Yolanda and The Thief - Contemporary Reviews

Contemporary Reviews

• New York Times November 23, 1945; Bosley Crowther: "Taste and imagination are so rare these days in musical films that a good bit of both is sufficient to offset a pack of obvious faults. So that's why this corner is cheering for Metro's Yolanda and the Thief...a pleasing compound of sparkling mummery and glistening allures for eyes and ears...the terpsichorean cavorting of Lucille Bremer and Fred Astaire is simply grand. A Dream Ballet number, expanded against Daliesque decor, with Mr. Astaire as the dreamer, is a thing of pictorial delight...Coffee Time puts movement and color to such use as you seldom behold on the screen...Mr. Astaire and Miss Bremer are plainly thrown considerably out of stride when they are called upon to ramble through some of the talkative scenes. The humor, to put it bluntly, is obvious and dull...It is a long established principle that Fred Astaire's name on a picture is a guarantee of fine dancing, and if Mr. Astaire retires as he is threatening to do, it will remove one of the truly great American dancers of the age."
• Variety October 17, 1945; Kahn: "There's an idea in this yarn, but it only suggests itself. It becomes too immersed in its musical background...A musical number attempts to be symbolic but only serves to waste too many moments of the over-long film...Miss Bremer is a beaut who has a friend in the cameraman...Astaire, on the other hand, gets no such camera treatment, and some of the close-ups are particularly unflattering. But his performance, as usual, is casual and sure."