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Basil Wright

Basil Wright's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) 97% EDIT “Snow White engrosses the attention from beginning to end. So convincing is it that it is difficult at times to realise that one is watching the painted figments of an animation-table, with no life beyond their creator's pencils and brushes.” – The Spectator Dec 21, 2022 Full Review The Shop Around the Corner (1940) 99% EDIT “Though we pretend to believe in this happy Lubitsch world, we know we're pretending. It is a toy we could reach out and break; but why break our toys. There are few enough of them left, with the toyshops all closing down.” – The Spectator Nov 8, 2022 Full Review Son of Frankenstein (1939) 95% EDIT “The Son of Frankenstein is, in short, a missed opportunity for all save the most unsophisticated.” – The Spectator Oct 14, 2020 Full Review EDIT “When Marguerite Moreno, as the outraged spouse of Zeus, is on the screen, all else is forgiven and forgotten.” – The Spectator Jun 29, 2020 Full Review True Confession (1937) 100% EDIT “[True Confession] is a carefully calculated essay in controlled lunacy -- controlled, because it is nearly always true enough to the humanities to remain curiously convincing, lunatic chiefly because of John Barrymore's macabre performance.” – The Spectator May 5, 2020 Full Review Men of Two Worlds (1946) EDIT “With all its faults the film has the great quality of sincerity ; and in many respects it has naiveté which is comparable to that of some of the Soviet films, and which in films of any origin whatever is not to be despised.” – The Spectator Apr 30, 2020 Full Review To Each His Own (1946) 81% EDIT “This one is set in war-time England (a very curious country) and involves that clever, but in this case stultified actress, Olivia de Havilland.” – The Spectator Apr 21, 2020 Full Review Let George Do It (1939) EDIT “Never mind the plot, but don your lowest and most receptive brow, cast social inhibitions to the wind, and enjoy fully a manifestation of that special quality which in no small measure represents what we are fighting to defend.” – The Spectator Apr 3, 2020 Full Review His Girl Friday (1940) 99% EDIT “His Girl Friday is certainly very funny it is also slickly directed, and the chief parts are acted with diamond-cut-diamond precision by Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.” – The Spectator Apr 3, 2020 Full Review The Key (1958) EDIT “Carol Reed is right back on form.” – Sight & Sound Mar 30, 2020 Full Review The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955) 92% EDIT “This is what makes Archibaldo so fascinating. It expresses one simple story idea. It goes straight ahead, sequence by sequence, and it never loiters or takes a wrong turning.” – Sight & Sound Mar 18, 2020 Full Review The Big Sleep (1946) 96% EDIT “It is brilliantly directed and photographed. It moves with breathless speed. The acting is admirable. The dialogue (Raymond Chandler and William Faulkner are among those credited) is of an unusually high level of humour and crispness.” – The Spectator Jul 22, 2019 Full Review L'Atalante (1934) 100% EDIT “Again, and unrepentantly, I call attention to the purity of Vigo's filmic conception, to his genius for presenting the world to us in subjective terms, in terms of the secret and not the public life of the human being.” – The Spectator Jul 22, 2019 Full Review Rebecca (1940) 98% EDIT “It may be conceded that Rebecca is a film well worth careful study by students of the cinema.” – The Spectator Feb 15, 2019 Full Review The Life of Emile Zola (1937) 92% EDIT “The film has all the elements of greatness. It is also remarkably accurate.” – The Spectator Feb 15, 2019 Full Review A Damsel in Distress (1937) 71% EDIT “The inspired lunacy of the Wodehouse prose style cannot, however, survive the change of medium, and the director has failed to capture the typical Blandings atmosphere.” – The Spectator Jun 27, 2018 Full Review The Drum (1938) 83% EDIT “The appeal is to the shallower herd instinct, the instinct which prefers, with double instinctiveness, to mistake melodrama for tragedy, and is too willingly moved to tears by a regiment marching-though it knows not whither or why.” – The Spectator Jun 27, 2018 Full Review Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) 100% EDIT “Angels With Dirty Faces is a very exciting gangster film. The scenario is by Rowland Brown and the direction is by Michael Curtiz, who has a fine sense of visual rhythm.” – The Spectator Jun 14, 2018 Full Review Black Narcissus (1947) 100% EDIT “Designed and photographed with an almost breathtaking sense of beauty.” – The Spectator May 9, 2018 Full Review The Grapes of Wrath (1940) 100% EDIT “The Grapes of Wrath is, in fact, the greatest master- piece the screen has ever produced; in it John Ford has established in vivid and inescapable terms the knowledge of good and evil.” – The Spectator Nov 3, 2015 Full Review
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