In her nearly quarter-century (1968-1991) reviewing films at The New Yorker, Pauline Kael became the most widely read, the most influential, the most powerful, and, often enough, the most provocative critic in America. Her passionate engagement with the work of a new generation of artists--and her ability to share her enthusiasm with a fresh, vernacular, and confrontational style--changed the face of film criticism. On the tenth anniversary of her death comes the first full-scale biography: author Brian Kellow has interviewed family members, friends, colleagues, and adversaries and written a detailed portrait of this remarkable, often relentlessly driven woman. Kellow examines the controversy Kael generated by overstepping what many considered the boundaries of critical propriety. He follows her successes as well as her battles. For anyone who loves film or is concerned about the role of criticism in the arts, this book is a revelatory biography of one of the most influential women of the past half century.--From publisher description.