Kings Row - Critical Reaction

Critical Reaction

New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther panned Kings Row, which he described as being as "gloomy and ponderous" as the novel upon which it was based. "Just why the Warners attempted a picture of this sort in these times, and just why the corps of high-priced artists which they employed for it did such a bungling job," Crowther wrote, "are questions which they are probably mulling more anxiously than any one else." Crowther said that the film "turgidly unfolds on the screen," and is "one of the bulkiest blunders to come out of Hollywood in some time." The performances, particularly Cummings', were, he said, "totally lacking in conviction." The film, he said, "just shows a lot of people feeling bad."

Modern reviewers have viewed the movie favorably, however, and the film received a 100% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, a film-review aggregator.

Time Out Film Guide described the film as "one of the great melodramas" and "as compulsive and perverse as any election, a veritable Mount Rushmore of emotional and physical cripples, including a surgeon with a penchant for unnecessary amputations, a girl who 'made friends on one side of the tracks and made love on the other'."

TV Guide said that Kings Row was "one of the most memorable melodramas of its day," in that it portrayed "a small town not with the poignancy and little joys of Thorton Wilder's Our Town, but rather in grim, often tragic tones." The magazine described the film as "one of director Wood's finest films," and praised Robinson's screenplay, "even if he cut out a death from cancer, deleted a mercy killing, and toned down the narrative's homosexual angle." It described Korngold's score as "haunting" and the sets "quite stunning." James Wong Howe's "gorgeous cinematography, meanwhile, maintains in deep focus many layers of drama, as befits this brooding tapestry."