Pauline Kael

“…. 3 Women might have been a success if it had been 2 Girls, because almost everything to do with Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek in the first hour had affection and humor. You could feel his love of these actresses (and the assurance they drew from it), and he showed his feeling for the comic beauty in pop and trash and kitsch (a feeling he shares with Godard); it was lovely, fresh sociological comedy about two working girls from Texas. But the paintings under the titles and the electronic score gave intimations of aesthetic howlers to come… The film was stunted by the archetypal female mysticism of the second hour; it was an act of devotion to sit through it….”

Pauline Kael
New Yorker, October 2, 1978
When the Lights Go Down, 442
(review of A Wedding)
[see comments on Duvall from Popeye]

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Just goes to show you that even Pauline Kael was capable of being inherently WRONG about a movie's degree of effectiveness. Taking into consideration that in hindsight (the current year being 2022), with everybody finally having had plenty of opportunity to see it, somehow, Ms. Kael, 3 WOMEN now ranks as one of ALtman's most beloved and best reviewed pictures... an opinion I had shared since initially seeing the fim as a child.