David Denby

“We're not overly bothered by obviousness in Shirley MacLaine's case because her performance is charmingly modest. However Anne Bancroft is a bit much. Those penetrating eyes and drawn eyebrows; the mouth pulled down at the corners; the slight leaning forward when she speaks, all radiant attention--can anyone take Bancroft's grand manner very seriously any more? When MacLaine tells her off ("You're a killer. You'd walk over anyone and sleep through the night"--the line is a direct steal from All About Eve) Bancroft's face remains calm but her body starts trembling in reaction. The performance is so actors'-schoolish it's a wheeze, and it forces you to relinquish your tolerance of the script. I have trouble with this idea that one arrives at a "turning point" at which one must determine the rest of life. Doesn't anyone turn back? For instance, many women with careers in the arts have taken a few years off to bear children and then returned to work. [Ballerinas, though?] The movie sets up mutually exclusive choices (career or marriage) to give women's decisions the inexorability of fate. Bancroft is so ravaged by her life here she seems to be playing Medea.”

David Denby
Boston Phoenix, Dec. 27, 1977

Stanley Kauffmann

“…. Anne Bancroft is, as usual, unbearable, and she is so gaunt and graceless that, even though we don't see her dancing, merely to see her in costume is ludicrous. Her acting is her customary unerring choice of sentimental clichés for every movement, inflection, transition….”

Stanley Kauffmann
The New Republic, Nov. 19, 1977