Posted on 05/02/2026 2:29:10 PM PDT by Twotone
Dirty Harry was released near the end of 1971 and became an immediate hit, and just as immediately began a feud between its star, Clint Eastwood, and Pauline Kael, one of the most influential movie critics in America. In her review, published in the New Yorker on January 15, 1972, and titled "Dirty Harry: Saint Cop", Kael called the film "a kind of hardhat The Fountainhead" and "an almost perfect piece of propaganda for para-legal police power."
"When you're making a picture with Clint Eastwood, you naturally want things to be simple, and the basic contest between good and evil is as simple as you can get. It makes this genre piece more archetypal than most movies, more primitive and dreamlike; fascist medievalism has a fairy-tale appeal," Kael wrote, adding near the end of her review that "Dirty Harry is obviously just a genre movie, but this action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced."
Invoking fascism not once but twice, Kael set the tone for the most vociferous criticism Eastwood would face for much of his career, and fired the first shots in a simmering vendetta between the actor and the writer that would inspire Eastwood to make a Kael-like critic the victim of the killer seventeen years later, in his final Dirty Harry sequel, The Dead Pool. "Please," San Francisco film critic Molly Fisher (played by Ronnie Claire Edwards) begs the killer, "I have a heart condition."
"A critic with a heart," he replies. "That's a laugh."
The film opens with what Kael called a "rather strange" choice – slow pans down the names of San Francisco Police Department officers killed in the line of duty on a memorial in the lobby of the city's Hall of Justice.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
“There is iron in his words.
Liberals like her and Ebert hated Dirty Harry and Death Wish movies because it showed the failures of liberal policies on the big screen.
Liberals like her and Ebert hated Dirty Harry and Death Wish movies because it showed the failures of liberal policies on the big screen.
Don’t forget the “Sneakin’ Into The Movies” guys.
“Make my day?!!? Do fifty bullets in yo’ ass make yo’ day?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X3nMw3FGQM
Doh! Thanks. Color me embarrassed.
Pawline who?
classic!
In the wiki for Pauline Kael there is this —
“In December 1972, a month after U.S. President Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide, Kael gave a lecture at the Modern Language Association during which she said: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they [Nixon’s other supporters] are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
Kael was subsequently misquoted as having said, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him” or something that similarly expressed surprise at the election result. This misquotation became an urban legend, and has been cited by conservatives (such as Bernard Goldberg, in his 2001 book Bias) as an example of insularity among the liberal elite.”
What’s interesting to me is that the left calls it a misquote for not stating precisely the words she said while missing the overall meaning. Kael said she knows only one person that voted for Nixon (a moderate Republican). That pretty much confirms she was a leftist for that period in time.
Is Rex Reed still around? I always liked his reviews.
I reckon so
I was more of a John Simon kind of guy.
I think he never wrote a positive review of anything.
Don Siegel later apologized to Andy for ‘ruining his career’ he was so good as Scorpio. Only other things I know he did were a supporting role in COBRA and his part in DEEP SPACE NINE.
Yes.
Rex Taylor Reed (born October 2, 1938) is an American film critic, journalist, actor, and media personality.
At least she didn't say she could smell them, as Harry Reid did.
Part of Scorpio’s crime was burying a school bus full of kids, which was modeled after a case at the time. The perps were released early a couple years ago by lib judge. Hey, bury kids in a school bus...you were young and deserve to get out early.
Audie Murphy probably would have been great in the part and reenergized his career and I would never begrudge him that. But that said I’m glad my hero didn’t play a serial killer.
fascist medievalism has a fairy-tale appealThe insane, insidious historical conflation speaks clearly to leftist illusions dependent upon conflated yet vague evils, regardless of their reality.
He was in the movie Charley Varrick with Walter Matthau. I remember him from that.
Forgot that one…. Another Don Siegel directed flick.
Jessica Walter …. So hot back in the day. I just recently rewatched GRAND PRIX.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.