919–2001

Related quotes

“If we make any kind of decent, useful life for ourselves we have less need to run from it to those diminishing pleasures of the movies. When we go to the movies we want something good, something sustained, we don’t want to settle for just a bit of something, because we have other things to do. If life at home is more interesting, why go to the movies? And the theatres frequented by true moviegoers — those perennial displaced persons in each city, the loners and the losers — depress us. Listening to them — and they are often more audible than the sound track — as they cheer the cons and jeer the cops, we may still share their disaffection, but it’s not enough to keep us interested in cops and robbers. A little nose-thumbing isn’t enough. If we’ve grown up at the movies we know that good work is continuous not with the academic, respectable tradition but with the glimpses of something good in trash, but we want the subversive gesture carried to the domain of discovery. Trash has given us an appetite for art.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

“When we make little sacrifices we like to have them appreciated, at least…”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“What's interesting is that you can have a set that's very calm, very smooth, very cooperative…and end up with a terrible movie. And you can have a set that's really horrible as far as relationships and volatility, and come up with a great movie. Sometimes that energy gets infused into what ends up on film -- it's interesting in that way.”

Tobin Bell (1942) American actor

The Only Tobin Bell Interview You'll Ever Need http://movieline.com/2009/10/16/tobin-bell-interview/ (October 16, 2009)

“We have but very indifferent men in general. Great part of those who ship for seamen know very little of the matter.”

Benedict Arnold (1741–1801) Continental and later British Army general during the American Revolutionary War

Letter to General Gates (7 September 1776), in Battle of Valcour on Lake Champlain, October 11th, 1776 by Peter Sailly Palmer(1876) p. 5

“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 — that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance of the people of that day and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But, that reasoning cannot be applied to the great charter.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451.
1920s

“We are then able to answer in some manner the question, "Why have we no great men?" We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great; we are fastidious, that is, we are small. When Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, I am afraid he had very little time to be honest himself. And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great.”

G. K. Chesterton Charles Dickens

Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch 1 : "The Dickens Period"

“We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.”

Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) French actress

Source: My Double Life (1907), Ch. 33 
Context: Life is short, even for those who live a long time, and we must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.

“Very trifling circumstances do give great and daily annoyance, and as often prove too much for our philosophy and forbearance, as matters of the highest moment. … The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can … To great evils we submit; we resent little provocations.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Great and Little Things"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“Though we cannot SEE angles, we can INFER them, and this with great precision.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 5. Of Our Methods of Recognizing One Another
Context: Though we cannot SEE angles, we can INFER them, and this with great precision. Our sense of touch, stimulated by necessity, and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles far more accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a rule or measure of angles.

“It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Lesson, Stanza 8 (1899-1902).
Other works

“Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Pauline Kael 72

Related quotes

Related topics