Golden age of female film critics
Summary
If Ann Tobin (Movie critics’ role in promoting violence, Letters, 19 May) had been an American cinephile, she’d probably have been aware that the sometime doyenne of US film critics, Pauline Kael, notoriously compared the release of Last Tango in Paris – “a landmark in movie history” – to the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring. The rest of her gushing review contained similar hyperbole: “the movie breakthrough has finally come”. She also announced that Maria Schneider’s alleged tormenters, Bertolucci and Brando, had “altered the face of an art form”. They were ably supported by numerous other women writers including (but far from exclusively) Freda Bruce Lockhart, Maryvonne Butcher, Virginia Dignam, Penelope Gilliatt, Virginia Graham, Elspeth Grant, Nina Hibbin, Penelope Mortimer and internationally such giants as Iris Barry, Molly Haskell, Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag. Brian Baxter Bournemouth, Dorset • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters