Alice Adams (1935)

Critic Reviews

• Variety Staff, Variety

  That George Stevens' direction captures the wistfulness of Katharine Hepburn's superb histrionism, and yet has not sacrificed audience values at the altar of too much drabness and prosaic realism, is an achievement of no small order.

• Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

  Stevens's talent for stepping away from the plotline and creating intimate, casual, and naturalistic moments is given plenty of opportunity here, as it would not be in his later superproductions.

• Andre Sennwald, New York Times

  An oddly exciting blend of tenderness, comedy and realistic despair, it touches life intimately at many points during its account of a lonely girl in a typical American small town.

• Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

  Stevens' deadpan-humane approach dilutes the acid of Booth Tarkington's social critique

• , TV Guide's Movie Guide

  The pathetic, social-climbing heroine of Booth Tarkington's novel was never better played than by Hepburn, who brought a fierce determination, clutching coyness, and tragic optimism to the part.

• Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

  George Stevens' poignant adaptation of the Tarkington famous novel is one of the few Ameriacn films of its era to examine the impact of social class in a realistic way.

• Tom Milne, Time Out

  Hepburn is magnificent as the small-town social climber, although the script so softens Booth Tarkington's novel.

• Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

  There's much humor that comes out of the believable characters portrayed and the pain they suffer from their plight.

• Steve Crum, Kansas City Kansan

  Hepburn is real reason to seek this one out

• James Sanford, Kalamazoo Gazette

  Hepburn is heartwarming

• , Film4

  Alice Adams would be forgotten if it weren't for Hepburn's typically charismatic performance as the woman who turns social climbing into an art form.

• Michael W. Phillips, Jr., Goatdog's Movies

  The flaws stand out like bad lawn jockeys.

• Tim Dirks, Tim Dirks' The Greatest Films

  Alice Adams (1935) is RKO's touching, effectively poignant portrayal of small-town, mid-Western American pretenses

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