Bosley Crowther

At least a good half of the effect in a sea-picture comes from the sea, and when that element is lacking the whole thing seems flat and synthetic. This, we regret to say, is a major fault in The Sea Wolf.

Stage Fright is dazzlingly stagy but it is far from frightening.

In a spirit of levity, contused by frequent doses of shock, Mr. Lubitsch has set his actors to performing a spy-thriller of fantastic design amid the ruins and frightful oppressions of Nazi-in-vaded Warsaw. To say it is callous and macabre is understating the case.

Ugly, powerful drama. [28 May 1963]

Technically, it's a good job. Mr. Webb has prepared a tough, tight script and Mr. Thompson has directed in a steady and starkly sinister style. There is no waste motion, no fooling. Everything is sharp and direct. Menace quivers in the picture like a sneaky electrical charge. And Mr. Mitchum plays the villain with the cheekiest, wickedest arrogance and the most relentless aura of sadism that he has ever managed to generate...But this is really one of those shockers that provokes disgust and regret. There seems to be no reason for it but to agitate anguish and a violent, vengeful urge that is offered some animal satisfaction by that murderous fight at the end.

Miss Wood has a beauty and radiance that carry her through a role of violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength. There is poetry in her performance, and her eyes in the final scene bespeak the moral significance and emotional fulfillment of this film.

Vincente Minnelli, in his direction, has got all the period charm out of ladies dressed in flowing creations, gentlemen in straw "boaters" and ice-cream pants, rooms lush with golden-oak wains-coating, ormolu decorations and red-plush chairs.

It's the slickest exercise in cerebration that has hit the screen in many months, and it is also one of the most compelling nervous-laughter provokers yet.

Here is a film that not only gives the charming Miss Andrews a chance to prove herself irresistible in a straight romantic comedy but also gets off some of the wildest brashest and funniest situations and cracks at the lunacy of warfare that have popped from the screen in quite some time.

A bountiful comedy-romance.

Its sense resides firmly in its facing one of civilization's most tragic ironies, its power derives from the sureness with which it tells a mordant tale and its beauty lies in its disclosures of human courage and dignity.

It works out to a fascinating picture, for one reason because of its superior illustrative performance and, for another, because of its striking mise en scène.

Believe us, that secret is so clever, even though it is devilishly far-fetched, that we wouldn't want to risk at all disturbing your inevitable enjoyment of the film.

Forget the length of time it took to make it and all the tattle of troubles they had, including the behavior of two of its spotlighted stars. The memorable thing about this picture is that it is a surpassing entertainment, one of the great epic films of our day. By virtue of brilliant staging, Mr. Mankiewicz keeps this well-known tale moving with visual excitements that increase the dramatic flow and give extraordinary insights into the characters.

One of the most intelligent, respectable and entertaining motion pictures of this year.