When the Lights Go Down

Here is Pauline Kael at the top of her powers – in the words of The Times Literary Supplement ‘a great critic . . . with a body of criticism which can be compared with Shaw’s criticism of music and theatre.’

When the Lights Go Down brings together all her writings that appeared inThe New Yorker between 1975 and 1980. She begins with her famous profile of Cary Grant, a searching examination of a star’s career during four decades of moviemaking. Then she turns to the movies of the second half of the 1970s – more than two hundred and fifty of them – and writes of each with a mastery, wit, erudition, and style that are truly incomparable.