Sunday, April 10, 2005

Pauline Kael

“…. In The Rose, she was probably able to give her passionate, skilled performance by drawing from the same source that Streisand drew from in Funny Girl: these "untrained" artists had invented their own training--they had been treating each song they sang as an encapsulated, highly emotional story. Midler--a comedienne who sings--and Streisand are very different, though. When Streisand sings, her command of the audience is in her regal stillness; she distills her own emotions. You feel that she doesn’t need the audience—that she could close her eyes and sing with the same magnetic power. Streisand’s voice is her instrument; Midler’s audience is her instrument. She plays on us and we bring her to life, or at least she makes us feel that we do….”

“…. Divine Madness shows us a great entertainer, though it’s not stirring, like The Rose, where we could see the dramatic reasons for the incontinent changes of feeling….”

Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, November 19, 1980
Taking It All In, p. 95-96
[review of Divine Madness]

“…. [Rose] sings frenziedly, trying to reach her emotional limits…. [A]s one of the Dionysian stars (such as Janis Joplin) who ascended to fame in the 60s and OD'd, all within a few years, Midler gives a paroxysm of a performance--it's scabrous yet delicate, and altogether amazing…. [T]here are sharply written, beautifully played dialogue scenes …. [F]our female impersonators--Claude Sacha, Michael St. Laurent, Sylvester, and Pearl Heart--… do a wonderfully ribald number number with Midler. She has eight others that she does virtually alone … She's a great performer.

Pauline Kael
5001 Nights at the Movies, p. 641
[ LO a little]

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