As I recall, it came here many months after the original release opening not at any of the grander theaters (then) here but in a regular neighborhood movie theater. I saw it the first weekend with a fair-sized audience who seemed to like it. I liked all of the songs and thought "Whistling Away...
There's a quite revelatory biography on her by Brian Kellow called Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark. Reading it certainly illuminated for me why she had problems dealing with certain subject matter and her unbridled championing of certain actors and directors.
Yes, it breaks my heart to look at those listings and remember what a treasure AMC used to be. Later on, they used to restrict showing the widescreen versions of films to the early morning hours, and my poor VCR was overworked taping all those movies so I could watch them over the course of the...