… The returns have long been in, and, despite the friends and followers who colonize the columns of publications across the country, Pauline Kael has lost. Clint Eastwood is rightly recognized as one of the most distinguished directors of the last forty years (and his career continues to advance from strength to strength); the same is true of Woody Allen (she preferred the early, “funny” Woody). Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray, John Cassavetes, Otto Preminger are justly considered consummate artists; “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” is a locus classicus of the political cinema. “Ishtar” was welcomed with ecstasy at its 92nd Street Y screening last spring, and its creator, Elaine May, was received like the exiled heroine returning. Nobody would mistake “Nashville” for the cinematic second coming of “Ulysses” or “Last Tango in Paris” for that of “The Rite of Spring”; when “Shoah” returned last year, it was not discussed as a “long moan.” And the list could go on for quite a while. As I wrote at this blog a couple of years ago, someone who watched only the movies that Kael endorsed would have a comically skewed and narrow view of the history of cinema.