Andrew Sarris

“…. [T]he performers, particularly Meryl Streep, make every effort to evoke Eros in a classically elliptical manner, a flash of stockings here, a slow, subtle rotation of the buttocks there…. Sophie… is more a creature of fantasy and desire, and since she was never all that real on the printed page, she becomes even more remote and unexamined on the screen, despite Meryl Streep's meticulously detailed characterization. “…. Styron, for all his garrulousness and public-spirited confessions, has fashioned a surefire tearjerker of an emotional climax. It would have been virtually foolproof with any actress, but Meryl Streep has been particularly adept at letting the situation emerge by itself without any excessive hysteria, and for this masterly restraint, I suppose, she is fully entitled to any Oscars she may receive…. “As for Meryl Streep's claims for best actress in 1982, let me go on record retroactively to say that if I had been voting for Oscars in 1936, I would have voted not for Louise Rainer, the Viennese Meryl Streep of her time, in The Great Ziegfeld, but for Carole Lombard, the Jessica Lange of her time, in My Man Godfrey. It goes almost without saying that in 1937 I would have voted not for Louise Rainer in The Good Earth, but for Greta Garbo in Camille, but that is another story. Streep's Sophie is flawless, prodigious, and yet somehow lacking in fire and music. [Sarris’s homage to All About Eve.] I tire of her very quickly on the screen. It is now clear that she will never get very far just being; she clearly needs a Polish accent or its equivalent to display her expertise.” Andrew Sarris Village Voice, December 21, 1982