Joan Did­ion vs Pauline Kael vs The Sound of Music

One of the great leg­ends of 20^th cen­tu­ry film crit­i­cism is that both Joan Did­ion and Pauline Kael were fired from their respec­tive jobs for trash­ing The Sound of Music. These women, who by this point had built up a com­fort­able rival­ry, were tem­porar­i­ly bond­ed by their mutu­al hatred of Robert Wise’s Oscar-sweep­ing musi­cal. Both women enjoyed the noto­ri­ety of being so vicious in print that it cost them their liveli­hoods, but the truth is a lot more obscure than the leg­end suggests.

In 1965, Did­ion was writ­ing for Vogue Mag­a­zine. She got her start in the adver­tis­ing depart­ment and moved up to writ­ing cap­tions. Before long, she was writ­ing cov­er arti­cles and briefly became Vogue’s film crit­ic. In her inau­gur­al film arti­cle, she wrote, ​“Let me lay it on the line: I like movies, and approach them with a tol­er­ance so fond that it will pos­si­bly strike you as simple-minded.”

At the same time, Kael was build­ing her own rep­u­ta­tion as a film crit­ic. She was a staff writer for a pop­u­lar women’s mag­a­zine called McCall’s and also had a reg­u­lar film col­umn at Vogue. Did­ion and Kael would spar in alter­nat­ing issues. One week Kael would praise the Jane Fon­da com­e­dy west­ern Cat Bal­lou, while in the next issue Did­ion would review The Sons of Katie Elder, mak­ing sure to take a swipe at Bal­lou in the process (Vogue was a week­ly until 1973).

It remains unclear what exact­ly inspired them to butt heads. While Kael was bois­ter­ous and Did­ion diminu­tive, it was said they spoke the same cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia lan­guage, or ​“val­ley talk,” as John Dunne wrote in a diary entry. Describ­ing their brief meet­ing at a New York Oscar par­ty, he described them as ​“two tough lit­tle num­bers with the instincts of a mon­goose and an ami­able con­tempt for each other’s work.”

When The Sound of Music was released in 1965, it was an instant sen­sa­tion, top­ping box offices around the world. The film has only grown in promi­nence over the years, yet at the time of its release, the crit­i­cal con­sen­sus was far from glow­ing. Kael’s review for McCall’s has become leg­endary in itself. She took par­tic­u­lar issue with the film’s arti­fi­cial­i­ty and whole­some­ness, call­ing it a nar­cot­ic for the mass­es. ​“Whom could it offend?” she wrote. ​“Only those of us who, despite the fact that we may respond, loathe being manip­u­lat­ed in this way and are aware of how self-indul­gent and cheap and ready-made are the respons­es we are made to feel.”

Didion’s review isn’t quite laced with same ven­om, but it is snide and caus­tic. It was rumoured by those close to her that she had grown tired of review­ing movies and The Sound of Music was a tip­ping point. Didion’s review implies a les­bian dal­liance between Moth­er Supe­ri­or and Maria, while also sug­gest­ing the kind of anes­thetis­ing his­tor­i­cal take. She said of the film that it was, ​“more embar­rass­ing than most, if only because of its sug­ges­tion that his­to­ry need not hap­pen to peo­ple … Just whis­tle a hap­py tune, and leave the Anschluss behind.”

Both women lost their jobs short­ly after, and it’s com­mon­ly thought that it was because of their neg­a­tive takes, though this has been dis­put­ed over the years. Kael’s edi­tor at the time, Robert Stein, argued through­out his life that it wasn’t what did for her. In a let­ter to the edi­tor sent to the New York Times in 2000, Stein attempt­ed to set the record straight: ​“I was the magazine’s edi­tor at the time and rather liked her trash­ing it as ​‘The Sound of Mon­ey’. I gave up months lat­er after she kept pan­ning every com­mer­cial movie from Lawrence of Ara­bia and Dr Zhiva­go to The Pawn­bro­ker and A Hard Day’s Night.”

Did­ion has a bit more lever­age in her leg­end, if only because there is no loud oppo­nent to her ver­sion of events. Some have said it was a mat­ter of logis­tics; Did­ion was tired of writ­ing film reviews and, hav­ing moved to Cal­i­for­nia, she and Vogue sim­ply part­ed ways. But it cer­tain­ly is pos­si­ble that the less opin­ion­at­ed Vogue was grow­ing tired of Didion’s flout­ing of the sta­tus quo.

What is real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing is how Did­ion and Kael latched on to this leg­end. It’s as though they decid­ed to posi­tion them­selves in con­trast to the vir­tu­ous ide­al that Julie Andrews’ Maria rep­re­sents. While both women were par­tic­u­lar­ly resis­tant to the idea of being a part of the woman’s move­ment, as crit­ics, they appeared pur­pose­ful in resist­ing Maria as a roman­tic mod­el. As The Sound of Music returns to cin­e­mas in the UK, this time in 70mm, it might be worth reflect­ing on the film’s place with­in the canon. Is it a musi­cal clas­sic or is it ​“cheap,” ​“self-indul­gent” and ​“embar­rass­ing?”