the corner from her, it would be all right for me to write a personal note to a film critic. I remember sitting there and not knowing what to say, and it was sent off, and I never heard from her.”
By now Pauline was hearing frequently from stars and directors whose work she had reviewed. She regarded Carol Burnett as “probably the most gifted comedienne this country has ever produced,” but she thought her new film, Martin Ritt’s Pete ’n’ Tillie, about a mismatched husband and wife, was a waste of her talents. Pauline thought Burnett’s work in Pete ’n’ Tillie was “grimly controlled” and “an unnecessarily confined and schoolmarmish performance.” Her review brought her a letter of gratitude from Burnett, in which the actress admitted that she had known something was wrong during the filming but had been unable to figure out what it was.
Pauline also received a letter from Sydney Pollack, director of Robert Redford’s new film Jeremiah Johnson, but it wasn’t one of thanks. Pauline disliked the movie partly because she had thought that Redford would evolve into “a new kind of hip and casually smart screen actor, and he’s already jumped into mythic-man roles in which tired, aging stars can vegetate profitably.” For much of the film, mountain man Jeremiah Johnson wages a war against the Crow Indians who have killed his wife and child; at the end comes a scene in which the Crows’ chief, signaling an end to hostilities, gives Johnson a sign of peace. Pauline wrote, “Jeremiah signals him back, giving him the finger.” Pollack wrote her a lengthy response, saying that she had misinterpreted the gesture, and that he couldonly assume that by that point you were so bored with the film that you were half asleep, since there is no other way to understand how you could see Johnson giving the finger to the Crow Chief. He quite clearly raises his hand in a salute.... The whole attempt, poorly done or not, was to present both the Indian and white man as they were, without judgment, according to my best efforts at research.... Now, I have been called a bum by some very prestigious critics the world over, including yourself, and while it tends to kill my appetite for a few days . . . those are the rules. But I have never been so completely misunderstood or misinterpreted as in those last few lines of your review.
Pauline was disappointed when at the end of the year the New York Film Critics Circle awarded Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers the year’s Best Picture prize over The Godfather. She was equally displeased when Laurence Olivier (for Sleuth) triumphed over Marlon Brando—the result of an unusual and precedent-setting circumstance. She was also disappointed that Liv Ullmann (Cries and Whispers, The Emigrants) won Best Actress over her favorites, Cicely Tyson and Liza Minnelli.
Pauline had recently begun exchanging letters with a young screenwriter named Robert Getchell, who had asked his agent to send along his new script “to save me the buck twenty.” Getchell’s screenplay concerned a Southwestern housewife named Alice who suddenly finds herself widowed and takes to the road with her young boy, in pursuit of the singing career she long ago abandoned. Getchell had written it with Shirley MacLaine in mind, and MacLaine had been eager to do it and had planned to try to get Peter Bogdanovich to direct; then she had gone to work on the presidential campaign of George McGovern, “never to be heard from again,” Getchell wrote.
Pauline read the script with fascination, and while she found it sharp and witty and tough and beautifully observed, she suggested a few improvements. “The idea should be for them to keep going with lots of engagement,” she wrote to Getchell, “to get something out of life along the way—not to look for a happy end.” She added that she thought it should be directed by Altman, choosing not to think about the dilemma that might lie ahead if Getchell’s script were to be filmed and she were to review it for The New Yorker.
The run of good films that appeared in late 1972 did not carry over to the new year: Most of the movies Pauline reviewed from January to March were disappointments. The major event of the winter months was the publication of her latest volume of criticism, Deeper into Movies, once again by Little, Brown. In her author’s note Pauline stated that this collection was “a record of the